Bequia - Turtle Sanctuary

"Pirates Hideout" and "Tabascocat" had arranged an island taxi tour and were kind enough to invite us along. Bequia is not that big, only seven square miles, and our driver Gideon said that the tour would take no more than three hours. Our first stop was the Hamilton Battery. "Battery" is just a fancy way of saying "fort" and you know how we feel about forts. But there were great views of the harbor and we snapped some good photos of all the boats at anchor. Other stops included an old sugar mill that has been turned into a pottery studio/art gallery, a hip beach bar called Moskito (the seats at the bar are all wooden swing chairs hanging from the ceiling), and a walk along the beach near the tiny, tiny airport. The runway is so short that they had to put the landing lights out in the water on tall telephone poles.

Our favorite stop was the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary. It's run by a retired fisherman whose life's mission is to rescue the endangered Hawksbill turtle from extinction. The hawksbills lay their eggs on a nearby beach and when they hatch he brings some of the babies to the sanctuary where they spend the first four years of their life safe from fisherman and predators. Once they are big enough to fend for themselves, he releases them. The sanctuary itself is kind of a big barn with several large pools of turtles grouped by age (there was even a bowl containing an itty-bitty baby that was only 3 weeks old. So cute!). There were about 200 turtles in all, including an eleven-year-old (they can live to more than 100 years old) that the owner keeps as a pet. She loves to have her back scratched and when I reached down to pet her she was so happy that she started splashing her flippers against the side of the pool. We really enjoyed the place. Considering that turtles are overfished and many are killed before they reach breeding age (25 years old) it is inspiring that one guy is doing what he can to make a difference. (Any animal lovers should stop reading here.)

On the other side of the spectrum is the whaling station. A handful of Caribbean islands still allow whaling in their waters and Bequia is one of them. However they are allowed to take only four per year during the months of February to April. This year they only got one, a humpback. The interesting thing is that they hunt the whales traditionally, in small open sailboats with harpoons thrown by hand. When they have the whale they tow it behind their boats back to the whaling station, where they process it for use by the islanders. We didn't tour the whaling station because it is located on a small cay only accessible by boat. Gideon's father used to go on the whaling trips so he was very informative about it.