Full Moon Party, Tobago Cays

Moving up the Grenadine Island chain, we ventured into the Tobago Cays (pronounced KEY).   The Tobago Cays consist of 5 small, uninhabited islands surrounded by a horseshoe reef.  These reefs protect the turquoise anchorages from the pounding surf.  The wind howled while we stayed here five days.  The sea spray was thick and covered everything in a not so fine layer of salt.   There were plenty of boats in the anchorage but it didn't seem crowded, if that makes any sense.  There were no stores, no marinas, no resturants of any kind on any of these beautiful islands.  Well, I take that back, there were a couple of outfitters selling t-shirts and jewelry on one particular beach.  We filled our days with school work, swimming and snorkeling.....perfecto!

Looking at Palm Island as we leave Clifton anchorage on Union Island.  

Following Patronus into Tobago Cays

Liv watching for reefs

View from our anchored spot off of Baradel Island, right next to the turtle watching area.  It was marked with linked buoys and we snorkeled around and saw tons of turtles, big and small.  This was almost as much fun as swimming with the dolphins in Les Saintes.  They move so slowly and effortlessly through the water and don't seem to mind if you are there watching them.  Craig and I saw a ginormous turtle, he was bigger than the circle of my arms.  

The water is sooo clear!

Looking at Petit Tabac - the only island outside the protected reef.  Does it look familiar?  Read on....

One of the few boat boys that sell flags, fruit, veggies, t-shirts, BBQ dinners on the beach....you name it, he sells it.

Chris and Craig working on their fishing gear.  That big bottle of rum in the middle of table is for the fish, not Craig or Chris.  Just in case you were curious about the amount of alcohol on the table in the middle of the afternoon.

St. Vincent and The Grenadines Flag.  As Kate would say, "it's a perfect flag day" (when the flag flies straight back).  It was really windy in Tobago Cays.  There were no mountains to temper the howling.

Visiting Petit Tabac, the 'deserted island' featured in Pirates of the Caribbean I.  Do you remember the scene where Jack Sparrow got kicked off the ship onto a deserted island (the second time) and Elizabeth discovered he had a stash of buried rum?  She promptly unburied it and set it ablaze to attract her rescuers.  That was filmed here!   Of course we wanted to experience the deserted island for ourselves, so we piled in our dinghies, armed with Chris’s iPhone navigation, meandered through the shallow reefs, through a narrow cut, trying not to get pounded by the huge surf on either side and zipped across the way to Petit Tabac Island.

Clearly, Bryson has been in the Caribbean too long if he can climb a palm tree to retrieve coconuts

The kids are exploring the beach.  We could walk around the entire island in 45 minutes or less!

Starting the painstaking process of removing all the braids in Olivia's hair.

A group photo on Petit Bateau, later that evening,  ready for our beach BBQ.  

The story takes much longer to write out than it actually is...so hang in there....One of the students we met at the elementary school, where we worked in the library, told us her mother worked in Tobago Cays.  Curious about what work she did, knowing there was next to nothing in the islands, we bombarded her with questions.  Come to find out, she does beach BBQ's on Friday and Saturday.  Sign us up!  We asked Demollie to let her mother know that we would be headed that way and would love to give her our business.  Once in Tobago Cays, The Conway's went ashore in search of Demollie's mother to make the arrangements.  They indeed found her, Batelle, and spent several hours lingering on the beach, listening to her life story.    Perhaps Erica will write about that in her post : )

On to the beach BBQ.  Batelle was hard at work when we arrived at the beach.  Her teenage daughter, boyfriend and Demollie were all there helping in the preparations.  The sun was setting over the small island and we had the beach to ourselves.  There was a stiff breeze and a layer of clouds that cooled things off quite a bit.  It was obvious that this was not just a casual "oh, let's just throw a small beach party and sit around a campfire".  They had quite the permanent set up with a huge BBQ grill tucked up close to the hillside, protected from the wind, covered with a canopy and tables to work on.  There were large picnic tables set up with table cloths and strings of lights everywhere to enhance the ambience (run by a generator, of course).  It felt like something right out of the movies.  We had portable speakers so we could play music and we brought some painkiller mixer to accompany the rum.

The kids with Damollie

Retrieving the fresh lobster in cages on the side of their boat.  This is the boat they use to travel back and forth from Union Island.  It's no small distance in open ocean for such a small boat.  I'm not sure I could make that trek every day.  Talk about a commute!

Batelle's boyfriend gets the lobsters ready for the grill

The food being cooked on the huge charcoal grill

Getting our groove on while we wait for dinner.  As you can see, we were trying out the popular dancing moves from Carnival!

Sitting around our table ready to enjoy

Our feast: grilled lobster (chicken for the kids), fried plantains, veggie rice, mixed vegetables and grilled potatoes with a pepper relish on top.  It was all soooo delicious, seasoned perfectly with garlic and seasoning peppers.  We totally and completely gorged ourselves until we couldn't even roll down the beach to our dinghies.  Oh and we had a plethora of fresh fruit for dessert too - that was also devoured on top of our already bulging bellies.

The following day, we spent all afternoon at the beach on Jamesby Island.  Erica and I checked out the snorkeling scene, which turned out to be great in a few spots.  There were several big rock piles near shore that numerous fish called home.  The fish seemed to stay close to the rocks, swimming between all the crevices and holes.

Beach Bums!

Surfer Girl Olivia plays in the waves!

Chris and Craig chillin' out, reading soaking up the Caribbean sun

A full moon rises over Tobago Cays, as we are anchored between Petit Rameau and Petit Bateau.

It is popular practice in the Caribbean to celebrate the full moon each month.  Which is basically yet another reason to party until the sun comes up.  We have yet to go to an "official" full moon party and we were so close to sailing back to Union Island for their Full Moon Party.  But in the end, we decided to stay put in Tobago Cays and have our own full moon party, Anything Goes and Patronus Style!  After we gorged ourselves on grilled lobster and danced on the beach to reggae music, we put the kids to bed and got naked!  Oh sorry, too much information for the family friendly blog.  What I meant was we adults did a little skinny dipping.  The next morning, the kids were all freaked out and very curious about what we had done the night before.  "You mean you were naked, like totally naked?".  "And you got in the water with the Conways?"  "Where they naked too?"  "Ewwww, that's just weird".  "Can we do it too!".  Enough said.

Helping Hands Across the Sea

Your life and mine should be valued not by what we take... but by what we give."- Edgar Allan

We don't usually arrive at an island with an agenda, but this time we had a mission to accomplish on Union Island.  Not only were we going to visit a local school, but we were going to volunteer for the day.  Erica met the co-founders, Harriet and TL, of Hands Across the Sea somewhere along the way, in Carriacou (I think).  In fact, that is the name of their boat they sail throughout the Caribbean.   Hands Across the Sea is an organization that helps foster and increase reading literacy in the Caribbean Islands either by donating school supplies, books, volunteering in classrooms or revamping the school libraries.

We were excited to have the opportunity to volunteer at the local Stephanie Browne Primary School.  We were reorganizing their library, as representatives for Hands across the Sea (HAS).   Volunteering is such a rewarding opportunity to teach compassion and understanding, especially for children.  This seemed to be a perfect fit for all our kids simply because they are so passionate about reading.  It was a great way for them to share their skills, talent and love for reading.   

As we walked through town that morning, the kids were excited to spend the day at a library, any library, as they missed theirs back home.  Erica and I wondered what we were in for.  We had no idea how big (or small) the library was, how many books they had, what its current condition was or even if they knew we were coming.  We were sort of making a cold call, having only spoken with Harriett about the possibility.  The school was not necessarily expecting us to just show up today.

When we arrived at the school, around 9 am, we found the principle outside and we held our breath as we explained who we were and why we were there, with 6 children in tow.  She had heard from HAS, and knew that we might be coming.  Phew.  We were relieved as she showed us the way to the library.  The children in the school stopped what they were doing and starred at us as we walked the outside hall.  Once inside the library, we quickly got familiar with our surroundings and chatted with the principle about how the space was used and our plans as instructed by HAS.

The library was currently structured in alphabetical order with reference books and like titles grouped together, well not really.  The library books were all mixed up.  There were student notebooks and projects strewn all over the place.  The teachers had their reference/teaching books mixed in with the student books.  Our job was to reorganize the books by reading level/grade level.  This would make it easier for the students to find age/grade appropriate books and be able to put them back without the cumbersome alphabet.  Which can be overwhelming for even the most experienced librarian.  I volunteer at our schools library and I know first hand what a job it is to reshelf books.  

This is what the library looked like before we started.  All the books were categorized alphabetically, sort of.  

First, we had to pull all the books off the shelves and sort them by grade level:  K-2; 3-4; 5-6.  The kids did a fantastic job sorting the hundreds of books on the shelves.  We had to remind them occasionally that just because they read a third grade book in second grade doesn’t mean it goes in the second grade pile.

Maggie and Reese work on organizing the K-1 books

Kate trying to figure out how she can read and work at the same time

Kate and Bryson work on the 5-6 grade books

Olivia works, I mean reads, K-1 books

Having a little fun in the process

Peek-a-boo.  We had many lookie loose.  Children would come in from time to time to see what we were doing or they would peer in the windows if they were too shy to come in. 

Once the books were sorted, then we placed them on the shelves.  We compiled all the book that were part of a series together and placed the lower grade books in easy reach of little hands.  

Erica organized the teacher reference area, which was a big job all by itself.  We moved book shelves, cabinets and tables around to best utilize the space and organized all the student projects.

All finished! Took us 8 hours to complete!  Some things the kids found in common with their own school libraries back home were posters on the wall and the words of encouragement to read and the power of learning.

The principle (pink sweater to the right) and some of the school children that either helped finish or wanted to check out what we had done.

Playing outside with the kids after school

Go Kate!

The kids have a running race with the students...on your mark.....get set.....

...GO!

View from their playing field