Crapping on a yak.....overland to the other side of the world and the rest: Days 343 to 354: 10 July to 21 July 2010: Bequia, and places Mick Jagger has been

Peak season in Bequia is during the winter months, so the island is fairly quiet at this time of year. This being the tropics, this is not so much because it is too hot, but because it is the rainy season, when the houses in Bequia collect rain in their tanks that serve as the year round water supply. This is not to say that my stay here was marred by the weather, and I had a couple of glorious days taking boat rides and snorkelling the reef at the end of Princess Margaret Beach below the house.

The Friendship Rose is a Bequia built schooner that is captained by one of the brothers that built the boat about fourty years ago. It takes me and about twenty other passengers on a day cruise to Tobago Quays, a serene uninhabited archipelago of fantastical beaches and perfect snorkelling. There are Reef Sharks here, though I don’t see any, but I do get to swim along with a couple of large sea turtles – if these were around Bequia they would probably end up on somebody’s dinner table.

During my stay, my mother takes me on a tour of the local bars and restaurants, and in most of she tells me of the time it was visited by Mick Jagger, who lives on the nearby Mustique. The story always seems to end with him leaving after being approached by autograph hunters. A couple we meet in one of the restaurants tells us of the time they once had dinner with Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston there, when they were the Hollywood couple de jour.

So Bequia is a bit of an unknown getaway for the rich and famous on yachts. This is not to say that the local people are wealthy, but it is a community where everybody knows everyone else and people seem generally happy. Willie, who can be found most days on Princess Margaret Beach selling trinkets and offering beach BBQs of fresh lobster, has an eight foot row boat which he takes to the harbour each morning and which he says he wouldn’t sell for a million dollars.

Once upon a time, Bequia used have a whaling station. Indeed whales are sometimes hunted still, the capture of one being a cause of great excitement among the local population. Bequia’s other main product was Bananas, but this faded away with the advent of ‘fair trade’ - Bequia’s banana farms did not qualify for some reason. Most of the Banana growers decided they were better off growing marijuana instead.