Wi-Fi in paradise
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| From barbuda again |
The trades are blowing strongly again , and we are back in Barbuda , anchored once more in the lee of its stunning East facing coast. There is only one building along the whole 11 mile beach – a small hotel of exquisite taste , but so it should be ; the cost of a room is $2200 – per night! I am told by an American friend that to many thousands of her countrymen , this is a snip!
We went ashore to see how much it would cost to eat there but it was way out of our price range. Talking to the locals it would seem that no further building is to be allowed along the beach , as not only do they not wish to spoil its staggering beauty but the general feeling is that the hotel guests , despite being mega rich , don’t spend any money with the local people . It seems the locals welcome the visiting yachtsmen , as most of them take a water taxi across the large lagoon and buy stores or eat in one of the cheap local restaurants in the town of Codrington .
And thats exactly what we did. We had planned to lift the canoe over the narrow sand spit separating the sea from the lagoon , and go exploring. Sadly , with 25 knots of Easterly wind the lagoon was a lee shore that would have been very difficult to launch through. We got pretty wet even in the big water taxi who dropped an anchor and came in through the surf to pick us up and for a very modest fee we were taken to the top of the lagoon to marvel at the huge frigate bird colony.
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| From barbuda again |
On first arriving at these shores I was a little bit disappointed with frigate birds. I had imagined them as huge birds constantly performing aerobatic miracles whereas in point of fact they are physically fairly small ( albeit with disproportionately long wings) and despite watching them for hours I have seldom seen them manage to bully other birds into dropping food . They are supposed to catch flying fish but we saw boobies and terns being much more successful .They do however soar high above all the other birds with effortless ease and it was difficult not to be impressed by the huge numbers in the breeding colonies ,so they must be getting plenty of food from somewhere. The males tend to display with their famous inflatable red neck pouches from September onwards , and so by now the birds have paired off , laid eggs and hatched their young who will fledge before the first storm of the autumn. Right now the young are little downy white balls of fluff and the few males who are bothering to inflate their neck pouches are probably just frustrated and rejected suitors.
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| From barbuda again |
Codrington was a tiny dusty little town with hardly any cars , but a new fishing harbour under construction courtesy of the Japanese. We have seen several similar schemes throughout the Caribbean and In effect the Japanese are buying support for the lifting of a ban on commercial whaling. These are poor countries but I am surprised that they haven’t opted for whale based eco-tourism as a better long term bet than taking short term bribes.
Talking of whales , I think “our” whale must have been a humpback ,despite not seeing its tail flukes when it dived ,as this is by far the most common species at this time of year. It also appears that our Barbuda dolphins were bottle nosed dolphin and my sea snake was in fact a snake eel – and harmless. How do you know these things I hear you ask? Well, the fancy hotel had a Wi-Fi system we could pick up from our anchorage and we had Wi-Fi in paradise- a strange concept if ever there was one!