A Caribbean island-hopping adventure in St Vincent & the Grenadines

Desron ‘Lava Man’ Rodriguez is a person of few words, but those he does utter can stop you in your tracks — for this mild-mannered, softly spoken Vincentian can detail what it’s like to climb an erupting volcano. “I didn’t want anyone else telling me how it was up there,” he answers to the inevitable question: why? “I had to witness it with my own eyes.” 

We’re winding through the ashy foothills of La Soufrière, the still-smouldering stratavolcano that dominates St Vincent’s northernmost tip. The largest and most densely populated of the 32 islands and cays that make up St Vincent & the Grenadines, this volcanic isle is a West Indies wonder. Black sand beaches are backed by small villages half-mooned around Caribbean bays devoid of international resort development. And St Vincent’s windward Atlantic shores are wilder still. Its densely forested cliffs are home to more goats than people, and they graze amid palms and surf-sprayed cactuses. 

We head inland from the ocean shores just beyond Georgetown, where the road rides over Rabacca Dry River, a gulch carved out by a 1902 eruption. Its banks are once again deep in grey volcanic ash, from La Soufrière’s latest blast in 2021. At the road’s end, La Soufrière’s four-mile out-and-back summit trail has been cleared and reopened, climbing steeply over 576m. It’s a journey Lava Man often makes twice a day — guiding visitors or just for fun, as he’s done since he was a child. “I’ve always liked being outside, in nature,” he says. And why should the top blowing off the mountain interrupt his daily walks? 

In March 2021, La Soufrière began notable ‘effusive’ action, exhaling clouds of gas, with the underground magma activity sending tremors through the island. On 9 April, the seismic research centre at University of the West Indies (UWI), with its customary exactitude, predicted a full explosion within 48 hours, advising islanders in the northern ‘red zone’ to evacuate immediately. But some didn’t leave — a minor eruption in 1979 perhaps still lingering in local consciousness, creating a false sense of ease. Lava Man didn’t evacuate. In fact, he drove into the red zone, making tracks through ash-thick roads, small volcanic rocks raining down. “You’d hear ‘pow pow’ as they hit the ground. One cracked my windscreen,” he tells me. Then he climbed the mountain wearing a gas mask to film what was happening at the top. “I had to go around trees on the ground, the path was gone. But I know the way even with my eyes shut.”

Over the course of the volcano’s two weeks of eruptions, he made the journey several times. At first, his Soufrière YouTube streams turned islanders against him, his actions labelled “doltish” by the lead UWI scientist Professor Richard Robertson. “But when people saw the mountain on fire?” Lava Man says of his ash-blasted broadcasts, “they really started evacuating then.” When he was finally caught by island police, islanders rallied for his release. Subsequently christened Lava Man, Desron is now the go-to guide for adventurers on the island. “But that’s not why I did it. And I wouldn’t do it again. I got my turn,” he says quietly, before adding with a self-effacing shrug, “God is great.” 

Unlike the devastating 1902 explosion, La Soufrière took no lives in 2021. And while its scorched summit is now a moonscape — accessible via a final steep scramble that demands fitness and hiking boots — lush vegetation has already reclaimed lower slopes. “It’s amazing,” says Julicia Lewis, another local guide joining our hike today. “It all came back so quickly.” We look down onto a thick forest of palms, banyan and bread fruit trees unfurling towards the coast at Georgetown. “To think, for weeks after the eruption, we had no water,” she says. “Ash got in reservoirs. We needed damp towels on windows to keep the ash out. And it still got everywhere.” She laughs now, but this young Vincentian woman actually gave birth to her second child the day before the eruption, bringing the newborn home to her house in the capital, Kingstown, as islanders flooded in from the evacuated north. 

“We’re resilient people,” she says with a smile. “We help each other.” She picks up a five-fronded leaf fallen from a trumpet tree, brown and curled inwards like a giant arthritic hand. “I want to make some tea and they’re no good for that if they’re still green,” she tells me. Whether it’s to ‘cool the blood’, soothe griping stomachs or fight a cold, which Julicia feels coming on, there’s little that bush tea can’t cure according to Vincentian lore. “My grandma made it, my mother too. It’s still a thing,” she says at a whisper as we stop to view a hovering hummingbird. “I once heard a parrot here,” says Julicia of national bird, the St Vincent Amazon parrot. “I think it got confused after the eruption. Their habitat is further south.”

We don’t spot the rainbow plumage of this endangered species, but there are bright orange wings of paradise plants and chandeliers of epiphytes spilling from the canopy through tangles of strangler fig trees, the beginnings and endings of plants hard to fathom. But Julicia has her quarry. “Got it! I’ve been looking to show you this,” she announces as she lays a fern leaf on her forearm, gives it a sharp slap and pulls it back to reveal the perfect imprint of its every tiny, feathery frond on her skin rendered in a chalky white sap. “We call it clap-hand,” she says, grinning. “We loved it as kids. My mum adds it to trumpet tea for that extra healing touch.”

From rainforest to reef

The Carib name for St Vincent, ‘Hairouna’ means Land of the Blessed, and for all La Soufrière’s devastation it has also blessed the island with rich volcanic soil in which an abundance of edible, medicinal and grazing crop plants thrive. Heading back south, we pass a roadside memorial to the ‘Defender of Hairouna’. Buffeted by Atlantic winds, this paint-peeling plaque is dedicated to St Vincent’s national hero, Joseph Chatoyer. Also known as Satuye, the Garifuna Carib chief, with his troops of tenacious locals and runaway shipwrecked slaves, held off British control of St Vincent for decades during the Carib Wars. He was finally killed in battle in 1795. Two centuries of British rule followed, but where sugar and banana plantation crops have dominated many Caribbean islands before and since emancipation, St Vincent, with its rich volcanic soil, has diversified to become the region’s fruit bowl. 

“It’ll make you strong!” urges a woman selling freshly chopped callaloo in Kingstown market. In contrast to the capital’s florid colonial churches and ballast-stone clapboard houses, its concrete-block market is a functional affair — but a Caribbean powerhouse no less, supplying the West Indies with a boggling range of produce including dried sea moss, local honey, ginger, sorrel, nutmeg and arrowroot. The market resounds with the clang of works currently enlarging the island’s cargo port across the street, but despite this, and the international airport that opened in 2017, St Vincent remains low key. Leaving the capital, we explore deserted beaches black with the island’s ubiquitous volcanic sand that diamond-sparkles in the sun. “People think it’ll be rough but it’s so soft, right?” says Julicia at my idiot grin as we paddle in the surf, the sand like velvet underfoot.

A rare strip of imported white sand graces the beach at Young Island. This one-hotel destination is accessed by a three-minute ferry journey, summoned from a phone in the small dock near Villa Beach. St Vincent will open a Sandals Resort this spring, but for now, Young Island’s confection of thatched cottage-suites characterises St Vincent’s locally run accommodation offering. I fall asleep to the crash of waves, the croak of frogs and the sound of soca music from Villa’s small strip of bars — more or less distant depending on which way the wind blows. 

Sitting pretty in the southern Caribbean, between St Lucia and Grenada, St Vincent & the Grenadines doesn’t lack castaway opportunities — and with a network of ferries and twin-prop planes, island-hopping is affordable and easy. The following morning, a 20-minute flight takes me low over a patchwork of Grenadine islands haloed in blues of impossibly brilliant hues. It’s as much bucket-list thrill as A-to-B journey. Barely 20 minutes by motorboat from the shores of Union Island, where we touch down, I’m out into that turquoise water, nose to snout with hawksbill and green turtles grazing in the seagrass at Tobago Cays Marine Park. 

This pristine protected reserve was a filming location for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. We skirt the shores of Petit Tabac, the palm-bristly sand spit where Kiera Knightly’s Elizabeth Swan shouts at Johnny Depp’s rum-drunk Captain Sparrow in The Curse of the Black Pearl. On neighbouring Petit Bateau, I sample a dark, spiced Vincentian rum named after the 17th-century brigand John ‘Sparrow’ Ward who inspired the movies. Sailors have long favoured this tiny island for rum punches, conch and lobster barbecue. “In my dad’s day it was just a beach bonfire. Things have changed,” says Carlos Peters, smiling as he indicates a newly built kitchen shelter with gas grills. Carlos heads up an association of 22 ‘boat boys’ who taxi guests from their yachts to dine surf-side on fresh catch. “We’re trying to regulate things more — how many boats operate, how much fish is caught and sold. Some old-timers don’t like it, but it’s the only way this is sustainable for everyone.” 

Local business is crucial for communities in the Grenadines — a place plied by self-sufficient cruise ships and famed for exclusive resort islands like Mustique (a 1970s favourite of Jagger, Bowie and Princess Margaret) and Canouan (where, so the local joke goes, billionaires go to escape the millionaires). On Mayreau, a 1.5sq mile hill ringed with white sand and coral reefs that’s the only populated island within Tobago Cays’ reserve — I meet John Roache. Tall and statesman-like, the former history teacher dedicates his time to community development, including tutoring local children. “Mayreau’s population is about 300 and 70% are young people,” he tells me as we watch two boys dip-fish with buckets off the dock. “We’re a transit for marijuana,” he says of the nation’s licence to export the crop to select countries where it’s legal; locally it was decriminalised for personal or medical use in 2018. “This can change our youngsters. They need careful direction.” 

John’s work-in-progress book, Wahya (‘who we are’), explores the Grenadines’ history. St Vincent and the Grenadines was the last of the West Indies’ Windward Islands to be ceded from the British, in 1979. “A daily issue in the Caribbean is succession. Lots of people left after independence.” And despite his development work, he says, “many in Mayreau still today don’t own their land”. When not teaching, John runs the island’s sole grocery store, where he displays the multiple prizes he’s won for good works, proudly showing me letters of commendation from Queen Elizabeth II. “We must embrace the complex multiplicity of our Caribbean nation,” he says of this perhaps surprisingly loyalist display. “We’re Black but also English, Irish and Asian. To progress, we need to bring all of us into the fold.” 

Nation builders

Masani Defreitas is singing in Swahili. It’s rehearsal time at Ashton community centre on Union Island, a brief pre-dusk moment bringing biting sandflies, and we’re all trying not to fidget. Dressed in a Ghanian headscarf and skirt, Masani has her crew in check. As her voice rises, a 15-strong contingent from the Imani Cultural Organization joins her in a chorus of song and drumming. The dancers pause, and their previous barefoot steps, spins and jumps give space to electrifying sound. “Our DNA on Union Island traces back to West Africa,” says Masani at the song’s close. Whether in Swahili or Creole, Union Island’s folk culture of song and dance is going strong. It’s front and centre of the prestigious Maroon Festival before the rains in May, and weddings here still involve a ‘cake dance’ where women do a tricky ballet of cake balancing. “We also do ‘meeting up’, when bride and groom parties meet in the street for a dance-off,” says Masani. And with that, the group launches into a ‘cherub song’ whose lyrics chide a man for being too late: his girl’s marrying someone else. The dancers — tonight ranging in age from seven to 17, and one adult — tag each other in and out of the circle. “I started this group in 1986. Some kids are now adults but still dance with me. We’re currently raising funds for a Ghana cultural exchange. I want these children to understand where they’re from.” 

Union Island is in the business of preservation. Just three miles long and one wide, this coral-fringed idyll was once little-known to outsiders beyond sailors and kitesurfers. But in 2005, a new species of gecko was discovered here by local citizen-scientists Mark da Silva and Matthew Harvey, putting Union on the map. “We were actually investigating tarantula habitat,” says Matthew, when I meet him in the tiny settlement of Pauper’s Land on the south coast. “But we knew we’d found something new.” The subsequent scientific paper, inadvertently pinpointing these exquisite jewelled creatures, saw them poached into endangered territory by 2018. “People want them as pets,” explains Matthew’s friend, Roseman Adams, another of Union’s home-grown conservationists and co-founder of the Union Island Environmental Alliance.

With the help of partners like Fauna and Flora International, the alliance has since put boots on the ground to deter poachers. They’re a small team but, standing 6ft tall with shoulders seemingly as wide, Roseman is an entire army in himself, albeit one with a disarmingly easy charm. He rounds up six alliance guides to help us explore Union’s peaks, where the lizard’s range is contained in a small tract of forest. “It’s one of the healthiest dry forests in the Caribbean, home to many endemic species. But development is encroaching,” says Roseman of Union’s nascent tourism industry. 

The guides stride ahead through the trees, bringing back two geckos in a lensed specimen dish that magnifies the spectacular circular markings on their tiny 3cm bodies. Then they’re released again, location undisclosed. “We’ve learned to be careful,” says Roseman. “Union is one of the poorest islands in the Caribbean. And these creatures are much more valuable to us alive.” The alliance organises tours, the only way to see the geckos, along with sustainable turtle-spotting, and raises money for Union’s ultimate challenge: water security. 

“We’re reliant on rain for drinking water,” says Roseman as we putter along Chatham Bay in his electric tuk-tuk, getting a wave from everyone we pass. “And people are suffering more shortages with climate change.” He points out rain-capture tanks funded by the alliance. Elsewhere, I spot wells in various states of disrepair, the island’s free-roaming goats and cows in attendance. “Another issue,” says Roseman. “Free-grazing causes crop shortages and erosion. And we need our vegetation. It’s trees that attract rain on tropical islands.” Known as ‘Young Buffalo’, it’s clear Roseman is not easily deterred. “It’s often about simple solutions, but it takes a unified approach,” he says. 

We’re able to shelter from the heat thanks to one such simple solution: shady walkways through the mangroves at Ashton Lagoon. An ill-placed causeway to Union’s airport cut off water to the lagoon, home to the Grenadines’ largest mangrove forest. Strategic flush holes engineered by local environmental group SusGren means they’re thriving again — as are the fish, bees and migratory birds that rely on them. Roseman beams. “This is one of the best birding spots in the Caribbean now.”

From Bequia, a two-hour ferry ride away, I can see the Grenadines laid out like jewels. A pickup truck taxi makes short work of the hilly hinterland, climbing through fragrant forests of ylang ylang, cashew and nutmeg to the lookout at Mount Pleasant. Named ‘island of the clouds’ by its early Arawak tribal settlers, Bequia’s sky is clear today, and St Vincent, the Grenadines and even Grenada rise out of the water like stepping stones, enticing travellers onwards. I resist, however. With its string of undeveloped beaches, locally run hotels and relaxed rum shacks, Bequia invites you to linger. It’s a place where yachties sail in and end up staying far longer than intended, integrating into island life, opening bars with names like Whaleboner. 

In the port, I buy a soursop ice cream at a pink-painted shack, the sun making shorter work of it than I do. I scurry into the shade of Mauvin’s Model Boat Shop. Strung with hundreds of immaculately detailed wooden replicas of old Bequian schooners, yachts and rigged rowing boats, the place itself looks ready to set sail. “I started out 40 years ago, using coconut shells,” explains  Mauvin Hutchins, one of several islanders who make a living from model ships. “People come to Bequia because they love the sea, love to sail. And they want to take a bit a that home with them,” he says, polishing the mahogany hull on a model of the island’s elegantly masted former ferry, Friendship Rose.

Outside, modern motorised car ferries honk their arrivals, summoning passengers to Mayreau, Canouan and beyond. Through the din, loud and clear, the call of a fisherman’s conch shell alerts islanders to fresh catch, just as it has done for centuries. “She don’t run anymore,” says Mauvin, of Friendship Rose. “But I guess island life doesn’t change that much.”