The Mystique of Bequia

I’m not really into cold weather. Now that we are able to travel more often, I’ve been able to convince my husband that we should go south- really, really far south- every winter for about 2 weeks so that I am sane to live with for the rest of the year. He felt that was a good bargain, so every year I look for a place to both use up our frequent flyer miles and escape the cold. This year we started our trip with a week on Bequia.

 

Bequia, pronounced Beck-Way, has a population of only 5,000. We had a brief introduction to it on our first (and only) cruise. We took a Windstar cruise in 2012 as a make-up after having to cancel our 25th anniversary trip the summer before. The cruise was our very first winter getaway. I was intrigued because the cruise stopped at many of those hard to get to quaint islands that were tiny, but worthy of a one day exploration. Bequia caught my attention then.

 

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Bequia is still the old Caribbean. Where people smile at you, beaches are uncrowded and you can walk about at night on the pedestrian waterfront safely. Where a smiling taxi driver gives you a card with their cell number and becomes your reliable personal driver. Where we kept running into a woman and her mother who arrived and left on the same 18-seat airplane flights. Where our “hotel” had a total of 5 cute little cottages as rooms and we got to know a few British couples who invite us to their impromptu “brilliant” and “smashing” Brexit Party. Where one of the two beach vendors, Faye, finds someone’s tablet left on a beach chair and gives it to us because she knew we were both staying at the same place. Where the taxi driver we liked with the big smiles (Gunno and his wife, Damaris) were actually Faye’s relatives. Bequia made us feel warm and welcome and part of the Bequia family.

 

 

The main town is Port Elizabeth in Admiralty Bay. Filled with moored sailboats, many of these captains and their passengers know each other and take small dinghy’s up on shore to have convivial dinners in town. The small, colorful main street is partly lined with vendors with carts, selling jewelry they’ve carved from shells or t-shirts they’ve painted. But no one is pushy. Everyone is chill here and time slows down.

 

 

 

The town of Port Elizabeth continues along Admiralty bay with several venerable old hotels, like the Frangipani (everyone calls it the Frangi), the Firefly and the Gingerbread Hotel. The hotels line the bay along Belmont Walkway, interspersed with restaurants. Belmont walkway is a concrete sidewalk with a small retaining wall on the water’s edge allowing two-way pedestrian traffic. The walkway had been destroyed by storms and the group Action Bequia took their own action to reconstruct a stronger walkway. The walkway connects to Princess Margaret Beach by a series of stairs that climb over a rock promontory and back down to the prettiest beaches of the island, Princess Margaret and Lower Bay.

 

 

 

 

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Princess Margaret Beach is so named because Princess Margaret herself was said to have enjoyed its pristine beauty. We ended up going to it 5 of our 6 days because we loved it so much. Our hotel was up (way up!) on a hill above it and we would climb down to snare a beach chair at Jack’s Beach Bar at 9 or 10 to do our limin’ and chillin’ for 4-5 hours. Rinse and repeat, it was wonderful!!

 

 

 

Princess Margaret Beach was fit for a princess. There were a few others enjoying the beach with us, but it felt pretty private. The waves were gentle and the water bright aqua. There were 2 beach vendors from whom I bought a whale necklace carved out of a whale tooth and also a “feed bag” from Faye. A feedbag is a shopping bag made out of Eastern Caribbean bags of livestock feed. This costs 20 E.C. or $8. I didn’t come home with expensive souvenirs this time!

 

 

There is fairly decent snorkeling at the end of Princess Margaret beach along a rocky promontory separating it from Lower Bay Beach. A set of stairs leads up and over the headland to Lower Bay.

 

 

Lower Bay:

 

 

De Reef Beach Bar on Lower Bay

 

Princess Margaret and Lower Bay were the acknowledged beach beauty queen winners and even though we are big into exploration, we were quite content to stick with the winners. A few people at our hotel preferred the even less populous Lower Bay to Princess Margaret. At Lower Bay, a padded chair rented for only 20 E.C. ($8). There were less sailboats moored in Lower Bay and it had a few restaurants right on the beach. We went to one of the restaurants named De Reef, which was beautiful but just okay. We missed Jack’s Beach Bar! So we fixed that problem by going back to Jack’s. First world problem easily solved.

 

Facts to know before you go:

• Bequia uses the Eastern Caribbean dollar or EC. One USD is equivalent to 2.7 EC’s as they are called or XCD as their offical abbreviation. Taxi drivers did not take US$ and some beach vendors did not as well. Most restaurants were fine with credit cards.
• St Vincent and the Grenadines is one of four places that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) allows to  conduct aboriginal subistence whaling hunts today along with Denmark (Greenland), Russia and Alaska. It is the only place outside of the Arctic Circle that is permitted to legally hunt whales. The whalemen are only allowed to use harpoons.
• Bequia is quite challenging to get to but is worth the hassle. There are ways to get there that are more time efficient and at a better price point. I will address how best to get to Bequia in a future post.