Welcome to Bequia

Look, Ma, no seatbelt

The Defender

Watch the road through the handy floor viewfinder panels

Driveway of Doom

Hope Crest House

Sunrise from Hope Crest porch

Hope Crest amenities include one giant ducky!

Neil and the Cauntay girls

Another ferry took us to Bequia (pronounced “beck-way”), this one big and fast, cutting through the waves like they were made of meringue.  Neil, a sixty-something British expatriate who first visited the island in 1973 and whose son brokered our rental, picked us up at the ferry.  He drove us up the hill to Hope Crest in the ’95 Land Rover Defender that would also be on loan during our stay.  There were three-inch holes rusted through the foot wells.  Nina, Toby and I were tossed about on the bench-seats in back as we wound our way up the narrow street from the harbor, and I had to smile once again at our good-intentions in bringing Toby’s booster seat along on the trip.  Aside from the jeep we’d rented in Grenada for the day, we hadn’t ridden in a vehicle yet that had seat belts. 

Our adventure on the island began immediately, when Justin took the wheel of the Defender after a brief tutorial from Neil.  Hope Crest’s driveway was steep and angled enough to have been treacherous in a car Justin was familiar with.  In the Defender, whose stick shift was on the left, and whose gears stuck, with reverse and first gear barely distinguishable, and no power steering, Justin’s attempt to negotiate turning around involved grinding the gears as he struggled to find first, rolling further and further down the hill.  Neil chuckled and shouted encouragement.

“Just let it roll back against the wall!”  When the rear tire was against the two-foot rock retaining wall, he cried out, “Now punch it!”

Thinking he was in first, Justin floored the pedal, but the rear wheels climbed over the wall and up the incline, sending rocks shuttling down the driveway.  Nina and I shrieked as the jeep teetered at a terrifying angle, threatening to flip over.  Neil remained calm throughout, balancing the vehicle by climbing onto the open passenger side door, and receiving each girl as I handed her out to be placed onto safe ground.  We three then climbed to level ground and watched, Nina and Toby crying with fear as Justin and Neil traded places and Neil shifted into “differential mode” to coax the rear tires back down to the driveway. 

Justin got right back on the horse, taking another, longer tutorial with Neil without the girls in back, and by the end of our week in Bequia, he was lamenting leaving the Defender behind.  Toby even rode co-pilot in her booster in the front passenger seat, and every time we got in the jeep to go somewhere, would ask, with only the slightest hesitation, “you’re not going to drive up the rocks again, Daddy?”