Saint Vincent photos

It was a murky day when Sarah, Cindy and I ventured up to Fort Charlotte. There were heavy rain squalls as well as some gusts of wind that blew Cindy's umbrella inside out. We decided that walking to the fort may have been a mission so hired a taxi. We were right, it was a long steep climb punctuated by Cindy yelling, "stop here, I've just got to get that picture".  Yes, someone worse than me. Luckily she did or I would have missed the rainbow over Kingstown.

We wandered around the fort guided by a nice young man who gave us the history with a passion that showed his sense of belonging to this place. He was an unofficial guide, we paid him of course. He told us the story of the fort high above the town protecting the headlands. The only people to be killed at the fort were an officer who was killed by the husband of the woman he was having an affair with and the soldier who killed him. It now houses the woman's prison, all 15 or so of them.

The entrance to the fort is imposing, although the photo above doesn't really do it justice. We wandered the battlements, astounded at the vista, from the ocean and surrounding islands to the tropical jungle covered mountains. We had climbed quite high. The history of the area is told in a series of paintings housed on site and I learnt about the peoples of the Eastern Caribbean, who settled first, who came later and the wars of colonisation. A similar story to many countries. It explained the people I had observed while wandering, very different but all locals.

The trip down was exciting and Sarah and I convinced the driver to stop so we could get some photos of the cemetery towards the bottom of the hill. It was interesting, old and new graves clustered together looking as though the new ones had been squeezed into vacant spaces. The row of white crosses looked interesting but I didn't make it over that far to find out their significance. It started to rain and we left, lifting the tapu as we went through the gate.