Stupid Activity of the Week – Admirality Bay, Bequia, May 21, 2023

We spent a long 12 hour day sailing, or should I say surfing down some pretty sporty waves, 71 miles to Bequia.  It’s an island I have never heard of but is part of the Grenadines and their “claim to fame” is that whaling is still legal here.  It’s pronounced “Beckway,” and used to be a British Colonial Island.  It’s pretty cool here  (despite the whaling laws), and it’s the best anchorage we have had for several weeks.  We have spent the last few days here snorkeling and relaxing.  We had decided to skip St. Vincent since there have been a rash of cruisers being boarded, held at gun or knife point, and robbed.  This has been a great alternative as it feels very safe, they have good food and some interesting hiking.

The first cool thing we saw when snorkeling was “Moonhole.”  It’s another old hotel which was built by a couple back in the 60’s and is still partially used today.  It‘s supposedly a very close to nature type experience but since it’s private, we were not able to go and see for ourselves.  Normally this would not stop us from taking a peek, however, this looked a bit too unstable for us to just jump ashore and poke around. 

Moonhole is now a protected area and the elkhorn coral here was stunning.  We spent a bit of time cutting fishing trash off of some of the mature ones so they could continue to grow.  Then after a few days of snorkeling, we decided to try the hike which goes from here over the volcano to Friendship Bay – 5.5 miles.  Well, this is where the stupid activity comes in.  First off, we got a bit lost as the path wasn’t terribly well marked.  Then, we knew it was rated as hard on All Trails app and how much the last moderately difficult hike had kicked our butts.  Lastly, it had rained the night before and it was still muddy. 

By the time we were done, we had walked over 15,000 steps, climbed the equivalent of 52 flights of stairs, an elevation of 1200 feet, and over just 6 miles. 

To make matters worse, after finally making it to the top, it started to rain making our decent just that much more challenging than it otherwise may have been.  The decent was basically an old riverbed and we could not make it down without touching the trees.  This is something we try not to do after learning what poisonwood and manchineel trees are.  Half of the climb down we had to do going backwards much like climbing down a ladder since it was so steep.  I figured this would fulfill our stupid activity requirement of the week.

If it wasn’t for this little guy, I would say it wasn’t worth it.

We spent the rest of the post shower, doing absolutely nothing!!!  It’s a good thing beer got delivered to the boat and we enjoyed the local taste of the island.