A little hot shower...

When I wake up in the morning I tell Daddy about the dragonflies in my crib. I then want my warm not hot and not cold chocolate milk. Then I go outside watch the 'lillipede' crawl on the ground and try to catch the cat. Then Mummy and Daddy take me to the school BBQ in an open taxi van that I complain is very bumpy and I insist on wearing my sunglasses. At the school BBQ I get a girl to push me on the swing and occupy a house with everybody else. Then I take a water taxi for the first time in my life and love it. 

At the beach I spend hours in the water with all my new friends, I learn how to jump into the waves, defend my toys against olders kids and walk along onto a jetty to see Nemofish. I see a boat that goes to Trinidad. I come home and want an outside shower to wash my shoes and a little hot shower inside to wash myself. I insist on using Daddy's electic toothbrush. I bumped my head on the table and demand ice that is warm not cold to make it better. I go to bed and want first water, then a story, then the door open, then the light on, then Daddy to go to bed and then I sleep.

Ivy.

We will be fit after living here for a month...

The hill that leads down to our villa is quite a steep one, the beach isn't called Lower Bay for nothing.  It is also off the main track for the dollar vans so in order to make use of cheap public transportation one has to hike up the hill to the main road.  Being New Yorkers a little walking does not scare us, but i think after living here we can move to San Fran and not blink an eye at the streets over there.

It starts off rather well walking along the lovely beach, then the hill starts...

Looks ok, but about half way up you start panting because its always about 80-90F...and pushing a stroller does not help! Ivy has learned to walk up the steepest parts otherwise she is left at the bottom of the hill.  Just when you think its over you turn the corner and see this!

Alas its only the last tough stretch before you are rewarded with a relatively flat road and magnificent views over Port Elizabeth

Jo

Jo is our housekeeper, nanny, gardener, supplier of fresh fish and lobster, you name it she does it or she knows the person who can get it for you.  The first day she babysat for us we came back to a quiet happy bunch playing a game on her laptop (they were both mesmerized!) and then Ivy gave her the biggest hug good night i have ever seen...i knew then she was a keeper.  

What I miss most from home...

The Dishwasher!!! We don't have a washer/dryer either....dryers are not popular on this island so for quite a hefty fee we have Jo do our laundry.  I guess this is the price you pay for living right on de beach man ;)

Turtle - the other red meat

We had two guests from New York for dinner and we wanted to make lobster. 

A guy on the beach introduced himself as the lobsterman Garry and gave me his cell phone number in case I need some. He also asked for a donation now for the lobster I might order later so I wasn't convinced. 

But there is always our wonderful housekeeper Jo who lives on the island forever so I asked her to get some

lobster.

She called 'the fisherman' on his cell and got us a great deal on two four-pounders for dinner. So when she arrived with the two wiggling lobsters the next day she told me that ' the fisherman' just came back this morning from an all nighter and we better boil it now to keep it fresh. 

And that 'the fisherman' is specialized in lobster and turtle. Which he also brought back this morning but Jo doesn't eat because she wants to cut back on red meat. 

I trying to make the point that eating turtles is maybe not a good idea in general as they are an endagered species and it not very well regarded where I come from. Just like eating Dolphins and Whales. 

To which she replied that she has two packs of Whale frozen and thinking of having it tomorrow for lunch as it is healthier than turtle. 

Before we feed our baby boiled fish heads...

The pinnacle of western baby food technology 'Similac Advance' can not be purchased on Bequia. According to Jo our housekeeper we should not waste our money with it anyway and rather feed Connor boiled fish head stew as they do here.

Not sure if Connor would agree so I took the 930 am ferry today for a shopping trip to Kingstown in St Vincent. 

On the way I dropped off Ivy at preschool in Port Elizabeth. Which involves walking up the steepest hill from our beach and then taking the dollar bus to town. The dollar bus is called so because it costs one Eastern Caribbean Dollar - Ivy, stroller, loud soca music and crazy driving included. Ivy likes it, I am not so sure.

The ferry has been built in Tromsø Norway, north of the arctic circle and it has probably shipped for decades Norwegians up and down the cold fjords. Now with the heating removed it is retiring in the warm waters of the Caribbean, shipping goods, people, cars and trucks between Bequia and Kingstown four times a day. Most signs on board are still in English and Norwegian so Scandinavian tourists will feel right at home. 

The same is true for the ride today, it could surely compare to a rough Tromsø fjord crossing in a autumn storm with half of the passengers being seasick and all trucks and cars tied down with chains so they don't topple over. I was glad for the Norwegian craftsmanship in ship building when we finally arrived in Kingstown after a long hour. 

Kingstown is crazy. It takes about an hour or longer to get used to the frenzy of street vendors, mini buses, rum shops, exotic fruits and blaring reggae music. More than other Caribbean capitals one feels that time has stood still since the time of pirates, banana boats and colonial powers.

But not for the dollar buses, they seem to have larger and louder stereo system and 25 passengers on top of each other is about the time when they will leave for their destination.

I went to the Kingstown botanical garden and got a great tour by a very friendly local guide. We sniffed, tasted, picked, chewed all sorts of exotic, plants, trees and fruits. 

He had great stories about everything and gave me a sour tasting fruit to eat with the words 'This will clean out our insides'.

It did rather violently later and when I arrived at lunch at the Cobblestone Inn I was very happy for a clean washroom.

In the end Similac Advance and other items were purchased and the boat from Tromsø took me on a relaxing ride back to our little island just before sunset.

Too exhausted to blog tonight....

Make no mistake, life anywhere with 2 kids is no picnic and today was a particularly tiring day.  Hopefully I will have more energy tomorrow to write about it!

Rainbows

Double rainbows appear over our little bay quite often, a few times it even seemed that the end or beginning of the rainbow was right in our garden- we should investigate where the pot of gold lies! What i really wanted to write about this morning are the 2 little rainbows that are the light of my life everyday- Ivy almost 3 years old and Connor almost 6 months old.

Ferry

The ferry ride over from St. Vincent lasted about an hour...kinda similar to the ferry ride from Bayshore to Seaview (fire island) actually!  The waves were rolling quite a lot this afternoon and we somehow managed to get there without any seasickness.  Traveling with 2 young kids and having to buy groceries too meant a whole heap of stuff to get on and off of that boat, but our taxi drivers were so gracious that it all happened without much trouble..pretty sure they were in awe of the amount of stuff we had though!

Sunsets

On November 14th we arrived by ferry to Bequia, not sure of how long we would stay or if we would like it.  After 10 days here we are settling down nicely and have decided to call this place home for a month, hence the from Brooklyn to Bequia title.  If you know Daniel and I well then you would be used to our facination with sunsets, this is quite a different view from what we had in Brooklyn...Port Elizabeth harbour instead of the Manhattan skyline ....ahhh a nice change for a while :)