Christy and I look at our schedule and decide to spend an extra day in Bequia, probably just stay one night on Paradise Beach. We’d like to get to Mt. Hartman on Friday and can still make that timeline with an extra night here.
Not much open downtown so the plan is to walk the boardwalk to Lower Bay and perhaps catch the band at De Reef later on. We seem to remember there’s a jazz band of ex-pats that play around 4 pm.
After a leisurely morning we head into the main dinghy dock and start the walk around. It’s lovely and seems pretty quiet. As we get around Frangipani’s, the girls stop to look at something and I can hear a violin playing not far away. Sounds too good to be a local musician but I follow the sound around to The Fig Tree where sure enough there is a guy playing the violin and the sound is perfection. He has a computer that is playing soft melodies and the violin sings the vocals. The girls catch up and we decide to have a cold drink and listen.
He plays everything from Bohemian Rhapsody to Michael Jackson and we even dance a bit. He takes a break and a steel drum player takes the stage for about 4 songs. He’s good but we’re kinda glad he only played 4 songs. I go to talk to him after to learn a bit about how the steel drums work. Leave a tip.
The violinist comes back and plays a duet with one of his students, the granddaughter of the restaurant’s owner. Amazing the difference between the pro and the protege. We listen to a few more and continue our wanderings, very glad to have found that little piece of melodic heaven on a Sunday afternoon in Bequia.
We get to Princess Margaret Beach where we stop for a swim, then carry on to Lower Bay. We’re wondering where all the locals are, PM Beach is usually packed on Sundays with locals blaring their gangster Caribbean rap. Oh, they’re on Lower Bay Beach this week. About 3 sets of locals, all with competing speaker systems mounted on top of their cars blasting that awful music at volume 11. Luckily it is barely within earshot at De Reef where we stop for a drink, and decide to eat also.
The band is just setting up so we stick around and eat the food, the girls have a couple of rum punches which pack a punch! Eventually the band starts up, there’s just 3 of them and they’re ok, nothing spectacular. Doesn’t make us want to get up and dance so we eventually start the walk home.
Takes about 45 minutes to walk from Lower Bay to the chandlery, almost an hour to get back to the dinghy. We dinghy past the floating bar, it’s pretty busy but we don’t stop.