Sheldon, our harbour master buddy and all round big help, invited us to have lunch with his wife, Georgette and 2 kids, daughter Shayla (7) and Sheldon junior (18months) known as SJ. What a lovely family. Shayla is as bright as a button, and SJ was playing games on an ipad like a seasoned gamer.
We pulled the dinghy up on the beach where Sheldon picked us up at midday.
To our surprise we ended up at a little local restaurant. Georgette’s parents have owned it for many years and she grew up in the attached house. It seems to serve the local community, not the tourist trade.
It was so relaxed and there is something special about home cooked food in a restaurant.
Afterwards we went around to their townhouse where we watched DVDs made to promote a charter business he used to work for. It was a real eye opener. On the north side of the island is a shallow sandbank and reef call Stingray City. Sheldon was Mr Personality himself giving the tourists the time of their lives. He even admits he used to go back to talking like a Jamaican, mon, because it was good for business, and tips!
Not only do they get to swim with stingrays but hold and stroke them. They are so tame and playful. He also had a grey nurse shark they’d been playing with from tiny and could handle. When Steve Irwin, Australia’s Crocodile Hunter of tv fame got killed by a stingray, it affected the business badly. People were understandably scared.
But now the place is in full swing again and Sheldon has bought a trimaran he is doing up, along with his car he is doing up, and back yard he is doing up, and the Yacht Club his boss is doing up!
He’ll be starting his own charter business later in the year with a friend and they will do well. They both have the right, fun loving, service orientated personalities so essential in the tourist trade.
While we were having lunch a friend called by and gave him 2 barracuda he’d just caught. They must have been 3 ft long and I wondered what they would have sold for at the Sydney Fish Market.
Unfortunately some fish here can have deadly levels of toxins depending on where they have been. Sheldon cut a fin off one and some gut from the other and put them on a footpath in the back yard that had ants crossing.
We finished our meal and about an hour later went to check the fish test. The ants had rejected the fin, which means it’s toxic, but it seems they couldn’t resist the gut bits. There were dead ants on and around it. They were curled up in little balls. All is not well in paradise.
It’s a real pity. Those 2 fish would have made a lot of meals had they been edible. We sure won’t be catching fish in this part of the Caribbean.
But chickens... this island is awash with chickens. They are everywhere and wild. Nobody owns them. They truly are free range.
I asked Sheldon if they ever catch any for the pot. He looked at me in horror, then laughed. “NO! They’re regarded as vermin here. Nobody eats them. It’s a status thing.”
So, free range chickens free, or pay through the nose for battery raised chickens from America.
It’s a funny old world...