We arrived beautiful Mustique after a couple of hours of smooth sailing! No offerings to King Neptune today :-) We even raced another yacht, creating our own little exciting regatta there for a while. The other boat was faster and bigger than our boat (damn Spaniards!) but we made some pretty good moves that made him sweat for a while!! It was a lot of fun!
Mustique is one of the privately owned very exclusive islands of the Caribbean. A huge chunk of Mustique was given to Princess Margaret of England as a wedding present in 1960. A lot of celebreties have houses here, and I can understand that. It's relatively small, it's gorgeous with beaches to die for, and it receives very, very few visitors. The only ones permitted to visit are yachties on small boats (maximum 20 people or so pr. boat, so no cruise ships.) They have limited space in their harbour as well so you need to get there early if you want to spend a night or two. You can arrive by plane and stay at one of the two hotels on the island of course. The most famous would be the 5 star luxurious Cottonhouse - if you can swing the cash for a stay there, which is around a measly 700-1000 US$ pr. night.... I think the anchorage-fee was kind of expensive there as well, no doubt to keep the "riff-raff" out of Mustique!!
But we had our own 'luxurious' yacht so we didn't have to worry about the prices for accommodation. We checked in with the harbourmaster, they come to you in a small boat, collecting a fee for you to anchor in the harbour and went to shore. There was a Blues festival going on at famous Basil's bar, and we had a great time, drinking tropical drinks and listening to some really swingin' music. There was even a rumour that Mick Jagger was around (someone had seen him a few days ago) but I didn't see any celebreties during our stay. The day after, we were heading down towards Tobago Cays so we just made a quick trip into land to see Mustique by day and to do some shopping for freshly baked goods. Everything is perfect, on the island - it's almost too perfect. There are shells along the paths to guide you to the shops, everything is clean (no litter), every house is brightly and freshly painted, there are almost no locals around and I thought it was a bit too 'film set like' for my taste. There are golf cart "taxis" to take you around the island if you wish.
A quick side trip down towards the harbour after Basil's bar, gave me another impression of the island though. Many fishermen live in barracks near the harbour, they are occupied with fishing or repairing nets etc. and although I was able to photograph the 'fishmarket' (with people's permission of course,) I didn't feel that welcome. It felt obvious that they didn't want the visitors to see the backside of Mustique. But that is what I find interesting, so I kept taking photos, but was very conscious of asking permission when my photos included people. We left Mustique for Tobago Cays where we were going to hang out for a few days. More thumbnails ...
Latest Comments (1)
|
Interesting travelogue and BEAUTIFUL photos! (reply)
Oct 30, 2006 12:38 EST by jaimegirl
Hello fellow traveler!
Just wanted to say that I have enjoyed reading your travelogue and wanted to ask what kind of camera you are using to get those amazing pics!i love photography-I especially liked 'crouching fisherman'. You definitely have an eye for an image:)
|
 Post a new comment | 
2 votes 
