ST VINCENT & THE GRENADINES


Quency John and Daren Simons from Affection Tours on their boat in Carnash Bay, Mayreau Right: The beach at Young Island Resort, St Vincent


Lewis, another local guide joining our hike today. “It all came back so quickly.” We look down onto a thick forest of palms, banyan and bread fruit trees unfurling towards the coast at Georgetown. “To think, for weeks after the eruption, we had no water,” she says. “Ash got in reservoirs. We needed damp towels on windows to keep the ash out. And it still got everywhere.” She laughs now, but this young Vincentian woman actually gave birth to her second child the day before the eruption, bringing the newborn home to her house in the capital, Kingstown, as islanders flooded in from the evacuated north. “We’re resilient people,” she says with a smile. “We help


each other.” She picks up a five-fronded leaf fallen from a trumpet tree, brown and curled inwards like a giant arthritic hand. “I want to make some tea and they’re no good for that if they’re still green,” she tells me. Whether it’s to ‘cool the blood’, soothe griping stomachs or fight a cold, which Julicia feels coming on, there’s little that bush tea can’t cure according to Vincentian lore. “My grandma made it, my mother too. It’s still a thing,” she says at a whisper as we stop to view a hovering hummingbird. “I once heard a parrot here,” says Julicia of national bird, the St Vincent Amazon parrot. “I think it got confused after the eruption. Their habitat is further south.” We don’t spot the rainbow plumage of this endangered


species, but there are bright orange wings of paradise plants and chandeliers of epiphytes spilling from the canopy through tangles of strangler fig trees, the beginnings and endings of plants hard to fathom. But Julicia has her quarry. “Got it! I’ve been looking to show you this,” she announces as she lays a fern leaf on her


102 NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/TRAVEL


forearm, gives it a sharp slap and pulls it back to reveal the perfect imprint of its every tiny, feathery frond on her skin rendered in a chalky white sap. “We call it clap-hand,” she says, grinning. “We loved it as kids. My mum adds it to trumpet tea for that extra healing touch.”


From rainforest to reef The Carib name for St Vincent, ‘Hairouna’ means Land of the Blessed, and for all La Soufrière’s devastation it has also blessed the island with rich volcanic soil in which an abundance of edible, medicinal and grazing crop plants thrive. Heading back south, we pass a roadside memorial to the ‘Defender of Hairouna’. Buffeted by Atlantic winds, this paint-peeling plaque is dedicated to St Vincent’s national hero, Joseph Chatoyer. Also known as Satuye, the Garifuna Carib chief, with his troops of tenacious locals and runaway shipwrecked slaves, held off British control of St Vincent for decades during the Carib Wars. He was finally killed in battle in 1795. Two centuries of British rule followed, but where sugar and banana plantation crops have dominated many Caribbean islands before and since emancipation, St Vincent, with its rich volcanic soil, has diversified to become the region’s fruit bowl. “It’ll make you strong!” urges a woman selling freshly


chopped callaloo in Kingstown market. In contrast to the capital’s florid colonial churches and ballast-stone clapboard houses, its concrete-block market is a functional affair — but a Caribbean powerhouse no less, supplying the West Indies with a boggling range of produce including dried sea moss, local honey, ginger, sorrel, nutmeg and arrowroot. The market resounds with the clang of works


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180