Final memories from the West Indies - a wonderful 4 months

Turtles – we had only ever had a brief sighting of a turtle in the past and there were many places that we were seeing turtles every day, how amazing! Each sight was as exciting as the first and to be in the water with one swimming beneath you is really cool.

Rum – Yep we have consumed a fair amount, dark rum, light rum, golden rum mmmm all yummy. Rum punches, Ti punch, dark and stormy, pina colada, killer bees, pain killers always up for trying something new.

Hummingbirds – Always wanted to see a hummingbird, so tiny and fast, after our first sighting in Guadeloupe we then saw regularly in the Lesser Antilles.

Snorkelling – There are some wonderful spots to snorkel on lots of the islands and once Amanda had overcome the fear of sharks we could enjoy the coral reefs. We must have seen over 50 species of reef fish, huge barracuda (as big as Amanda), giant stingrays and even a shark plus brightly coloured and delicate corals, it was like a garden under the sea!

Bananas – On arriving in Guadeloupe after almost 3 weeks at sea we made the most of our supermarket trips and were so impressed by the fact that we could eat local bananas, we thought how wonderful it would be to eat lots of fresh exotic local fruit but we soon realised this was not to be the case. As we transmitted the islands we realised that produce was not imported from local islands, so you could not find Guadeloupe bananas in Antigua even though they are neighbouring islands, you would get more variety of fruit and veg in the UK though all imported – how can this be right!

Rain Forest – Neither of us had every visited a rain forest, we were amazed by the size of the trees, the variety of plants, the vastness of the coverage and were still surprised when we were caught out in a huge downpour!

The colour of the sea – on many occasions we commented on the beautiful colour of the sea, turquoise, deep blue, green, aqua every shade of blue and green and often amazingly clear.

The people – we meet some really lovely people and mostly people were very friendly, not that often in the UK do you walk down the road and everyone say hello to you. It was often in the most remote and often poor locations that people made you feel this most welcome, funny that in the more touristy areas this is where you felt people tried to take advantage of you.

We have many special memories from our 4 months in the West Indies, not all the islands were the same and we enjoyed lots of different experiences.