Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
I first travelled to Saint Vincent in 1997 to help out in my Aunt & Uncle’s hotel – the Tropic Breeze! I was 17 and had just finished my GCSE’s and I wanted to pursue a career in tourism. I am so glad my Mum arranged this trip for me to meet my Mum’s half sister, Aunt June, and to experience life working abroad in a totally new place. I was quite a shy teenager but soon settled in to life on the island. I seem to remember I was paid around £30 a week and I was given a big Jeep Cherokee to drive (for official business only of course). My role was to assist the hotel manager, James Brown – a likeable Maltese guy who was in his early thirties. I have fond memories of going down to the Vincy Mass – the raucous carnival held on the island and the largest of its kind in the Caribbean- I remember my Aunt being petrified of me going on my own! I’d never seen or heard anything like it, I remember a massive lorry just covered in speakers and the bass made my entire body vibrate! Other key memories are climbing Le Soufriere – the island’s active volcano – something we will be doing again next week, though I am sure the landscape will be very different now, following the multiple eruptions in April this year.
Fastforward to 2021 and here we are again. This is my 4th time on the island (Bunty’s 2nd time) and it still feels like home, in many ways. Our aim this time is to try and help with conservation, beach cleaning, coral restoration and learn about eco farming, skills we want to take forward to future projects in Cyprus and eventually in India. We arrived in October and have been slowly settling in and have recently settled down on a working organic farm on the windward side of the island, in Congo Valley.
Life on the Farm
What better way to learn about eco farming than living on a working farm.. in the Caribbean?! We decided to spend 6 months on Saint Vincent, the most fertile island of all the Caribbean! In 2019 we were introduced to a lovely lady called Yvette Pereira who owns Amazona Nest, nestled in Congo Valley below…
La Soufriére – December 2021, Saint Vincent
In April La Soufriere exploded. The first eruption took place on the 9th April 2021 with eruptions finally ending on the 22nd April. The North of the island was declared a red zone; all the inhabitants in this area were ordered to evacuate – almost 20,000 islanders in total. The devastation was huge, and the…
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