One Less Plane

Since my last update i’ve spent an excting month in Tortola (British Virgin Islands) living on a beach and volunteering on an organic farm / art studio/ cafe/ craft festival and sailing round the islands, i’ve made a spontaneous (fossil fuel powered, but still at sea and accompanying fruit cargo) detour back Southwards again to experience the legendary eco-paradise of Dominica, and, after much lamenting over my life in England and sadness from missing my friends and family, i have finally made the difficult but exciting decision to stay and work in Bermuda for a year once i get there. (And i have found a windpowered ride to Bermuda at the end of April!)

The Virgin Islands

At the end of January I managed to hitch a ride with Midge and Michael on ‘Sundowner’, my biggest and most luxiourious ride yet! This was an 80 foot ‘Oyster’ (to put it in perspective, i crossed the Atlantic on a 42 ft boat), less than a year old. I was excited to get sailing again and anxious to work for my passage, but alas this was one of those press button boats, with electric winches to hoist the sails, everything computerized, a selfsufficient crew of two, and we ended up motoring all the way, so i had to settle for making fruit salad and trying to be nice company! Arriving in the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) by sea is breathtaking – they are about 10 dark dark green mountain tops, a few miles apart rising out of the deep blue sea, and hundreds of sailing boats blowing between them.  Somehow i seemed to fit in on this boat, Midge’s daughter joined us, and they invited me to stay a few extra days of fun sailing round the British Virgin Islands, snorkelling, climbing rocks, eating in posh restaurants, until i was finally dropped off in Virgin Gorda. Virgin Gorda is an island the shape of a pregnant lady (or a ‘fat virgin’ as named by Columbus), lying floating in the sea. I spent a day climbing to the peak of the virgin’s belly, melting for a few hours on an extremely steep winding tarmac road, refusing many offers of lifts by bemused islanders, and then whizzing through a few miles of twisting paths tunneling through tangled woodland accompanied by the bizarre local fauna of wild chickens (each followed by a clutch of chirping chicks), snakes, lizards and enormous bright red hermit crabs (i am amazed, the shell-less crabs must trek 100s of crab miles down and up the mountain to get a shell from the sea!).   

From Virgin Gorda i caught a little ferry across to Trellis Bay, Tortola, intending to couchsurf a night at a cool sounding beachside cybercafe, before trying to head over to the Dominican Republic, but i ended up staying a month. What i found was a little bay, with a little beach, and a little community of artisans (Caribbean, European, American, S.African), boat dwellers, dive bombing pelicans, and WWOOFERS! For those who don’t know, this stands for Worldwide Workers On Organic Farms, which is a worldwide network of independent farms which invite people to and volunteer for them in exchange for food and accomodation. So i spent a very happy and exciting month sleeping under a palm leaf  roof on the beach, my hands finally in the earth digging, weeding, planting, harvesting, selling and eating  spinach, arugula, basil, bananas and cassava up at the farm in the hills, hitching rides in the back of pick up trucks to the beach, jumping in the ocean to cool off,  sitting in the outdoor artstudio listening for hours to Jacob, a craftsman from St Vincent tell his life story and Caribbean myths and legends whilst helping him sand down his black coral bracelets, learning Caribindian drumming and singing with Johnny from Dominica, and many many other random tasks set for us by farmer/artist Aragorn – the man on a hundred missions including helping Tortola to produce more of its own food, supporting and encouraging arts and crafts through his arts studio and shop and the Caribbean Arts and Crafts Festival and helping build wooden canoes in Dominica and sailing them round the Caribbean and down to Guyana (S.America) to retrace the steps/paddels of the Caribindians (thought to be the first to populate the Caribbean). So our other random tasks involved killing, gutting and scaling freshly caught fish, building fires for the monthly full moon beach parties (including fire balls and raku ceramics firing by two ceramicists here, one of which i amazingly coincidently met in Greece 6 years ago on a turtle conservation project), feeding the chickens, hacking down bamboo in the forest and making it into stalls for the crafts festival, sailing catamarans from one side of the island to the other, building a compost bin, organising and modelling in a fashion show, helping the Chocolate man (one of the artisans) to sell the GOODEST chocolate i have ever met – from Grenada (so sort of local to Tortola), fairtrade, organic, small scale, animal product free, and srumdidliumpcious (especially after a severe 3 month chocolate deficiency (it’s not popular here and is never vegan). To get an idea of the place i have been living, you can see some photos of the beach and the fire filled full moon parties in the ‘Gallery’ of this website: www.windsurfing.vi

I have been getting more used to occasionally killing and eating fish, but am still sticking to the locally, sustainably (as far as i can tell) caught. I still find it a very strange and distressing experience (as i am sure it is also for the fish) – especially when i am whacking the end of a knife down on the head of an angel fish (which i am always so excited to see when snorkelling) with it’s luminious blue and yellow scales and it’s little pouty lips which keep flexing after it is dead.  However, i still intend to return to veganism, i think, when i get back to the UK, and try to grow more beans and nuts for locally produced protein.

It was so good to settle for a while, to have a kitchen where i could myself cook all the exciting new local produce – sorrel (flowers infused to make juice), yams, cassava, arugula, pigeon peas, coconut and of course angel fish and red snappers. And it felt especially satisfying ( and helpful for bank balance) to be working in exchange for food. I also did painting and cooking at the cybercafe in exchange for internet, rum punches and Caribs (local beer) – one day i even ended up as a model windsurfer student for some promotional pictures in exchange for breakfast!  

I also went to the US! The US Virgin Islands are just next door and i went over  by ferry to meet a potential yacht for the leg to Bermuda, which never materialised. Entry to the US was scary - immigration took my fingerprints and my photo,  and they had guns, and i thought for a moment i may get deported as a criminal because  it said you cannot enter if you have ever been arrested, even if not charged, (which is true of me) but it turned out it was only for violent or drug related offences (though surely you are innocent anyway if not charged?). To cut a potentially long story short, i had a fun time in the US, with lovely lovely couchsurf hosts, getting completely and slightly worryingly lost on my own for a day in the forest, and seeing an enormous purple iguana on the beach (one day i hope to post a photo).

Finally i want to write about an amazing lady i met, (amongst many many other amazing ladies and men, children and animals too numerous to mention), called Akilah, from Trinidad. She runs a reforestation project there as well as making incredible big dramatic natural jewellry for which she has grown her own trees so she can now harvest the seeds – so it is truly sustainable, and beautiful. I always have this dilemma about collecting natural materials like shells and seeds, as souvenirs or to make things – because you are taking it out of carefully balance ecosystem which must need those materials. For this reason i usually now take a photograph instead, and i now have loads of quite boring photos of shells which i will never end up doing anything with! But here Akilah has worked out an answer.

As i write this i am now down in Dominica, and even though i have got a little behind in my blog writing i am looking forward to writing about this incredible place in my next entry – whenever it is i next manage sit down with internet access and lots of time. My plan is to head back up to Tortola next week (hoping i’ll find a sail boat, but more likely the dirty black smoking banana boat again), then to Puerto Rico, for a yacht to Bermuda (about 85% sure, i just need to meet the skipper face to face before it’s certain.)

For now, lots and lots of love to all, from a land of rainforest, cooking on fires, cocoa and red bananas.

Charlotte