Looking for info on Bequia. Dive conditions, Non diver activities, travel problems, what the beaches are like, relative costs, etc, etc. We were in Utila and Belize this year and although we loved both places and will probably return to Belize for the 3rd year we are thinking about adding a 2nd destination. Thanks for the help
Bequia Info??
- Thread starter Chivas
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DougY
Registered
Chivas:
Hi,
I was in Bequia in November 2004. I had a great time. I went diving with http://www.bequiadiveadventures.com they were a small outfit, they were really helpful and flexible.
Bequia is a small island so the non diving activities are pretty limited, walking, lieing on the beach, taking a taxi tour round the island, a speed boat trip to mustique. I stayed at gingerbread in Port Eliisabeth it was great. There are some good beaches on Bequia Princess Margeret beach is about a mile from Port Elisabeth and its really good. Bequia is a laid back out of the way place great for relaxing and chilling out.
Doug
Damselfish
Contributor
I've been to St Vincent several times and combined that with some time in Bequia in 1999. I really liked Bequia, as long as you can amuse yourself it's a great little place to hang out and explore. For the size there's a fair number of good places to eat, probably because of the sailing crowd.
St. Vincent is a bit of a pain to get to (as no major carriers fly there and the airport doesn't do big jets.) Bequia is more of a pain to get to. I don't believe there is any scheduled air to Bequia, there are small charter planes but the usual way is to take the ferry from St. Vincent. (Or sail there!) St. Vincent diving is quite good and that combined with staying at Young Island Resort makes it well worth the trouble for me. (The Mariner Hotel on St. Vincent also seems nice enough and would be cheaper, I talked to people staying there that were happy with it.) Bequia diving was fine and there was some unique scenery, but nothing better or so fantastic that it's worth the extra trouble of getting there just for the diving. But if you really enjoy laid back quirky little places it might be worth it for you. I might go back, I wouldn't skip St. Vincent to go to Bequia but I might combine them again.
We stayed at the Gingerbread and it was very nice except no screens on the windows, just wooden louvers you had to leave open or melt, as there was no AC. And the mosquitos were bad when we were there. If it wasn't for that I would stay there again in a second. Gingerbread doesn't have a beach, but the location was great for walking to everything or watching the world go by. You could take a water taxi to a nice beach or walk if you're ambitious. There are a number of other small places to stay with different pros and cons, some are on or near beaches.
St. Vincent is a bit of a pain to get to (as no major carriers fly there and the airport doesn't do big jets.) Bequia is more of a pain to get to. I don't believe there is any scheduled air to Bequia, there are small charter planes but the usual way is to take the ferry from St. Vincent. (Or sail there!) St. Vincent diving is quite good and that combined with staying at Young Island Resort makes it well worth the trouble for me. (The Mariner Hotel on St. Vincent also seems nice enough and would be cheaper, I talked to people staying there that were happy with it.) Bequia diving was fine and there was some unique scenery, but nothing better or so fantastic that it's worth the extra trouble of getting there just for the diving. But if you really enjoy laid back quirky little places it might be worth it for you. I might go back, I wouldn't skip St. Vincent to go to Bequia but I might combine them again.
We stayed at the Gingerbread and it was very nice except no screens on the windows, just wooden louvers you had to leave open or melt, as there was no AC. And the mosquitos were bad when we were there. If it wasn't for that I would stay there again in a second. Gingerbread doesn't have a beach, but the location was great for walking to everything or watching the world go by. You could take a water taxi to a nice beach or walk if you're ambitious. There are a number of other small places to stay with different pros and cons, some are on or near beaches.
-hh
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DougY:
We went in the springtime...May 2003. Gosh, how time flies. FWIW, May is roughly 2 months out of Season, and in 2003, the rainy season hadn't started yet, so everything was (nicely mosquito-free) very dry and brown.
I used the same operation. They did quite well...and right next store, there's a darn good ice cream shop on the one side, and a good pizza place on the other!
In actuality, the waterfront walk really isn't that big anyway. Plan (and expect) to be "adopted" by one of the taxi drivers for the week. We had 'Doc' ... a really nice gentleman and I'd definitely use him again. Doc was quite friendly and engaging in conversation. We did an island tour with Doc, found out that he's a former commercial diver and former fishing boat captain (they used to be able to fill a 60 ton boat with grouper in 3 days). Doc's Taxi Service is at Telephone# 458-3382 or VHF 68. Cellphone 529-0970. His card doesn't have an area code listed, but the rest of Bequia is 784, so I assume that his international phone number would be 1-784-458-3382. If a really young child answers the phone, its his granddaughter; ask her for "Mom" and Doc's daughter will arrange your pickup. Doc was excellent all week, and given the condition (and steepness, and narrowness) of some of the island's roads, I'd definitely go with a driver before my own rental car next time. Well recommended. Our cost for the week was $140 (including tip), and this was based on 5-6 taxi's per day.
BTW, do make it a point to go over to Bequia's turtle farm, the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary:
See: http://www.flyingcameraco.demon.co.uk/oasis/journal/jan02bequia.html
Its definitely worth a visit as well as its suggested $5/person admission. This facility has been run for the past 8 years by Orton "Brother" King (who's known Doc for decades). Brother King is another former Bequian commercial fisherman, who lived to see his overfishing crash the local populations (reportedly, ~4 years ago). Orton's response was to start raising endangered Hawskbill turtles expressly for release back into the wild (unlike the Cayman Turtle Farm, where they raise turtles for their meat first, and any excess gets released). He released turtles #645 & #646 during our visit...not at all shabby for such a small homegrown and run-on-a-shoestring operation.
Getting there:
There's nothing direct; you're going to have to fly to a more popular island, and then decide if you want your last leg to be puddlejumper aircraft, or by boat. There's frequent ferryboats that run to/from St. Vincent on a regular, published schedule, and we did meet some visitors who used that mode of transportation. The ferry is inexpensive, even after factoring in the cost of a couple of taxi's to get you there from whichever airport. The ferryboat ride from St. Vincent to Bequia takes around an hour.
For puddlejumper flights, the more popular gateways are Grenada, St. Vincent and Barbados. There appear to be several small flight companies; two that I learned of are SVG Air (http://www.svgair.com/) and Mustique Airways (http://www.mustique.com).
While we normally fly out of New York (Newark), for this trip, we chose to drive to Philadelphia to take advantage of a nonstop flight to Barbados on US Airways, and then took the 30-50 minute puddlejumper. Bequia's airport is along its southern coast, and was created in 1991 by a landfill project.
Homeward Bound:
FYI, be aware that one of the woman who works their airport security is known for trying to sell pamphlets of her poetry to her captive audience. Fortunately, she's not too pushy about it, but it will be one of the last things you'll do (and remember about) on your visit.
Accomodations:
Most accomodations are in the main town of Port Elizabeth, which is where the ferry docks. There's some scuttlebutt that there's some trade-offs to staying in town. These consist of some visitor complaints about noise from barking dogs (there were a lot of "strays" around), as well as a security warning about criminals who are known to have the MO of taking the last ferryboat to Bequia at night, burgle, and then take the 6:30am ferryboat back to St. Vincent. Port Elizabeth is a town for the visiting yachts and is where pretty much all of the nightlife is.
There are some houses and other accomodations elsewhere, however, such as "The Old Fort" (http://vincy.com/oldfort/), a B&B based on the foundations of 17th Century military hilltop fortification.
The place we stayed at, Bequia Beach Club (http://www.bequiabeachclub.com), was across the island's main ridge, on the shores of Friendship Bay, on the island's southeast corner. At only ten rooms with its own sandy beach, this place is reportedly favored by Germans and other Europeans for whatever reason. The accomodations themselves were spacious but simple, and their off-season rates are quite affordable. You know that you're not in a 4 star Hilton when upon check-in, you're warned that the post-dry-season drought has made the remaining water in the cistern unusually salty, so while the tap water was safe, it wasn't recommended for drinking. Similarly, while the shower had heated and unheated (aka hot and cold) cistern water, the sink only had one tap. The owner/operator, Chester Peters, is very active in the local Rotary International Chapter, and was extremely helpful and accomodating to our needs, as were also Margaret and Tilla, two of his staffmembers.
If I had to do it again, I might stay along the waterfront in Port Elizabeth, but it was also nice to have a very quiet place to ourselves, where we could watch sustinance fishing take place out front instead of the Rich Cruiser set. Also, considering that Chester had donated our stay to a charity, he's IMO definitely the right kind of person to give your business to. I'd enjoy visiting with them again, and to find out how his Rotary Chapter's hosting of a teen regatta sailing competition boat is doing.
(End of Part I)
-hh
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(Part II)
Seasonal Note:
By late May, the entire island was in very deep "out of season", and because the dry season was ~2 months overdue in ending, the island looked as brown and arid as Bonaire or Aruba. Fresh water on the island is collected rainwater, and many residents' cisterns were close to running completely dry. Our local taxi driver, Doc, reported that he had only 2 inches of water left in his main cistern, and his second was down to "half full". They're right on the bubble of tapping their 'Emergency' Cisterns which are located on the hillsides above Port Elizabeth.
Eating:
There's a number of good restaurants for dinner (http://www.bequia-information.com/bi/pages/restaurants.asp), as well as some beachfront bar types of places that are frequented by the "Yachties". Because it was so quiet during our off-season stay, it was recommended that we make dinner reservations each night, which was mostly to verify that the restaurant would remain open. For four nights of our week, we were literally the only customers in the restaurant for the night. The largest "gang" was a lunch downtown, where there were around a dozen total customers.
One of the regional foods is a 'Rotis'. Its a thin dough that's been wrapped around a filling, typically meat & potatoes, and baked. Its heavy on the curry. I'd describe it as a curry-spiced Pastee, except a Pastee's dough is thicker. These are a traditional West Indian dish; its popular in Trinidad.
Another well-known treat to the Tourists is to get a lobster pizza from Mac's Pizza. Its right next to Bequia Dive Adventures (the diveshop I used; http://www.bequiadiveadventures.com/), which means its 4 doors down from Dive Bequia (the only other diveshop; http://www.dive-bequia.com/). Unfortunately, the local Lobster Season ends April 30th each year, and by the time that we arrived ~3 weeks later, and all of the lobsters were long since eaten. I did notice that some restaurants along the Belmont walkway in Port Elizabeth had small "Lobster Ponds" to hold their stock.
The Belmont walkway:
This is a waterfront thoroughfare between the sand and the waterfront row of shops in downtown Port Elizabeth. This area was damaged when Bequia got a "out of the blue" set of waves from Hurricane Lenny, much like how Bonaire got hit. For the sections that are covered with sand, you walk on the sand ;-) You can see sections of it in "ScubaMom's" webpages on Bequia, at: www.scubamom.com/grenadines/bequia/island.htm
Island Life:
The Bequians are friendly ... I'd say friendlier than Cayman ... and while it is evident that there are some people who are quite poor, there was a distinct lack of the "hassle the tourists for money" that we've found in places such as Jamacia. Bequia is known for having some aboriginal whaling, and you'll see some evidence of this around (there's a museum under reconstruction). They're also known for their sailors and a double-ender sailboat design that's used in their annual Easter Regatta. The bad news on these boats is that we saw many more flat-stern powerboats; the good news is that Chester's work with the Rotary is helping to retain (and restore) this heritage ... they're hosting a student team who's going to be competing in a Regatta later this summer, and is expected to do well.
Moonhole (House):
There's an overpriced tour offered of these "artist" houses on Bequia's SW tip. You'll see them from the diveboat, which will help you decide if you want to shell out the money (4x as much as the Turtle Sancuary) to see them. We didn't bother.
Spring Pottery:
Man, am I glad this place wasn't open when we visited...we would have spent a mint. This is a pottery shop run by a man from UK who has a nice, clean style. Because the winter season was over, he had gone home to UK for the summer.
Currency:
The Eastern Caribbean Dollar is EC$2.68 = US$1.00 Like many other destinations, US currency is always accepted, although the exchange rate gets rounded off (US$10 = EC$26; US$20 = EC$53). Most businesses accepted Credit Cards, with some of them ringing the charge through in EC$ and others in US$. If you're paying in cach, you'll get EC$ in your change. There was no real reason to try to exchange currency, and since we always be prepared with cash to backup a credit card, absolutely no problems.
BTW, Barbados has their own currency. But they accept both US$ and Euro's in most of the airport shops.
The diving on Bequia:
I had seen an article in _Sport Diver_ right after I got back...probably the June 2003 issue...and they had an article which included Bequia. The article was reasonably accurate, although I did "read between the lines" at a few points. The things I noticed were:
- No bold statements on water visibility. The article discussed macro critters extensively, and late within it has a statement saying how the UW photographers "finally" put on their wide angle lenses for a particular dive. This is because the water was reliably green (not blue) and horizontal viz was better than 30ft, but probably no better than 50ft.
- wonderful green "tropical paradise" photo's. The island was very brown, reminiscient of Bonaire, due to the post dry season drought. The goats who wandered through our hotel's courtyard every day didn't have much browse The good news for us was that we didn't have to worry about bugs...I can't speak for what they're like when the island is green from rain. FWIW, we bought a postcard of Admiralty Bay so that we can put it in our Photo scrapbook side-by-side with our photo from the same scenic overlook.
- Bragging about diving on a special dive site, namely "End of Bequia". Its a nice site, but if the inference that its as far afield as the Bequian dive operations will go is incorrect. That honor goes to Pigeon Island. To get to Pigeon Island, go to End of Bequia, through the gap, and then turn south and go to the last of the nearby Cays. Its a nice site too, although it was a wet/rough crossing on the day we went.
Here's a hard-to-find map of Bequia:
http://www.travel-and-fun.de/pictures/st-vincent/bequia-karte-kl.gif
What makes this map noteworthy & unusual is that it actually shows the southern Cays in their actual relative position. For example, End of Bequia is located just beyond Moonhole, which is on the northern side of the west side of the main island on this map; Pigeon Island is across the bay to its south, being the leftmost island at the bottom of this map.
The balance of the dive sites we visited were all along Bequia's west side, all the way up to nearly the northern point.
As I mentioned earlier, I used Dive Bequia. Reason was that they were recommended by the hotel that we stayed at, but I think it was the right choice ... Don, Larry & Dave run a good operation, and they have a fast 6-pack design, where Dive Adventures has the putt-putt types. They do a 9:00, 11:30 & 2:30 dive daily (although they like to take Sunday Afternoons off). I dived intermittantly, and it was $39/tank after all taxes. FWIW, one nice touch that they do is that your invoice includes all of the divesite names that you dived with them, day by day.
The diving was light drift, although they hook in to the reef when starting, and they'll hook in perhaps 25% of the time when you're being picked up. Unfortunately, the island don't have dive moorings, but I saw no obvious gross reef damage from the practice.
Dive conditions were 80-81F, 35-50ft viz, generally greenish waters, and enough surface chop that they were unhappy about conditions. I thought I was going to be disappointed in the UW photography, but I simply put aside my 15mm lens and shot my Close-Up kit all week: they have a lot of macro life going: we generally saw juvenile drum, cleaner shrimp (*BIG* banded corals!), eels (4 different varieties) and scorpionfish on almost every dive, including four (4) scorpionfish on the last dive. On a few dives, we encountered schools of wrasse and butterflies who were raiding the masses of unguarded Sergant Major eggs. All in all, this was good macro diving. We were also looking for frogfish and sea horses, but drew blanks. Most of the reefs were sloping, but we did have some areas where we had true verticals. For most sites, the bottom of the reef was within sight, typically down at 80-100fsw.
We rarely went all the way to the bottom; most dives averaged around 60ft max, and Dive Bequia was very good at providing value with good bottom times; an hour was typical. Tank fills were just a tiny bit short in that they were right at 3000psi in the sun, instead of the oft-found slight overfill that cools to 3000psi once you're in the water.
All in all, Bequia's a nice laid-back place with slow drift diving with a focus on the smaller macro critters. IMO, if you've not seen a Scorpionfish, this is probably one of the best places to go in the Caribbean to do so.
-hh
Seasonal Note:
By late May, the entire island was in very deep "out of season", and because the dry season was ~2 months overdue in ending, the island looked as brown and arid as Bonaire or Aruba. Fresh water on the island is collected rainwater, and many residents' cisterns were close to running completely dry. Our local taxi driver, Doc, reported that he had only 2 inches of water left in his main cistern, and his second was down to "half full". They're right on the bubble of tapping their 'Emergency' Cisterns which are located on the hillsides above Port Elizabeth.
Eating:
There's a number of good restaurants for dinner (http://www.bequia-information.com/bi/pages/restaurants.asp), as well as some beachfront bar types of places that are frequented by the "Yachties". Because it was so quiet during our off-season stay, it was recommended that we make dinner reservations each night, which was mostly to verify that the restaurant would remain open. For four nights of our week, we were literally the only customers in the restaurant for the night. The largest "gang" was a lunch downtown, where there were around a dozen total customers.
One of the regional foods is a 'Rotis'. Its a thin dough that's been wrapped around a filling, typically meat & potatoes, and baked. Its heavy on the curry. I'd describe it as a curry-spiced Pastee, except a Pastee's dough is thicker. These are a traditional West Indian dish; its popular in Trinidad.
Another well-known treat to the Tourists is to get a lobster pizza from Mac's Pizza. Its right next to Bequia Dive Adventures (the diveshop I used; http://www.bequiadiveadventures.com/), which means its 4 doors down from Dive Bequia (the only other diveshop; http://www.dive-bequia.com/). Unfortunately, the local Lobster Season ends April 30th each year, and by the time that we arrived ~3 weeks later, and all of the lobsters were long since eaten. I did notice that some restaurants along the Belmont walkway in Port Elizabeth had small "Lobster Ponds" to hold their stock.
The Belmont walkway:
This is a waterfront thoroughfare between the sand and the waterfront row of shops in downtown Port Elizabeth. This area was damaged when Bequia got a "out of the blue" set of waves from Hurricane Lenny, much like how Bonaire got hit. For the sections that are covered with sand, you walk on the sand ;-) You can see sections of it in "ScubaMom's" webpages on Bequia, at: www.scubamom.com/grenadines/bequia/island.htm
Island Life:
The Bequians are friendly ... I'd say friendlier than Cayman ... and while it is evident that there are some people who are quite poor, there was a distinct lack of the "hassle the tourists for money" that we've found in places such as Jamacia. Bequia is known for having some aboriginal whaling, and you'll see some evidence of this around (there's a museum under reconstruction). They're also known for their sailors and a double-ender sailboat design that's used in their annual Easter Regatta. The bad news on these boats is that we saw many more flat-stern powerboats; the good news is that Chester's work with the Rotary is helping to retain (and restore) this heritage ... they're hosting a student team who's going to be competing in a Regatta later this summer, and is expected to do well.
Moonhole (House):
There's an overpriced tour offered of these "artist" houses on Bequia's SW tip. You'll see them from the diveboat, which will help you decide if you want to shell out the money (4x as much as the Turtle Sancuary) to see them. We didn't bother.
Spring Pottery:
Man, am I glad this place wasn't open when we visited...we would have spent a mint. This is a pottery shop run by a man from UK who has a nice, clean style. Because the winter season was over, he had gone home to UK for the summer.
Currency:
The Eastern Caribbean Dollar is EC$2.68 = US$1.00 Like many other destinations, US currency is always accepted, although the exchange rate gets rounded off (US$10 = EC$26; US$20 = EC$53). Most businesses accepted Credit Cards, with some of them ringing the charge through in EC$ and others in US$. If you're paying in cach, you'll get EC$ in your change. There was no real reason to try to exchange currency, and since we always be prepared with cash to backup a credit card, absolutely no problems.
BTW, Barbados has their own currency. But they accept both US$ and Euro's in most of the airport shops.
The diving on Bequia:
I had seen an article in _Sport Diver_ right after I got back...probably the June 2003 issue...and they had an article which included Bequia. The article was reasonably accurate, although I did "read between the lines" at a few points. The things I noticed were:
- No bold statements on water visibility. The article discussed macro critters extensively, and late within it has a statement saying how the UW photographers "finally" put on their wide angle lenses for a particular dive. This is because the water was reliably green (not blue) and horizontal viz was better than 30ft, but probably no better than 50ft.
- wonderful green "tropical paradise" photo's. The island was very brown, reminiscient of Bonaire, due to the post dry season drought. The goats who wandered through our hotel's courtyard every day didn't have much browse
The good news for us was that we didn't have to worry about bugs...I can't speak for what they're like when the island is green from rain. FWIW, we bought a postcard of Admiralty Bay so that we can put it in our Photo scrapbook side-by-side with our photo from the same scenic overlook.- Bragging about diving on a special dive site, namely "End of Bequia". Its a nice site, but if the inference that its as far afield as the Bequian dive operations will go is incorrect. That honor goes to Pigeon Island. To get to Pigeon Island, go to End of Bequia, through the gap, and then turn south and go to the last of the nearby Cays. Its a nice site too, although it was a wet/rough crossing on the day we went.
Here's a hard-to-find map of Bequia:
http://www.travel-and-fun.de/pictures/st-vincent/bequia-karte-kl.gif
What makes this map noteworthy & unusual is that it actually shows the southern Cays in their actual relative position. For example, End of Bequia is located just beyond Moonhole, which is on the northern side of the west side of the main island on this map; Pigeon Island is across the bay to its south, being the leftmost island at the bottom of this map.
The balance of the dive sites we visited were all along Bequia's west side, all the way up to nearly the northern point.
As I mentioned earlier, I used Dive Bequia. Reason was that they were recommended by the hotel that we stayed at, but I think it was the right choice ... Don, Larry & Dave run a good operation, and they have a fast 6-pack design, where Dive Adventures has the putt-putt types. They do a 9:00, 11:30 & 2:30 dive daily (although they like to take Sunday Afternoons off). I dived intermittantly, and it was $39/tank after all taxes. FWIW, one nice touch that they do is that your invoice includes all of the divesite names that you dived with them, day by day.
The diving was light drift, although they hook in to the reef when starting, and they'll hook in perhaps 25% of the time when you're being picked up. Unfortunately, the island don't have dive moorings, but I saw no obvious gross reef damage from the practice.
Dive conditions were 80-81F, 35-50ft viz, generally greenish waters, and enough surface chop that they were unhappy about conditions. I thought I was going to be disappointed in the UW photography, but I simply put aside my 15mm lens and shot my Close-Up kit all week: they have a lot of macro life going: we generally saw juvenile drum, cleaner shrimp (*BIG* banded corals!), eels (4 different varieties) and scorpionfish on almost every dive, including four (4) scorpionfish on the last dive. On a few dives, we encountered schools of wrasse and butterflies who were raiding the masses of unguarded Sergant Major eggs. All in all, this was good macro diving. We were also looking for frogfish and sea horses, but drew blanks. Most of the reefs were sloping, but we did have some areas where we had true verticals. For most sites, the bottom of the reef was within sight, typically down at 80-100fsw.
We rarely went all the way to the bottom; most dives averaged around 60ft max, and Dive Bequia was very good at providing value with good bottom times; an hour was typical. Tank fills were just a tiny bit short in that they were right at 3000psi in the sun, instead of the oft-found slight overfill that cools to 3000psi once you're in the water.
All in all, Bequia's a nice laid-back place with slow drift diving with a focus on the smaller macro critters. IMO, if you've not seen a Scorpionfish, this is probably one of the best places to go in the Caribbean to do so.
-hh
-hh
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PS:
Here's the youth sailing team that the Bequia Rotary & Chester Peters hosts...
http://www.katsbvi.org/cmcup/teams_sub.htm
Here's the youth sailing team that the Bequia Rotary & Chester Peters hosts...
http://www.katsbvi.org/cmcup/teams_sub.htm
BenjieBrown
Guest
Great article!
Did you happen to see any of the Apartments on the island? I think one is called the Village Apts. Some other visitors recommended these as being a good value and location. I have been wanting to go to Bequia for several years, but haven't found a sutiable flight. I think things are looking better this year to get to St . Vincent and then ferry over. Would it be hard to dive one day at St. Vincent? Would that be a big hassle? Do the dive operators at Bequia offer to take you to other nearby sites? I would appreciate and info you can give me. Thanking you,
easonal Note:
By late May, the entire island was in very deep "out of season", and because the dry season was ~2 months overdue in ending, the island looked as brown and arid as Bonaire or Aruba. Fresh water on the island is collected rainwater, and many residents' cisterns were close to running completely dry. Our local taxi driver, Doc, reported that he had only 2 inches of water left in his main cistern, and his second was down to "half full". They're right on the bubble of tapping their 'Emergency' Cisterns which are located on the hillsides above Port Elizabeth.
Eating:
There's a number of good restaurants for dinner (http://www.bequia-information.com/bi/pages/restaurants.asp), as well as some beachfront bar types of places that are frequented by the "Yachties". Because it was so quiet during our off-season stay, it was recommended that we make dinner reservations each night, which was mostly to verify that the restaurant would remain open. For four nights of our week, we were literally the only customers in the restaurant for the night. The largest "gang" was a lunch downtown, where there were around a dozen total customers.
One of the regional foods is a 'Rotis'. Its a thin dough that's been wrapped around a filling, typically meat & potatoes, and baked. Its heavy on the curry. I'd describe it as a curry-spiced Pastee, except a Pastee's dough is thicker. These are a traditional West Indian dish; its popular in Trinidad.
Another well-known treat to the Tourists is to get a lobster pizza from Mac's Pizza. Its right next to Bequia Dive Adventures (the diveshop I used; http://www.bequiadiveadventures.com/), which means its 4 doors down from Dive Bequia (the only other diveshop; http://www.dive-bequia.com/). Unfortunately, the local Lobster Season ends April 30th each year, and by the time that we arrived ~3 weeks later, and all of the lobsters were long since eaten. I did notice that some restaurants along the Belmont walkway in Port Elizabeth had small "Lobster Ponds" to hold their stock.
The Belmont walkway:
This is a waterfront thoroughfare between the sand and the waterfront row of shops in downtown Port Elizabeth. This area was damaged when Bequia got a "out of the blue" set of waves from Hurricane Lenny, much like how Bonaire got hit. For the sections that are covered with sand, you walk on the sand ;-) You can see sections of it in "ScubaMom's" webpages on Bequia, at: www.scubamom.com/grenadines/bequia/island.htm
Island Life:
The Bequians are friendly ... I'd say friendlier than Cayman ... and while it is evident that there are some people who are quite poor, there was a distinct lack of the "hassle the tourists for money" that we've found in places such as Jamacia. Bequia is known for having some aboriginal whaling, and you'll see some evidence of this around (there's a museum under reconstruction). They're also known for their sailors and a double-ender sailboat design that's used in their annual Easter Regatta. The bad news on these boats is that we saw many more flat-stern powerboats; the good news is that Chester's work with the Rotary is helping to retain (and restore) this heritage ... they're hosting a student team who's going to be competing in a Regatta later this summer, and is expected to do well.
Moonhole (House):
There's an overpriced tour offered of these "artist" houses on Bequia's SW tip. You'll see them from the diveboat, which will help you decide if you want to shell out the money (4x as much as the Turtle Sancuary) to see them. We didn't bother.
Spring Pottery:
Man, am I glad this place wasn't open when we visited...we would have spent a mint. This is a pottery shop run by a man from UK who has a nice, clean style. Because the winter season was over, he had gone home to UK for the summer.
Currency:
The Eastern Caribbean Dollar is EC$2.68 = US$1.00 Like many other destinations, US currency is always accepted, although the exchange rate gets rounded off (US$10 = EC$26; US$20 = EC$53). Most businesses accepted Credit Cards, with some of them ringing the charge through in EC$ and others in US$. If you're paying in cach, you'll get EC$ in your change. There was no real reason to try to exchange currency, and since we always be prepared with cash to backup a credit card, absolutely no problems.
BTW, Barbados has their own currency. But they accept both US$ and Euro's in most of the airport shops.
The diving on Bequia:
I had seen an article in _Sport Diver_ right after I got back...probably the June 2003 issue...and they had an article which included Bequia. The article was reasonably accurate, although I did "read between the lines" at a few points. The things I noticed were:
- No bold statements on water visibility. The article discussed macro critters extensively, and late within it has a statement saying how the UW photographers "finally" put on their wide angle lenses for a particular dive. This is because the water was reliably green (not blue) and horizontal viz was better than 30ft, but probably no better than 50ft.
- wonderful green "tropical paradise" photo's. The island was very brown, reminiscient of Bonaire, due to the post dry season drought. The goats who wandered through our hotel's courtyard every day didn't have much browse The good news for us was that we didn't have to worry about bugs...I can't speak for what they're like when the island is green from rain. FWIW, we bought a postcard of Admiralty Bay so that we can put it in our Photo scrapbook side-by-side with our photo from the same scenic overlook.
- Bragging about diving on a special dive site, namely "End of Bequia". Its a nice site, but if the inference that its as far afield as the Bequian dive operations will go is incorrect. That honor goes to Pigeon Island. To get to Pigeon Island, go to End of Bequia, through the gap, and then turn south and go to the last of the nearby Cays. Its a nice site too, although it was a wet/rough crossing on the day we went.
Here's a hard-to-find map of Bequia:
http://www.travel-and-fun.de/pictures/st-vincent/bequia-karte-kl.gif
What makes this map noteworthy & unusual is that it actually shows the southern Cays in their actual relative position. For example, End of Bequia is located just beyond Moonhole, which is on the northern side of the west side of the main island on this map; Pigeon Island is across the bay to its south, being the leftmost island at the bottom of this map.
The balance of the dive sites we visited were all along Bequia's west side, all the way up to nearly the northern point.
As I mentioned earlier, I used Dive Bequia. Reason was that they were recommended by the hotel that we stayed at, but I think it was the right choice ... Don, Larry & Dave run a good operation, and they have a fast 6-pack design, where Dive Adventures has the putt-putt types. They do a 9:00, 11:30 & 2:30 dive daily (although they like to take Sunday Afternoons off). I dived intermittantly, and it was $39/tank after all taxes. FWIW, one nice touch that they do is that your invoice includes all of the divesite names that you dived with them, day by day.
The diving was light drift, although they hook in to the reef when starting, and they'll hook in perhaps 25% of the time when you're being picked up. Unfortunately, the island don't have dive moorings, but I saw no obvious gross reef damage from the practice.
Dive conditions were 80-81F, 35-50ft viz, generally greenish waters, and enough surface chop that they were unhappy about conditions. I thought I was going to be disappointed in the UW photography, but I simply put aside my 15mm lens and shot my Close-Up kit all week: they have a lot of macro life going: we generally saw juvenile drum, cleaner shrimp (*BIG* banded corals!), eels (4 different varieties) and scorpionfish on almost every dive, including four (4) scorpionfish on the last dive. On a few dives, we encountered schools of wrasse and butterflies who were raiding the masses of unguarded Sergant Major eggs. All in all, this was good macro diving. We were also looking for frogfish and sea horses, but drew blanks. Most of the reefs were sloping, but we did have some areas where we had true verticals. For most sites, the bottom of the reef was within sight, typically down at 80-100fsw.
We rarely went all the way to the bottom; most dives averaged around 60ft max, and Dive Bequia was very good at providing value with good bottom times; an hour was typical. Tank fills were just a tiny bit short in that they were right at 3000psi in the sun, instead of the oft-found slight overfill that cools to 3000psi once you're in the water.
All in all, Bequia's a nice laid-back place with slow drift diving with a focus on the smaller macro critters. IMO, if you've not seen a Scorpionfish, this is probably one of the best places to go in the Caribbean to do so.
-hh[/QUOTE]
Did you happen to see any of the Apartments on the island? I think one is called the Village Apts. Some other visitors recommended these as being a good value and location. I have been wanting to go to Bequia for several years, but haven't found a sutiable flight. I think things are looking better this year to get to St . Vincent and then ferry over. Would it be hard to dive one day at St. Vincent? Would that be a big hassle? Do the dive operators at Bequia offer to take you to other nearby sites? I would appreciate and info you can give me. Thanking you,
easonal Note:
By late May, the entire island was in very deep "out of season", and because the dry season was ~2 months overdue in ending, the island looked as brown and arid as Bonaire or Aruba. Fresh water on the island is collected rainwater, and many residents' cisterns were close to running completely dry. Our local taxi driver, Doc, reported that he had only 2 inches of water left in his main cistern, and his second was down to "half full". They're right on the bubble of tapping their 'Emergency' Cisterns which are located on the hillsides above Port Elizabeth.
Eating:
There's a number of good restaurants for dinner (http://www.bequia-information.com/bi/pages/restaurants.asp), as well as some beachfront bar types of places that are frequented by the "Yachties". Because it was so quiet during our off-season stay, it was recommended that we make dinner reservations each night, which was mostly to verify that the restaurant would remain open. For four nights of our week, we were literally the only customers in the restaurant for the night. The largest "gang" was a lunch downtown, where there were around a dozen total customers.
One of the regional foods is a 'Rotis'. Its a thin dough that's been wrapped around a filling, typically meat & potatoes, and baked. Its heavy on the curry. I'd describe it as a curry-spiced Pastee, except a Pastee's dough is thicker. These are a traditional West Indian dish; its popular in Trinidad.
Another well-known treat to the Tourists is to get a lobster pizza from Mac's Pizza. Its right next to Bequia Dive Adventures (the diveshop I used; http://www.bequiadiveadventures.com/), which means its 4 doors down from Dive Bequia (the only other diveshop; http://www.dive-bequia.com/). Unfortunately, the local Lobster Season ends April 30th each year, and by the time that we arrived ~3 weeks later, and all of the lobsters were long since eaten. I did notice that some restaurants along the Belmont walkway in Port Elizabeth had small "Lobster Ponds" to hold their stock.
The Belmont walkway:
This is a waterfront thoroughfare between the sand and the waterfront row of shops in downtown Port Elizabeth. This area was damaged when Bequia got a "out of the blue" set of waves from Hurricane Lenny, much like how Bonaire got hit. For the sections that are covered with sand, you walk on the sand ;-) You can see sections of it in "ScubaMom's" webpages on Bequia, at: www.scubamom.com/grenadines/bequia/island.htm
Island Life:
The Bequians are friendly ... I'd say friendlier than Cayman ... and while it is evident that there are some people who are quite poor, there was a distinct lack of the "hassle the tourists for money" that we've found in places such as Jamacia. Bequia is known for having some aboriginal whaling, and you'll see some evidence of this around (there's a museum under reconstruction). They're also known for their sailors and a double-ender sailboat design that's used in their annual Easter Regatta. The bad news on these boats is that we saw many more flat-stern powerboats; the good news is that Chester's work with the Rotary is helping to retain (and restore) this heritage ... they're hosting a student team who's going to be competing in a Regatta later this summer, and is expected to do well.
Moonhole (House):
There's an overpriced tour offered of these "artist" houses on Bequia's SW tip. You'll see them from the diveboat, which will help you decide if you want to shell out the money (4x as much as the Turtle Sancuary) to see them. We didn't bother.
Spring Pottery:
Man, am I glad this place wasn't open when we visited...we would have spent a mint. This is a pottery shop run by a man from UK who has a nice, clean style. Because the winter season was over, he had gone home to UK for the summer.
Currency:
The Eastern Caribbean Dollar is EC$2.68 = US$1.00 Like many other destinations, US currency is always accepted, although the exchange rate gets rounded off (US$10 = EC$26; US$20 = EC$53). Most businesses accepted Credit Cards, with some of them ringing the charge through in EC$ and others in US$. If you're paying in cach, you'll get EC$ in your change. There was no real reason to try to exchange currency, and since we always be prepared with cash to backup a credit card, absolutely no problems.
BTW, Barbados has their own currency. But they accept both US$ and Euro's in most of the airport shops.
The diving on Bequia:
I had seen an article in _Sport Diver_ right after I got back...probably the June 2003 issue...and they had an article which included Bequia. The article was reasonably accurate, although I did "read between the lines" at a few points. The things I noticed were:
- No bold statements on water visibility. The article discussed macro critters extensively, and late within it has a statement saying how the UW photographers "finally" put on their wide angle lenses for a particular dive. This is because the water was reliably green (not blue) and horizontal viz was better than 30ft, but probably no better than 50ft.
- wonderful green "tropical paradise" photo's. The island was very brown, reminiscient of Bonaire, due to the post dry season drought. The goats who wandered through our hotel's courtyard every day didn't have much browse
The good news for us was that we didn't have to worry about bugs...I can't speak for what they're like when the island is green from rain. FWIW, we bought a postcard of Admiralty Bay so that we can put it in our Photo scrapbook side-by-side with our photo from the same scenic overlook.- Bragging about diving on a special dive site, namely "End of Bequia". Its a nice site, but if the inference that its as far afield as the Bequian dive operations will go is incorrect. That honor goes to Pigeon Island. To get to Pigeon Island, go to End of Bequia, through the gap, and then turn south and go to the last of the nearby Cays. Its a nice site too, although it was a wet/rough crossing on the day we went.
Here's a hard-to-find map of Bequia:
http://www.travel-and-fun.de/pictures/st-vincent/bequia-karte-kl.gif
What makes this map noteworthy & unusual is that it actually shows the southern Cays in their actual relative position. For example, End of Bequia is located just beyond Moonhole, which is on the northern side of the west side of the main island on this map; Pigeon Island is across the bay to its south, being the leftmost island at the bottom of this map.
The balance of the dive sites we visited were all along Bequia's west side, all the way up to nearly the northern point.
As I mentioned earlier, I used Dive Bequia. Reason was that they were recommended by the hotel that we stayed at, but I think it was the right choice ... Don, Larry & Dave run a good operation, and they have a fast 6-pack design, where Dive Adventures has the putt-putt types. They do a 9:00, 11:30 & 2:30 dive daily (although they like to take Sunday Afternoons off). I dived intermittantly, and it was $39/tank after all taxes. FWIW, one nice touch that they do is that your invoice includes all of the divesite names that you dived with them, day by day.
The diving was light drift, although they hook in to the reef when starting, and they'll hook in perhaps 25% of the time when you're being picked up. Unfortunately, the island don't have dive moorings, but I saw no obvious gross reef damage from the practice.
Dive conditions were 80-81F, 35-50ft viz, generally greenish waters, and enough surface chop that they were unhappy about conditions. I thought I was going to be disappointed in the UW photography, but I simply put aside my 15mm lens and shot my Close-Up kit all week: they have a lot of macro life going: we generally saw juvenile drum, cleaner shrimp (*BIG* banded corals!), eels (4 different varieties) and scorpionfish on almost every dive, including four (4) scorpionfish on the last dive. On a few dives, we encountered schools of wrasse and butterflies who were raiding the masses of unguarded Sergant Major eggs. All in all, this was good macro diving. We were also looking for frogfish and sea horses, but drew blanks. Most of the reefs were sloping, but we did have some areas where we had true verticals. For most sites, the bottom of the reef was within sight, typically down at 80-100fsw.
We rarely went all the way to the bottom; most dives averaged around 60ft max, and Dive Bequia was very good at providing value with good bottom times; an hour was typical. Tank fills were just a tiny bit short in that they were right at 3000psi in the sun, instead of the oft-found slight overfill that cools to 3000psi once you're in the water.
All in all, Bequia's a nice laid-back place with slow drift diving with a focus on the smaller macro critters. IMO, if you've not seen a Scorpionfish, this is probably one of the best places to go in the Caribbean to do so.
-hh[/QUOTE]
BenjieBrown
Guest
Where did you stay (motel or apt.) while on Bequia. Any other info will be appreciated. Thanking you
Benjie
Benjie
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