Aahhhh, Vacation

We, my wife, Joycee, and I, just returned from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They are a wonderful set of islands about 3/4’s of the way from here in Florida and South America. We spent three nights on St. Vincent at the Beachcomber Hotel (http://www.beachcombershotel.com) which is beautiful. The entire grounds are like a small garden of lush tropical plants that are kept trimmed and clean by a crew of local men. The interesting thing was that 80% of the plants they have, we also have in our yard in St. Petersburg. Ours don’t look as good as theirs..Hum, it must be the volcanic soil they have, or the tropical showers.

St. Vincent is a volcanic island with steep hills and the volcano is on the North end. In the center is a valley called the Mesopotamia Valley that is the most beautiful place for growing fruits and vegetables that I have ever seen. The rich soil frequent showers and topic sunshine make it like the Garden of Eden must have been like. Our driver, Desmond, grew up on the island, so of course knew the best places to go. He took us to the best, first. The highlight of the first part of our trip was a visit to a place called Montreal Estate Gardens. Here is the website, but it doesn't do it justice. (http://www.montrealestgdns.f9.co.uk/). I have traveled over most of Europe and North and Central America and I have never seen any garden, formal or otherwise to match this one. The number of species and variations are incredible. The colors are spectacular. If I ever figure out how to put pictures on this site I will put them on here. But they won’t show how beautiful they really are.

Then we got on our yacht, a 44 ft. Lagoon sailing Catamaran, and headed South to the Grenadines. The sailing was great and easy and we lived real easy. We stopped at several islands to look around, and dine at top notch restaurants like Bazel’s on Mustique Island. We snorkled some beautiful spots, swam with turtles, caught fish while traveling from one island to another, and visited a former whaling station. The boat was the perfect size for four couples. The captain, Mike, and his wife, Hiya, who served as host, were very hospitable, and she is a wonderful cook. They are very nice and Mike is a supremely competent captain.

There were other two couples on the yacht with us and they were great fun and added to the experience. Arnem and Yvonne are newly weds on their honeymoon and are from St Vincent but lived most of their lives in England. They are retired and are settling in their new home on the island. Linda and Gustavo are a young couple from California and are a blast. We will continue to keep in touch with them. In fact I talked with Arnim and Yvonne already on SKYPE just a day ago.

After the week of sailing we spent two more days on St. Vincent and went to Dark Falls. These two falls are in the jungle close to the volcano. The trail is steep, muddy and has some tricky spots in it, but the trek is well worth it. These falls are very high and beautiful. We love falls and took lots of pictures to frame for our house.

Then it was time to come home. We had a wonderful, restful, and fun vacation. We recommend the sailing vacation we had with our Festiva sailing time share. It was all that was promised and more. Look up Festiva Sailing Vacations at:
( http://www.festivaresorts.com/fsv.php)