Beautiful Cays

We left Union on the 7th and sailed 3 and a half miles or so up to Saltwhistle Bay in the north of Mayreau. This was a beautiful halfmoon bay with palm trees fringing the beach. There were rather a lot of boats there, but there was space for us. We went ashore and had a walk over the hill to the village, and a swim to cool off, had a fruit juice at a little bar on the way back over to the anchorage. Each island has a very different feel even ‘though they are so close together. Mayreu was friendly and quiet. Its a small island with one road.
We were invited for Drinks and then Dinner on a couple of the boats we had met previously in southern Granada, who were on the “Oyster round the world rally”. They are heading up to Antiqua for the start of April, where they left from a year ago. It was a very nice evening, we had drinks on Stiarna and dinner on Yantina.
On Sat 8th we sailed round the corner to the Tobago Cays. These are a group of tiny desert islands protected by a massive windward reef. The water between them is shallow and gleaming turquoise. We had seen lots of photos of them and were keen to go although we knew they would be rammed with boats.
The super-yachts anchored off as they couldn’t fit in. We motored in through the boats and anchored in what looked like a swimming pool.
We swam from the boat and saw massive rays swimming along the bottom, at the beach there were turtles feeding on the sea grass and on the little islands there were big iguanas : grey and speakely with orange punk spike spines from their heads down the length of their backs. They were sitting in trees and strolling along the paths. They looked just like dinosaurs, and there were also tortoises. These were the happiest tortoises I have seen for a while, they were minding their own business, just wandering about having bites of grass here and there as they saw fit. They had never met the children of Carriacou, and were as free as the wind ( or maybe a slow breeze). It was amazing sitting and watching them for a while. One was tucking into some grass with quite some vigour, It had a little pink tung which it kept trying to wrap around the blade of grass to bite it off. The island was deserted , despite the boats anchored, no one was venturing into the undergrowth. We swam all day and snorkelled on the reefs, clouds of fish and forests of corral. A rain squall came over and by the afternoon we headed back to Hestur for Coco and rum.
We spent two days at the Cays and constantly explored ashore and in the water.
And yesterday the 11th we sailed up to Canouan where we are now. When we arrived we met Tony ! the American Guy on Tamarack who we met in the Cape Verdes and in Grenada. He came to greet us with cold beers!
We had a walk ashore, bought ice cream, had a drink with some of the guys from the Oysters we met in Mayraeu and had a very jolly evening aboard Hestur with our neighbours.
Tomorrow we are heading up to Bequia…

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