Walk around the Quill
Sunday 4th Feb 18
Back to the Quill this morning, we are going to try going around it, which means retracing part of our steps of the day before but it was such a nice walk we do not mind. We enter new territory after the cliff and the going is still good, the path is well marked and the views to St Kitts are fabulous. We reach the botanical garden with the rain, so we take shelter and have lunch. A nice family on a day out joins us and we have a little chat, they have been there for 20 years coming from Guyana for work on the oil depot. The grown up children are obviously visiting from the US. The rain soon stops and we are able to have a look around the garden. Very nicely done.
The path takes us further around the volcano, we are nearly ¾ of the way there when things get a bit tougher. The hurricane or more likely hurricanes have blown down many trees and although you can see some of the markers now and then it has now become an obstacle course, and progress is slow. However we feel we are so close to the end we soldier on fighting our way through the bush. Time is marching on and it will be dark soon, time to retrace our steps but not before we make a last ditch attempt to go down the volcano via one of the gulley going down. We can hear the cars and civilisation down there, it is tantalisingly close but we hit a patch of tangled trees and we have to go back up, to pick up the path to the botanical garden. Dusk is now there but we have found the well defined path, funnily enough, it is easier to follow in semi darkness the stones bordering it are more defined. Still do not fancy doing too much of this in the dark, even with our torches. Thankfully we are back at the botanical garden as the first stars appear. From there, there is a paved road leading back to town, it is only 7pm and it should not take more than an hour to get back. Wish we’d done that walk in the light though, you can hear the sea and the frogs...but then I would not have seen the Fireflies ballet all around us... never seen so many, such a magical thing.
We deserve a day off Monday to recover from our late expedition.
