St. Vincent Trip Report

[Jonathan Bird]

Hi Gang,
I thought I would post a little trip report about my experiences in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I have just returned from a whirlwind tour of the place, typical of magazine assignment type trips, where you run from place to place in order to photograph everything for a story and do it all in 7 days. As a result, I dove with Dive St. Vincent and Indigo Dive on St. Vincent, and with Bequia Dive Adventures on Bequia (pronounced "BECK-way"). I also had the good fortune to get the use of a small airplane for a few hours to fly around the entire archipelago for some aerials, so I can include some aerials here as well.

THE ISLANDS
St. Vincent is a volcanic island like my favorite Caribbean island Dominica, except not as steep and rugged as Dominica. It is a beautiful island and many of you probably know that the Pirates of the Caribbean films were filmed in both St. Vincent and Dominica. St. Vincent is lush and green, and most of the shoreline is rocky. What few beaches they have are mostly all black sand. Don't go to St. Vincent expecting beaches, shopping, or night life. However the food is quite good, the people are very nice in general, and the diving is great.


ST. VINCENT
I stayed at the Mariners Hotel for my time on St. Vincent and I can recommend this hotel for divers. It is right on the water, reasonably priced, has a dock for the dive shops to pick you up in the morning, has a pool, ice-cold AC, wireless internet that works in the rooms, and has what is generally regarded as the best restaurant on the island. The restaurant is French-themed, and quite good, but very expensive by island standards. (Only moderate by U.S. standards....dinner would run around EC $100 which is about US $40 for each person).

I dove with both of the dive shops on the island. Each is a good shop, with different specialties. Dive St. Vincent has been around a long time and the owner (Bill Tewes) is a lover of macro critters. He is the guy responsible for giving St. Vincent its reputation as a muck-diving critter destination in the Caribbean. His favorite sites typically have sandy, rubble or sea grass bottoms and would be considered "boring" by non-photographers, but if you are a macro guy, he finds some incredible stuff. He even found me a striated ("hairy") frogfish, one of the rarest of the rare fish in the Caribbean, and something I have wanted to photograph for 10 years.

Kay Wilson owns the other dive shop, Indigo Dive. She is the new kid on the block (in business 5 years) and is looking to expand St. Vincent's reputation to more than macro. Her feeling is that St. Vincent is only known for muck diving, and she wants to show that there are walls, reefs and even a couple wrecks. In my diving with her, she showed me all of that...very nice reefs, lots of color, and a wreck that is only a few years old and already starting to become encrusted with colorful marine growth. It's already a good dive, but in a few more years, it's going to be a really spectacular wreck. It's perfectly upright, and sank by accident, so it wasn't all prepped for divers from the get go, which makes it more interesting.

I enjoyed both dive operators--each has their own style and interests. In fact if I were to go back on vacation, I would dive a few days with each so I could get the full experience of the island. Both dive operators are a short boat ride from the Mariner Hotel dock and can pick you up right in front of the hotel in the morning.

BEQUIA
Bequia is infamous as one of the last places that still has a whale hunting tradition. There are only two people left on the island that hunt whales, and they do it in the old traditional way, dating back to the 1800's. They use tiny sailboats (not motorboats) and hand-thrown harpoons. They manage to catch about one whale every other year. Many people have different opinions on this. I'm a whale hugger for sure, and I oppose whale hunting, but this seems to me to be a traditional (some might say aboriginal) whale fishery that can't possibly make a big difference in the humpback population. It's actually a lot less objectionable than the Eskimo whale hunting, where they claim it's an aboriginal fishery, but they are using motorboats and rifles. (On the other hand, the Eskimos actually NEED the whales to eat, and the people on Bequia don't). So I will leave you to your own opinions on this and just talk about the diving.

Bequia has some of the most beautiful reefs in the Caribbean, seriously. They are lush, healthy and filled with fish and colors. There are so many big gorgonians that it's hard to believe. I loved the diving on Bequia! On the flip side, although they have lots of schools of small and medium sized fish and the occasional larger fish, I didn't see anything bigger than a breadbox....no turtles, no sharks, etc. (Same with St. Vincent for that matter). I'm told there are plenty of turtles around though.

The biggest problem for me with St. Vincent as a destination is Liat Airlines, as the only way to get there. Liat (i.e. known as: Luggage In Another Terminal, Leave Island Angry Today) has no baggage agreement with American or any other major airline, so to get there I had to fly to San Juan from Boston on American, then CLAIM my luggage, lug it to the Liat terminal and check it in again to St. Vincent. You can't check your luggage straight through. I imagine this is because Liat has limited luggage space and they charge out the wazoo for excess baggage, so they want to be sure that they get a chance to gouge people. This has several problems. First, you will pay excess baggage fees twice each way, (a total of 4 times), unless you travel very light. Second, if American loses your luggage (as they did with mine) GOOD LUCK ever getting it. For example, my luggage was tagged to San Juan from Boston. One of my bags didn't show up. So now I have to hope that American can find it, and get it to Liat, and that Liat can get it to me...without any tag on my luggage saying it's going to St. Vincent. I only got mine because I was on assignment and the ministry of tourism got involved. I have known other people to not get their luggage for a whole week because of this. My advice is to put a big piece of duct tape on your luggage and write where it's going in case they lose it, and then PLAN on them losing it. Carry on anything that is critical. Not being able to check luggage all the way from your home city to St. Vincent is a HUGE GIGANTIC pain in the butt. Same deal on the way home.

I am happy to answer questions if anyone has any. Overall, I liked St. Vincent, the people, the diving and the dive shops. I did not like my options for getting there, and that is the biggest hurdle to diving there in my opinion.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

Here are some shots...and there are some more in the other thread in this section.

[Jonathan Bird]

I forgot to mention the Orinoco Flow. At certain times of the year, heavy rainfall in south America and currents in the Atlantic conspire to bring a lot of nutrients from the Orinoco river delta all the way north to St. Lucia, which includes Trinidad, Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I was fortunate enough to be in St. Vincent directly after 2 days of solid rain from Hurricane Felix, plus an Orinoco Flow. (Both are summer phenomenons.) As a result, I had greenish water, with viz of about 20 feet at the beginning of the week, improving to about 35 feet at the end of the week. Every one of the pictures you see here was shot in 30 foot or less visibility. I used a wide lens, and got close.

The following are some pics from Bequia.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

Here's a couple topside of St. Vincent.

[tarczy]

Originally Posted by Jonathan Bird

The biggest problem for me with St. Vincent as a destination is Liat Airlines, as the only way to get there. Liat (i.e. known as: Luggage In Another Terminal, Leave Island Angry Today) has no baggage agreement with American or any other major airline, so to get there I had to fly to San Juan from Boston on American, then CLAIM my luggage, lug it to the Liat terminal and check it in again to St. Vincent. You can't check your luggage straight through. I imagine this is because Liat has limited luggage space and they charge out the wazoo for excess baggage, so they want to be sure that they get a chance to gouge people. This has several problems. First, you will pay excess baggage fees twice each way, (a total of 4 times), unless you travel very light. Second, if American loses your luggage (as they did with mine) GOOD LUCK ever getting it. For example, my luggage was tagged to San Juan from Boston. One of my bags didn't show up. So now I have to hope that American can find it, and get it to Liat, and that Liat can get it to me...without any tag on my luggage saying it's going to St. Vincent. I only got mine because I was on assignment and the ministry of tourism got involved. I have known other people to not get their luggage for a whole week because of this. My advice is to put a big piece of duct tape on your luggage and write where it's going in case they lose it, and then PLAN on them losing it. Carry on anything that is critical. Not being able to check luggage all the way from your home city to St. Vincent is a HUGE GIGANTIC pain in the butt. Same deal on the way home.

Jonathan

Thanks for the trip report, Jonathan.

I guess another way to solve the luggage problem is to stay an extra day in San Juan and wait for any lost luggage to catch up with you . . . kinda like what we do when we fly into Guayaquil, Ecuador a day earlier than our scheduled departure to the Galapagos.

Just out of curiosity, how much did Liat overcharge you for your luggage?

Those beaches looked interesting. How well did you do shooting macro while muck diving? Some of the macro shots on the hotel's website look very interesting.

BTW, more and more, I'm finding myself employing the tactic of arriving at the hub location, or the final destination a day earlier than scheduled just so baggage can catch up. Since the Galapagos incident, I'm really freaked about lost luggage - as I'm sure you were when that bag didn't arrive in San Juan.

Finally, did you stop in that third world country known as Miami, or is there a direct from Boston to San Juan?

[Clay Coleman]

Thanks for the peek, Jonathan. The aerials are especially cool, I think. I refuse to go through San Juan on American Airlines, period. If it's the only way to get there, I go somewhere else. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Clay, I am starting to agree with you. I know people that have had all their camera gear STOLEN from their luggage in San Juan. San Juan baggage handling is the worst in the world. Incompetent only goes half way. They are crooks!

Mark, yes, there is a direct flight to San Juan from Boston. You might be right about waiting for the luggage to catch up. You are assuming of course that Liat won't lose it, but chances are much less if you have it to check in the first place!!

I did pretty well with macro. As I have said before in the other thread, I was desperately wanting to photograph a Striated frogfish. The reason is that I am working on a book about the Caribbean and I want a shot of one for the book. So I was happy we found one, even when Bill said he hadn't seen one in over a year and he doubted we would find one. That was really lucky, and it made up for my bad luck with the viz, or at least that is what I told myself.

I'll post a few macro shots. Honestly, the macro was good, but I don't think it was any better than Dominica. (A friend of mine found a pair of striated frogfish in Dominica 2 years ago, so they are there). We saw nothing on St. Vincent (except the frogfish and a funky nudibranch that lives on gorgonians--see below) that I haven't seen on Dominica. The difference is that Bill is really geared towards finding that stuff. The benefit of St. Vincent in my opinion from a macro standpoint is not the location itself, but having Bill to find the stuff for you. If you took him to Dominica, he would find just as much. I think all the islands down in the southern windward part of the Caribbean (Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, etc) have all the same critters. However, if you go to Dominica, there is no equivalent of Bill that I know of, so you are on your own to find the stuff.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

The above images:

1. Banded Coral Shrimp with eggs
2. Longsnout sea horse
3. Blueback Jawfish (pretty rare)
4. Magnificent sea urchin (pretty rare)
5. Funky nudibranch than I forget the name of that lives on gorgonians.
6. Yellowthroat pike blenny
7. Striated frogfish (rare)

I am not posting any of the images that Sport Diver has selected to run in the story. You can see them in the October issue!

Jonathan

[tarczy]

Dude . . .

Nice job on the eyeballs!!!

Every one of them sharp, crisp and in focus!

What lense were you using? That Nikkor 105mm?

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey dude,
Thanks. I'm a bit anal retentive about things being in focus. I used the 105 for the small stuff and a Sigma 50 (my favorite macro lens) for the larger stuff. With macro I tend to use spot focus, and move the little focus spot around to where it needs to be in order to accomplish the composition I like and put the spot on the eye or close to it so there isn't much recomposition to do once I lock focus.

On the really small stuff, I just switch it to manual once it's focused at about the right distance and then move the camera in and out to get it in focus. On really little stuff, the autofocus hunts too much with the 105. The lens is too slow to gather enough light to focus well really close.

Jonathan