From Firefly Plantation, I went on to explore a little more of Bequia's northeast coast.
First, I dropped by the Whaleboner silk screen printing workshop. The evening before, as I sat on a bar stool made out of a whale vertebrae (whaling is still permitted on Bequia), I had been served a beer by Angie, owner of the workshop and bar. She said I had to go in and take a look.
Amongst a pile of silk screens, propped up against a wall, I pick out one I liked. It turned out to be the first one made by her late husband, and is still used for printing on t-shirts.
Angie showed me how on a long piece of cotton, prints are made one by one, by scraping paint through the silk screen design. In the shop below there were several rolls, along with dresses, t-shirts, place mats and beach bags made at the workshop.
It was now time to see more of the coast, so I carried on walking and first got to the quiet Spring beach, below Firefly Plantation.
Further on, I got to Industry beach. Named after long-forgotten industries such as the production of lime (from the heating of crushed coral) and sugar, there is nothing industrial about Industry beach today. It's quiet, empty and with a landscape of farmsteads, rocky hills and turquoise waters.
After a snorkel from the rocks and before reaching the cliffs, I got to the Old Hegg trutle sanctuary. It was set up in 1995 by skin diving fisherman Orion King, who wanted to put an end to the declining numbers of turtles in local waters (eggs and turtles were hunted by locals).
He started off by keeping a few hatchlings in tubs of sea water, to later release them (once they had grown and would have a higher chance of survival). Now, there are several large tanks, holding everything from newly hatched turtles to a few larger ones. When I was there, the keeper was busy putting gentian violet on the young ones, to rid them of infections.
Most are Hawksbill, but there were also a few larger Green turtles.
Part of the mission of the sanctuary is to educate school kids as well as adults about turtles and the need to protect them. Some collecting of eggs and hunting still goes on, but apparently much less so, meaning that numbers should start to come up again.
