Mayreau

Mayreau is an island and a way of being. Mayreau has two cars. One is lacking most windows, the driver is a rastaman and it functions as a taxi and transporter of goods. Otherwise it is an island of ones: One one road, one policeman, one proper guest house, one lone flamingo in the saltwater pond and one lone tourist. 
The one road goes over a very steep hill with the school and the church on top and the village below. People on Mayreau look fit from constantly walking up and down the hill where all of the 200 residents live. The supermarket is called 'the first stop supermarket' as it is the first stop when you come from the ferry or the last stop when you leave town. On Friday night the  people of Mayreau gather around some enourmous speakers at the barber shop for the 'barber shop lime'.

Forgetting your swimming trunks is a big mistake, the person who sells such exotic things was on the 'mainland' as they call St. Vincent here. The next person you ask will try to sell you her only pair of jeans instead. The only available pair on the island was bought at Salt Whistle Bay from the smiley happy women who sell t-shirts to the few people arriving with sailboats everyday. The color was a little off but it did fit.

The goats of the island seem to prefer the cemetery and all dogs of the island are related as they all bark in symphony every hour all through the night. Weed seem to have replaced cigarettes and the boys on the watertaxi drink something they call 'wine de columbia'.

Ordering a lobster salad at the 'Last Bar before the Jungle' involves somebody taking a boat across the bay, diving into the water to get the lobster out of a cage, coming back to the bar dripping wet and then preparing the beast on a barbeque. When you order a beer the barkeeper might take some money, run to the next bar to buy it for you there. And then when you sit at the bar at night the stories keep coming the pirates, the smugglers, the ruthless investors, the girlfriends in foreign lands and the revolvers in boots.

But when at sunset on top of the hill the infinte views reveal all the Grenadines preparing for the night, the bustling little village below is getting ready for dinner and a lone Rasta is humming a Bob Marley tune to the sound of the goats and the whistle of the tradewinds you might have found it: Mayreau.