A walk around the crater

Our package included an excursion every day, and as it had been pouring with rain last night they suggested we do a local hike, rather than the more difficult hike we had planned last night. We started down at the waterfront at Soufriere following a steep old path which was the main access to a village at the top of the crater. Wee Fee was our guide, he was wonderful, very jolly and full of local knowledge. He used to operate a diving business in Soufriere, but hurricane Maria and then Covid has meant he closed down, not least because his premises was demolished on the waterfront. As the crater is half in the sea, it has become a very well known free diving centre because of the steep drop off into the centre. Some of the big competitions are run here. The calm waters of the bay means it is perfect for the divers. Have to say free diving holds no appeal to me!

Looking back to Jungle Bay our hotel perched on a ledge half way up the crater.

Cute village of Soufriere below Jungle Bay, you can see the sharp drop into the village which is why Rose’s limes were cleverly brought down by cables. So much hurricane damage, their jetty is under reconstruction at the moment, rather scary as the Chinese have piled into the country with all their infrastructure projects to rebuild the damage. Sadly they bring in their own labour force which means the locals don’t get the work. Wee Fee is the chairman of the council in Soufriere, he seems to think they have little idea of how they are going to repay the Chinese loans.

A lovely path up with a few old houses on the way with colourful gardens

Wee Fee our guide.

Original paving stones from the Rose’s lime era.

Looking back to the sea, this is Scotts Head which is joined to the mainland by a tiny spit of land.

A steady climb up and up.

Rowan under a Bread Fruit tree.

Looking back to Jungle Bay, only about a third of it is currently in use.

Higher up the crater. the bare bits of ground are where the steam and sulphur is coming out.

The rim of the crater. The land slide blocked one of the air vents for a while until it built up enough pressure and blew itself free.

Sadly I can’t find the name of this tree with its thorny flying buttress trunk.

They have had a ‘Beautification of the island’ project going for many years, they are encouraged to make the road verges look good. A great project has been using up all the old tyres, painting them and then using them as planters.

The walk we did today is a section of the Waitukubuli Trail, a huge tourist attraction for the island, but I have to say it was looking fairly jaded and I would not rely on it being well marked. It is the longest hiking trail in the Caribbean, 115 miles long and divided into 14 segments, beginning in the southern village of Scott’s Head, next to Soufriere and ending in the north at Cabrits National Park which is where we did our quarantine. We have booked an external guide (called Bushman!) for Wednesday, the day we leave, to do the most difficult section of the trail to the boiling lake. 9 hour hike with a big steep climb. We really enjoyed the walk today and a good preparation for Wednesday. We requested just fruit for our picnic lunch which was delicious mangoes, pineapple and bananas.

We had a warm refresh in the sulphur spring!

Our resident doorman at our cottage.

There is a Swiss lady, the only white employee, who seems to be the manageress and lords it about the place. She is the yoga instructor too and got us signed up for the evening class after our massage. They have two lovely open wooden yoga rooms, they run special yoga retreats which was their core business at the old site. We enjoyed it all, even Rowan enjoyed stretching out, she just had a rather drawn out laboured voice, that seemed to have the opposite affect to the soothing tones she was aiming for! There was one other couple and an American lady who runs a dive shop in Soufriere. Turns out the other couple own the huge big Catamaran called Turkish Delight, they have flown in from New York with their black labrador, while their crew quarantined next to us. They are both English, but live in NY, she is half Turkish which is where the boat name comes from. I think the name is rather cute now ….his Turkish delight! We are gutted as they did their week’s quarantine at the hotel. The island has set up a few approved hotels for quarantining with ‘safe in nature’ rules. This means they can do excursions, basically anything outdoors. If only we had known we could have quarantined here too! Too late but a real bummer we didn’t know. They joined us for supper, great to be doing a bit of socialising again, hopefully not too boring for them as they are much younger than us – late thirties.