The best I can manage is to get my upper body lying across the top with my legs still hanging over the edge. Notwithstanding the splinters, the raw planks are actually a benefit in that they provide the necessary bit of purchase that enables you to hold on long enough to drag one knee upward onto the planks, haul the rest of yourself up after it into a kneeling position and then stand upright. When both of us are firmly on land we make our way into town.
The island of Nevis is seven miles long by five wide and sombrero-shaped, thanks to the volcano at its centre which rises to a peak 985 metres high. It is the smaller of the two islands which make up this small country whose formal title is the Federation of St Kitts & Nevis. Once British, it became independent in 1983. The name Nevis derives from its one-time Spanish name, Our Lady of the Snows, and may have been derived by linking the white cloud around Nevis Peak with a 4th century Catholic miracle story about snow falling on one of the seven hills during a hot Roman summer.
It was here that the young naval captain Horatio Nelson, on his tour of duty in the Caribbean, met and fell in love with Fanny Nisbet, the young widow of a plantation owner. They married on the island in March 1787 and set up home in England a few months later.
This is only the third Caribbean island we have ever visited (the first being a week’s package tour in the late ’80s), but it will soon become apparent that each one has an identity all its own. On some there is a tangible apartheid between the local culture and the foreign environment created by tourism. At the other extreme, the benefit to the island’s standard of living from tourism is embraced so wholeheartedly that it’s like holidaying in a shopping mall.
To our delight, Nevis has been slower to develop than some. Here the islanders, on this brief acquaintance at least, appear to treat visitors as they do each other, which is in a kindly, courteous, God-fearing way. Sadly, this may be about to change. The construction of a neat little shopping complex for luxury goods is well advanced and has already set itself apart, not just spatially but by its modern design and building materials. In contrast the town centre, where real life is lived, though very neat and tidy is a little worn.
Indeed, some of Nevis’s public buildings belong to another century, earlier even than the one we have just left behind, and it is in one of them that we find a neatly dressed, polite young official from the Harbour Authority. She carries out her duties in a battered, wooden lean-to, built against an inside wall of a very old and disreputable-looking warehouse. Her office resembles an open-fronted garden shed, with just a counter and a high shelf on the wall behind her containing dusty boxes of paperwork.
As well as housing the Harbour Authority, the warehouse doubles as the Customs shed and incongruous among the cardboard boxes and parcels that litter its dirt floor is a new, gleaming white, vitreous enamel toilet that someone somewhere on the island is waiting to have installed. We pay EC$20 to the Customs man and EC$12 in harbour dues.
Since we are so close, we pop into the tourist office for local information, provided by a very friendly and helpful young woman, and then make our way to the police station which doubles as the Immigration Office. On our way there, a middle-aged woman with a welcoming smile stops to pass the time of day with us.
The public area of the police station is a small room with a counter and a couple of chairs against one wall. Behind the chairs is a notice board which contains a sheet of A4 paper bearing Nevis Constabulary’s Mission Statement: to answer calls, reduce crime and be honest and efficient.
While David stands at the counter and fills in a form with our details and the duration of our visit (after first checking if there are any financial penalties for overstaying) I sit in one of the two chairs and observe the large blackboard opposite. In permanent lettering across the top it has Life Has No Spare and Jesus Saves. Below, written neatly in white chalk, are the island’s traffic statistics – one accident in February (today is the 22nd) – followed by the names of current disqualified drivers. There are four men and one woman, along with the dates on which they will get their driving licences back. When a door opens behind the counter there is a glimpse of a cell with its tenant leaning in the open doorway chatting to an officer. Nevis boasts ‘virtually no crime’.
A woman comes in to ask if her nephew has finished giving his statement yet. Told no, she asks the officer behind the counter to tell him to meet her at the supermarket when he has. This request is called out to another officer, behind the thin wall, who calls back the nephew’s query as to which supermarket she means; and the officer behind the counter and the one behind the wall relay data back and forth until the meeting place of the woman and her nephew has been established.
When our paperwork has been completed we go into the bank to withdraw some money and feel reassured by quite a long tract in the bank teller’s window about trust, honesty and keeping faith with the Lord. Then we go and spend the money in the nearby supermarket on essentials which include a fly swatter, of which we are much in need.
By the time we get back to Voyager there is quite a sea swell. The owner of one of the small wooden fishing boats paddles out to it on a surf board, leaves it tied to his mooring buoy and goes off in his boat to fish. We have lunch, put up our feet and read the literature from the tourist office. There are two things in particular that we should like to see. One is the former home of Alexander Hamilton which is now a museum. The other is the island’s famous African green or vervet monkeys which are most likely to be spotted from Golden Rock, formerly a sugar plantation and now a hotel. The Hamilton house is nearby and we shall visit it tomorrow. Golden Rock is some distance away and will make an ideal outing another day, once we find a way to get there.
Meanwhile, our new fly swatter works a treat. After all, why destroy the ozone layer with aerosols when you can bring the little critters down manually and get exercise at the same time. David is recording his tally with little silhouettes in biro on the plastic handle.
34
A Little Local History
After breakfast, and before we shower, I give us both haircuts out in the cockpit while we watch the pelicans. Not far from us is a wrecked freighter which a hurricane drove onto the rocks some years ago. The pelicans use it as an observation platform.
Brown pelicans are related to gannets and they fly with the same languid, flap-and-glide as their gannet cousins. They also acquire their food in a similar way, at least initially. Firstly, they seek out their quarry. Then they soar above it to an appropriate height, lower their heads and plunge onto it with the most terrific force. But where the gannet rises gracefully from the depths to swallow a single fish, the pelican bursts forth with its pouch bulging with fish and water.
The pouch, which extends underwater, holds far more than the stomach can, so all the water has to be disposed of before the fish can be swallowed. This is achieved by an undignified and rather comic performance involving much head-shaking and large quantities of seawater flying from the sides of the beak.
When they have breakfasted, the pelicans settle themselves on the fishermen’s boats and begin their grooming regime which involves a thorough investigation of their feathers and much drying of wings. A particular favourite among the small boats seems to be one with the words Let Them Talk painted on its side in shaky writing. Twelve pelicans complete their grooming here before settling down to sun themselves. They really are the most affable of birds. They don’t fret or complain if, after arranging themselves comfortably in the limited space, another pelican decides to join them. Far from screeching in protest or physically attacking the intruder as another species might, the present incumbents merely budge up a bit to make room for the newcomer. It is all very civilised.
With our own feeding and grooming completed we take the dinghy into Charlestown Harbour and brave the assault course again. These things are always less challenging the second time you do them and I lose hardly any skin off my knees and elbows at all today.
The Hamilton house sits at a fork in the
road. It is substantial and built of stone. The actual year of Alexander’s birth is a bit vague, but somewhere between 1755 and 1757. He was the fourth son of a Scottish laird and a local woman of Huguenot descent married to, but separated from, somebody else at the time. Born and raised in Nevis, Alexander was sent to be educated in New York, at what would become Columbia University. He later became the first US Secretary of the Treasury and a Founding Father of the US Constitution. He died in 1804 following a duel with a political opponent.
I found it a fascinating house, not just in its style and solidity, but also because despite being a museum now, in an odd sort of way it still seems almost lived in. Its rooms haven’t been buffed and neatened into a parody of themselves, as the former homes of the famous often are. In the kitchen you can imagine cooking being done over the open fire amid the thump and clatter of its pans, big stone jars and kitchen utensils, not to mention the rush and noise of children running across its stone floors. In fact, one very appealing exhibit is a determined attempt to preserve children’s games from the old days before they are lost forever.
We visit a church and a bookshop, buy a book about whales and dolphins in the Caribbean and before heading home make enquiries about getting a taxi to take us to Golden Rock tomorrow. We are quickly accosted by a man who says he is a walking-tour guide. We know the hotel is some distance away on the other side of the island and, wondering if we should still need a taxi or whether he has a car, we ask him how we would get there and he says on the bus.
We try to establish how much he will charge for his services but he is very vague, saying it depends how much we want to do, how far we want to go into the rainforest, and so on. What we are asking for is something as basic as how much an hour, but we don’t get an answer. It also hadn’t occurred to us until this moment to go into the rainforest. With something of an aversion to wet clammy places and snakes and spiders and other biting things that run up your legs it is something I had intended to leave to more adventurous souls. A glimpse of the monkeys and lunch was as much as we’d planned for. We tell the man we’ll think about it.
As we lower ourselves down the precipitous wooden dinghy dock we notice a small local boat tied up behind our dinghy. Its owner has put a series of nail boards and wire across the top of its cuddy, the little boat’s tiny cabin, to keep seabirds off. Heaven help him if he ever stumbles getting on or off his boat. He’ll need to have his tetanus injections up to date. A bit of guano must surely be preferable to stepping onto a bed of rusty nails. On the other hand, they do make a mess.
Talking over tomorrow’s outing during the dinghy ride back to Voyager we ask ourselves: if you can get to Golden Rock by bus, why go to the expense of a taxi? And why not postpone any decision about a guide until we get there?
After lunch, and a squall, I do some laundry with the water gathered from the awning while David swabs the decks. Blue water cruising means using whatever opportunities offer themselves, and fresh water at anchor is not something to be ignored.
Another squall is imminent which will provide a final freshwater rinse for the laundry now pegged out on the rails, as well as plenty of water for baths tomorrow. By the time the second squall has passed through, the atmosphere is so fresh it feels as if the whole planet has been washed clean. We are even able to look up and see the top of Mount Nevis without its cloud for the first time. There is also a rainbow, which somehow makes it all picture perfect. High cloud provides a cool, restful evening. At bedtime a narrow strip of sky on the western horizon clears and a blazing peach-gold sun slips into the sea.
When you leave a chilly, appliance-based environment for something as basic as a yacht at anchor, especially in a tropical climate, you become part of the natural world and your life takes on its rhythms. Accordingly you wake as it begins to get light and what with the mornings being so warm, and the sunrises so captivating, it takes no effort at all to rise at daybreak. Similarly, you begin to yawn as night falls. Everything becomes more simple and spontaneous.
Meals are not pre-planned; you buy what is available. Laundry and personal hygiene is not a problem given the brief but heavy shower virtually every afternoon. Bathing, in secluded places, is most pleasant in the cockpit in collected rainwater heated by the sun. Communication with the outside world tends to be brief – at anchor there are more important things for your batteries to do – but the desire to maintain that link with your homeland remains strong.
Much as our parents’ generation clustered around their Bush radios for news from war-torn London, we hunch over our SSB for World Service’s Britain Today between 6.30 and 6.45am Eastern Caribbean Time. Hunching is necessary because reception is not as good here as it was in Antigua, with the radio announcer fighting a losing the battle with what appears to be variously a bagpipe player, a male drunk and a woman wailing some unintelligible but heartfelt lament.
The FM version of World Service, also broadcast from London but relayed locally, is easier to hear but makes only a brief mention of UK news, concentrating instead on international events. It has an American presenter with the most wonderfully reassuring voice backed by soaring, heartwarming music that makes you feel all is well with the world – both utterly inappropriate given the unrelieved human misery from flood, famine, human trafficking and ethnic cleansing being reported on the channel every morning.
35
A Bus Called Babylon
At 10.30 this morning we seek out the place where the local buses gather – Memorial Square, opposite Happy Hill Alley – and ask which one of them goes to Golden Rock. They have names instead of numbers and the one we need is called Babylon.
All these vehicles, we will discover, carry a printed injunction to the effect: No eating or drinking – 14 passengers max. It is one of the few areas of conformity they share because Nevis’s buses are as individual as their owner/drivers, each one reflecting his particular tastes, in music especially, which is played very loud.
I’ve always had a well-developed sense of survival and it was reinforced many years ago when David and I took an activity holiday in rural France. A member of the group, an aviator and mechanical engineer with a melancholy side to his nature, was convinced that while the white-water canoeing and potholing were of no great risk to us, the transportation between sites definitely was. And as we clattered daily around steep hairpin bends in geriatric French vehicles he could be heard intoning gloomily, ‘Have you noticed how much he’s using his gearbox on the corners? That’s because his brakes are shot.’ Or, ‘Hear that? That’s the...’ and pinpoint to a nicety the actual bit of this particular vehicle’s gearbox, steering or braking system currently announcing its own imminent demise. And possibly ours. Ever since that time I have always tried to travel in newer vehicles rather than old ones, wherever possible, on the premise that their essential parts are likely to outlast my journey.
We approach the bus with Babylon painted across the front in vibrant graffiti-style letters and I am gratified to see that it is a very recent model. Although the whole vehicle, including the half-dozen other passengers already waiting in their seats, is vibrating to a reggae beat.
There is only one road around the island and it is a winding, pot-holed switchback. Combined with the Caribbean bus driver’s commitment to unrestrained speed, it is a wild ride. At one point we come to a narrow bridge over a river. The banks slope steeply down to it and as we breast the top of the slope we can see that a car has stopped on the bridge and a man is standing beside it, chatting with the driver. Babylon is already being driven flat out but, as it descends the slope, gravity lends an added momentum and it positively hurtles down onto the narrow bridge.
There is a communal intake of breath from the passengers, almost as if by doing so we can somehow make the bus narrower. The horrified pedestrian, luckily a very slender young man, presses his pelvis against the parked car, and raises his hands high in the air to make himself as flat as possible. We zoom past him, with only inches to spare. As one, everybody o
n the bus – apart from the driver – turns to see if he has survived and observe his sickly smile of disbelief as he stares after our disappearing bus. I let out an involuntary, ‘Jesus!’ and a second quiver of shock runs through my immediate neighbour at my blasphemy. Fortunately, only she has heard it above the pulsating reggae which is making all the metal on the bus hum.
Our driver does seem to have a gentler side, though, for the bus makes a detour down a narrow dirt track to drop off a very small, very elderly lady at her door. But in case anyone should suspect him of going soft, this is immediately followed by a wheel spinning, gravel spitting reverse up someone’s steep drive and a head-banging, pot-holing lunge back up the dirt track and onto the road again.
Babylon finally lurches to a stop and lets us off. The moment we close its door the bus roars away. There is an immediate sense of relief as the ear-shattering reggae disappears into the distance.
It is a long, steep, winding trek up to Golden Rock. We are, after all, climbing the foothills of a volcano. There are thickly wooded slopes on both sides of us with the addition of a deep gully to our right, culminating in a dry river bed. Halfway up we are given a wondrous display of the very thing we have come to see. From the far side of the gully on our right, across a small wooden bridge, comes a troop of African vervet monkeys. It is a family group, descending in size, age and gender from a surprisingly large patriarch, through a variety of smaller adults and even smaller adolescents to springy little youngsters less than a foot high. They are slender and graceful, with black faces, long tails and a green tinge to the fur, most noticeably on the youngest. And despite their numbers on the island – estimated at around 45,000, or five times the human population – they are apparently elusive.
Following the lead of the patriarch, the troop leaves the bridge, climbs the river bank, assembles onto the track and then makes its way across it in single file. We stand quite still and they pass a few yards in front of us, without haste, effortlessly vaulting the steep bank to the left of us and disappearing one at a time into the trees. All except one. Among the first to reach the trees, he perches negligently on a branch and gazes back at us until the whole troop has gone and then he also turns and vanishes into the foliage.
A Thousand Miles from Anywhere Page 22