Rastas, reggae and back to reality

When setting off in 1994 to go travelling, the Caribbean was the place I most wanted to spend some time. Events led me elsewhere but it was satisfying to finally see the Caribbean close up.

Over the Bahamas after leaving Miami

Island in the Caribbean further up the chain

Coming in to Saint Lucia

We felt lucky we ended up on Saint Lucia as the people were superbly easy going and friendly. They get a lot of tourists and parts of the island are very poor but most people are warm and genuine and as a rastaman said, “It’s all about respect”. Give some and you get it back.

Our comfortable, very 80s room at the Royal St Lucian

The food was good with plenty of local fish and a good Cantonese restaurant. The music is mostly reggae, dancehall and soca which we enjoyed and we got to a local village ‘jump up’ street party on a Friday night with a big sound system set up in the road to blast it out while all the locals danced or watched. A taxi driver who seemed to know us but was strangely unfamiliar gave us a lift home and what appeared to be a detour quickly led to sudden visions of abduction and robbery and protestations of “Where the hell are you taking us?!”, before the case of mistaken identity became clear and we headed back the right direction with laughs all around.

Exploring the old kitchen at Pigeon Island Fort

Looking over Rodney Bay from the fort (named for Admiral Rodney who led the British fleet to rout the French fleet on neighbouring Martinique in the 1700s).

The scenery is tropical and at times volcanic and spectacular. The sea was warm, green and offered some reasonable snorkeling off the palm lined beaches. The island of Martinique can be seen across the channel to the north and we took a ferry trip across to check it out and the crew managed to get everyone singing happy birthday for a couple of us (a day early but certainly memorable).

Enjoying the rough ride to Martinique with Sean Paul in background

Colourful Fort de France, capital of Martinique

Petit Anse beach, lunch and snorkeling stop

La tormenta perfecta (perfect storm) on the way back

The first few days we stayed in a big resort and hung out in the beach huts and hammocks while C negotiated the beach vendors. We then moved onto a smaller place and on down the coast to a Marigot Bay guesthouse run by a Canadians Normand and Louise. They (and their neighbours) ferried us down a track to the bay every day and we had a few good banana daquiris with the local bar staff for my birthday.

The next night we were treated to an impromptu dinner show complete with band and a big drunk English girl wearing a transparent dress and union jack undies who attempted to bump and grind on the dancefloor with every male (and C and staff) in what was a very small sedate restaurant. She was the talk of the village next day.

Doolittle's at Marigot Bay, apparently where the original Dr Doolittle movie was filmed

Birthday drinks or 'dacquiris are dangerous'

We had a few days at La Haut Plantation overlooking the Piton peaks, the town of Soufriere and the volcanic sulphur vents and boiling mud pools for which the town is named.

The plantation where we stayed and something to boil copra in

After spending so much time together dinner conversation was sometimes a bit lacking so innovation in the form of napkin folding competitions was a welcome relief. C won hands down (or rather ears up).

The ladies working at the plantation are like a family and took a real liking to Catalina. They drove us around, explained the local food, made us some tasty drinks, and covered the bathroom in bougainvilleas each day. What a nice way to finish up the trip.

After C talked me out of sea kayaking, a morning sailing was nice too with a few guys from the UK and US despite a grumpy-ass skipper. We’re already looking forward to seeing more of the Caribbean at some point, hopefully by boat. C’mon Dan, hurry up and get your skippers course!

A final cocktail to celebrate our adventures and surviving to tell the tale despite (in order of dangerousness) Italian driving, American food, sharks, guns, bears, terrorists, snakes, homies, driving snow and rain, hot deserts, wild seas, precarious mountain passes and the threat of starvation created by my never stopping to eat, which I’m sure C would have listed first not last.

And that was it.

Back around the island to the airport (people on islands always seem to drive like lunatics despite their crappy roads), wait two hours, flight, immigration one hour, arrange hotel Miami, go to hotel, change rooms three times, sleep, back to airport, wait four hours, flight to Milan (sitting next to Gianpaulo from Bologna who sells marine parts in Miami), wait three hours, flight to Madrid (on an Alitalia MD-8 from about 1970), wait eight hours in smoky lounge, change gates three times, flight to Santiago, back where we started, go to sleep.

Getting bleary eyed

Saddle up, there´s alien about and fried clam ahead

About six hours drive took us down into Arizona and the 200km required to get from one side of the Grand Canyon to the other. Pine covered forests gave way to open desert cut by huge gorges and muddy brown rivers.

The Indian trading post of Cliff Dwellers where we stopped for enchiladas

It´s easy to miss the nice Indians if you drive too fast.

The Canyon itself lived up to its reputation and falls 2km vertically. It was cold.

Small historic Williams, AZ was our stop that night, one of the best preserved towns on the famous old Route 66 across the US. Even the diner was run and staffed by ‘old –timers’, none under 70, service was wobbly but friendly.

Santa drives a Caddy

A day’s drive northeast took us into the Navajo Nation Indian Reserve to Monument Valley where a lot of westerns have been filmed.

Passing through Shiprock and coming down into New Mexico we adventured out to the ruins of old Indian villages in the middle of nowhere and eventually got back to Santa Fe and a dinner at AppleBees (like Sizzler) which made us sick.

Shiprock, NM

To compensate for feeling pretty awful we went out of town to the Galisteo Inn www.galisteoinn.com and enjoyed a little luxury amongst the dust, horses and cow skulls.

Taos

Taos and its strong Indian influence was interesting and we picked up a pretty cool Pendleton blanket (http://www.pendleton-usa.com/jump.jsp?itemType=CATEGORY&itemID=41&path=1%2C2%2C6%2C41)

before going on a night drive across the mountains, dodging deer and ice patches, passing a few famous Wild West hotels and getting to Las Vegas, NM. It was an old west town and characters passed through like Doc Holliday and Pat Garrett (with Billy the Kid in chains).

Las Vegas NM is so well presverved that a lot of movies are filmed here including Convoy, Easy Rider and one classic was the Patrick Swayze’s 1984 ‘Red Dawn’ for which the mural below was painted.

Another solid day of driving took us down to Roswell, home of ET, UFOs and the alien contact museum. I found out that Close Encounters of the Third Kind is called that because the first two don’t involve actually meeting the aliens. C was more freaked out by the people working in the UFO museum than by the aliens. Big, big hair, very tight jeans and way too much makeup on ladies over sixty will do that. And people lined the streets to see the White House Christmas tree pass through town that day.

Is that a UFO? Shadowed on the highway to Roswell

Shocking coverups and startling discoveries

Across the state line into Texas and to another Wild West location in Fort Stockton (the friendliest town in Texas), home to Annie Riggs, various gunfighters, a cavalry fort and a big fiberglass road runner the size of a car.

Fort Stockton also boasts 1000 motel rooms, 6 RV parks and 26 restaurants but only 2 aren´t fast food. Domino’s pizza there was awful, didn’t try that again. Donuts for breakfast.

On entering town is Paisano Pete, the world´s biggest roadrunner.

Old cattle brands at the Annie Riggs Hotel Museum

Ye olde West church, next to the fort ruins.

Drifting past the oil pumps we reached the Texas hill country (home of George W), the quaint German town Fredericksburg, home of Admiral Nimitz and lots of touristy craft shops. We got on to Austin that night and went out for some good Italian food, wandered the buzzing bars, had a drink and listened to some blues. C attacked the many vintage clothing stores the next day and we savoured the good food and coffee while it lasted. In true Texas style everyone we met was friendly and happy to have a chat.

We were getting tired of driving and having trouble finding hotels due to all the hurricane reconstruction work around the gulf coast and New Orleans. We did a run across the South over the next two days going through Louisiana; stopping at the home and factory of Tabasco sauce; through a little Mississippi bayou; into Mobile, Alabama with its grand old homes and on to Pensacola and a brief stop at one of the biggest air museums in the world (which was actually pretty good).

Mossy trees in Louisiana

On down past the bright blue waters and white sands of the Florida Gulf Coast to Tampa and Captiva and Sanibel Islands where we accidentally got stuck camping surrounded by rednecks called Dwayne, Dwight and Dawg who after a dinner of frankfurters and beans spent the night snoring, arguing, barfing, boasting and drink driving.

Rested up we continued across Florida through the EverGlades admiring a heap of bird life and a few alligators.

We spent the next five days down in the Keys below Florida camped at a fishing lodge. The islands are very low, covered with mangroves, joined by long bridges and surrounded by fish infested tropical blue waters. We checked out Key Largo, Marathon Key, the old houses of Key West where Hemingway lived, sunk Coronas, fish burgers, and fried clam and watched sunsets (once as a 6ft shark cruised right in front of us).

Bahia Honda State Park

Traditional house of Bahamian trader made of ground conch shells

Amongst the old wreckers houses of Key West

C at the fishing coop ready to consume a fish burger

Big shrimp bait shop car Marathon Key

The sun, warm weather and water were great considering the north of the country was covered in snow. The locals were the usual laid-back tropical mix of fishermen, hippies and retirees.

The end of the road

This was pretty much the end of the road trip, San Francisco to Key West, about 8,500km in three weeks. It’s remarkable that we are still talking to each other after going from a situation where we only spent a few waking hours a week together, to spending all day every day together for six months and driving over 16,000km, more than a third of the way around the world. We certainly had some ups and downs but learned a lot more about the world, people and ourselves than we could have sitting behind a desk.

Pigs mightn´t but cows obviously can

We headed back up to Miami Beach to drop the car off and work out what to do next. Miami was somewhat familiar from my hours playing GTA (or weeks according to some people) so I knew some of the landmarks and the basic layout. Matt, this should look familiar.

The South Beach area is uber trendy with lots of fancy shops, bars, hotels, ‘beautiful people’, Ferraris, modules, people primped up with ridiculous outfits and plastic surgery – all Miami Vice. Completely different to what we’d seen the previous three weeks and not unlike being back in Sydney, except everyone speaks Spanish.

We enjoyed a bit of window shopping, some good pizza and sushi and got to a travel agent where we found ourselves heading to Saint Lucia the next day and with the option of heading back to Spain December 15 or trying to stretch things out until January when flights were again cheaper. Common sense and C’s love of Christmas at home prevailed.