Aaron took us to the other side of the island, where we were able to see the previously mentioned wind farm, from which the views in all directions were amazing. We were even able to see the airport, which was completely deserted as it wasn’t a day with a flight. We were also able to see two critically endangered endemic species: The Wirebird (also known as the St. Helena Plover) and the St. Helena gumwood tree. Both populations are rebounding due to the efforts of painstaking conservation.
A sunny day - The Briars was a home to Napoleon for the first few weeks of his enforced stay on the island (1815), and the Hutts Gate Store is even older, the building gets a mention in the reports from the Dutch capture of the island from 1673.
A visit to the area known as Deadwood included another sighting of the wirebird, along with the site of the Boer war POW camp (must have been miserable), the wind farm and general stunning views
We almost missed the daily deplyment of the weather balloon from the Met station. It is set off at 11am daily
The stunning natural "artists' pallet", and the man made runway looking quite barren.
A side trip to see the natural feature known as the "Turk's hat" with our guide Aarron before going on to check out the successful Millenium project gumwood replanting project.
We then returned back down to sea level on the western side of the island at Sandy Bay. As we took the very steep, narrow and winding road down, Aaron told us that it had only been built in 1984. Prior to that, it was a footpath that locals had to take if they wanted to reach the rest of the island.
The narrow, steep, windy road down to Sandy bay transitions from lush green to barren ash landscape
As we descended, the lush, tropical jungle slowly changed through several different ecological zones until we arrived at the beach, which was backed by a moonscape of barren, volcanic ash. Sandy Bay is the other spot on the island, besides the Jamestown pier, where it is possible to walk on level ground. It’s difficult to do, though, as the sand is so coarse and soft.
We stopped at Sandy bay for a picnic lunch - among the ash landscape we found this delicate plant known locally as 'Baby toes'.
Even though both were technically closed for the day, we also managed visits to both Plantation House and Longwood House.
Plantation House and it's most famous resident Jonathan (still going strong at over 190 years old)
Plantation house is the Governor’s residence and the venue for most of the island’s fancy parties, when one is needed. The Cape Town to St. Helena yacht race had their awards banquet there, for example. What we were most excited about was a chance to see Jonathan, the world’s oldest living reptile (actually oldest living animal). Jonathan is a Seychelles giant tortoise who was already fifty years old when he was gifted to the island in 1882, which will make him 191 this year. He wasn’t hard to find as he was doing his part to keep the lawn trimmed. He is much bigger than a push mower.
Longwood House (Napoleon's long term home on the island, he hated it - primarily for its remoteness and harsh winds)
Longwood House is where Napoleon Bonaparte, a Frenchman of some note, was exiled after losing the Battle of Waterloo to the British. By all accounts, he seems to have spent the last six years of his life here reminding everyone around him that he is better than they are. He bitterly complained that he was an Emperor, but was being disrespected by being treated as a General. Egalité, indeed.
Pardon me, but if I had led an army into battle and lost, I would expect much ruder treatment from my victors than a villa on a tropical island, a staff and a stipend, complete with a ‘dress allowance’ so that the ladies visiting him could arrive in the latest fashions of Paris.
Napoleon is the reason for all of the island’s fortifications. The British were terribly worried that the French would try to rescue him. In fact, it never came to pass. Perhaps the French got used to the peace and quiet and decided to give it a miss.
We had mentioned to Aaron that we were wanting to do the hike up Diana’s Peak, St. Helena’s highest point, after the tour. He kindly offered to drive us to the trailhead instead of taking us back to Jamestown. That saved us quite a bit of climbing.
The lush, green top of the island was covered in cloud when he dropped us off. We headed up into the mist with a farewell wave. Diana’s peak has all sorts of interesting endemic flora to pass through on the way to the 920m summit. We were especially impressed with the trail. Almost every bit of what would otherwise be slippery or boggy ground was covered with an overly sturdy wooden walkway, complete with stairs and handrails on both sides. I can only imagine the effort of carrying all of that heavy timber up here and then assembling it. Thanks so much to the folks who did so.
A side trip to Diana's Peak (hightest point on the island at 815m) provided exercise and views (between the clouds)
We had almost made it back to our starting point when Maryanne slipped on one of the spots without a boardwalk. She didn’t hurt herself. Her shoes lost their grip on the wet grass and down she went. She was doing alright, finding the fast way down, when the clean grass beneath her gave way to a puddle of mud. Oh, dear! No pub is going to let us in now.
Waiting for us at the gate was Aaron, who came back for us, even though he didn’t have to. Maryanne pulled a plastic bag out of her purse and was able to arrange it so as not to soil the car. By the time we got to Jamestown, the place was pretty much shut for the evening. A couple of the locals spotted Maryanne and gave a knowing smile. “Been up Diana’s Peak, I see?”
Before she met me, Maryanne got to swim with a Whale Shark. I know this because she sets a weekly reminder to make sure I don’t forget. Every time we have been somewhere Whale Sharks frequent, it has been the wrong season to see them. Well, St. Helena has Whale Sharks and they have them here right now! I pushed past her and booked myself on a tour.
As I was greedily clutching my reservation, she told me she wants to go, too. Oh, I bet you do, Lady! Maryanne really likes Whale Sharks.
Whale Sharks are, of course, the world’s biggest fish. Also, they are perfectly safe to be in the water with because they are the only shark in the world that can get away with calling a Great White, “Shorty.” Also, they eat plankton, not people.
Our tour started out a bit rough, with lots of time bobbing around and watching the lookout on the roof for signs of a sighting. At last, he pointed to a dark shape and the skipper zoomed towards it.
We had been told to be fast getting into the water because Whale Sharks swim surprisingly quickly and are impossible to follow. Maryanne wasted no time and was first off of the boat. I was about fourth. The shark didn’t move on, but circled around slowly so we could get a good look. Whale Sharks are beautiful with their dappled skin covered in pale blue polka dots. Their tiny eyes and round snouts give them a friendly, slightly dopey look like a Labrador puppy. I really wanted to give it a scratch behind the ears but that was forbidden and I couldn’t find them anyway. Instead, we just contented ourselves with admiring its grace as it circled among us.
It was early in the season but we were able to swim with a whale shark!
Maryanne even managed a second encounter. Once again, she was ready and was first in the water. By the time the rest of us donned our fins, it was too far away. Maryanne and the shark were heading for the horizon. It must have known she was one of the good ones because it let her keep pace while the rest of us watched from the boat.
We got back to the pier with enough time to have an afternoon to kill. We decided to take the trail to the site of the Heart-Shaped Waterfall. Despite the fact that it started raining almost as soon as we left Jamestown, there was no water coming off the falls, but we did have a nice, if slightly muddy walk through the jungle. Neither of us had fallen, so we decided now was our chance to pop into a pub.
Back in town we checked out the VHS rental store (still in demand when there is no high-speed internet), admired the local coins, and took a trail along 'The Run' since it was a lane we had yet to explore
The heartshaped waterfall was dry, but we enjoyed the trail anyway
We started with The Standard, which we mistakenly thought was St. Helena’s oldest from the 1700s. It was very lively and after some friendly chat with a few of the patrons at the outdoor tables, we learned the actual place was the White Horse Tavern across the street. We finished our beers and went over to have a look.
Checking out the pubs: The Stanard and the White Horse Tavern
I once heard a comedian, I think it may have been George Carlin, who said that you always want to live in a town that’s at least big enough to have two Denny’s. That way, you can always say, “Let’s not go to this one. Let’s go to the good one.”
The White Horse was not what we were expecting at all. It may have been old, but it was hardly historic. It was like walking from Cheers into a subway bathroom with a lone, flickering light. We ordered our beers from a guy who served us with a grunt and then each took a plastic chair by a plywood table. Two other patrons were grimly watching some international version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. That and the light coming through the front door offered the only illumination. We each drank our beers as fast as we could without looking like we were trying to escape and then bid the fellas a hearty "Good Evening".
Returning to the jovial crowd at The Standard, we got knowing smirks. “Well”, one of them said, “How did you like it?”
”Omigod, that place suuuuucks!”
Chuckles.
“And the beer there is more expensive. The people that go there must really not like you for some reason. This place is sooo much nicer and the beer is cheap.”
This was met with guffaws. “You think the beer here is cheap‽”
”Why yes I do. £1.80 is half what you would pay in the UK and a third of what it would cost you in Toronto. It’s even less than we would expect to pay in Cape Town.”
This was met with scoffs and snorts. The common wisdom seems to be that The Standard is the most expensive pub in the world, with the exception of that other place over there. Not so, my new friends. You are luckier than you think.
It was now about time for The Mule Yard to open. It’s an open-air venue that serves pizza and live music on Friday nights. We had been especially looking forward to it because Ard Matthews was going to be playing. He was without his band, Just Jinja, but I am told they are world famous in South Africa.
So much talent was in town (between the boaters and the locals) - Singing this night were a couple of locals, and then Noah (a talented singer/songwriter from Boston) and Ard Matthews (renowned South African singer with a great voice, who diverted to St Helena unexpectedly with some boat problems.).
Ard is the owner of one of the boats in the Cape2Rio race that left Cape Town the day before we did. The Impossible Machine had rig and engine trouble, so they had to abandon the race and divert to St Helena for repairs. Ard was going to miss the concert in Rio, so he decided to play for St. Helena instead.
Maryanne and I often rode ashore with The Impossible Machine’s crew on the ferry. Since we have never seen Ard, we spent the whole week trying to figure out which one was him. My first guess was a heavily tattooed guy who always dresses like a bikie. That turned out to be Jules. He’s a commercial diver and he is way nicer than he looks. I was also pretty sure it wasn’t the tall, skinny guy who was always taking pictures. We were two tables down from four of them at a café when someone mentioned Ard in the third person. They were going to meet up with him later. That eliminates them, then. Of course, the whole crew was hanging out at The Mule Yard now, so that was no help.
The evening started with some local talent. The guy was unquestionably very good, but also a little too proud of himself for being two-thirds of St, Helena’s Rock n Roll/Jazz/Folk/Blues scene for my taste. Next came Noah, who had also come from another cruising boat. He was from Boston, USA and was quite good. Someone told me later that he had won one of the America’s Got Talent song contests.
When Ard finally took the stage, I couldn’t believe it. THAT was the guy! He was the least showy person in the whole crew. He was never in the front of the group when it went out. He was polite, but seemed shy almost to the point of reticence. He seemed to prefer sitting back and listening to being the center of conversations.
He let out a little giggle and thanked everybody for coming, then he picked up his guitar and started playing. I would never have expected what came out. His music is soaring and soulful and he has the most incredible voice. Not only does he have a huge range, but he can do stuff with it like a cartoon voice actor. I was especially pleased when he started playing The Impossible Machine, the title song of the album which he explained paid for his boat. The song is not about boats in any way, but instead about the machines, that were new at the time he wrote it, that we keep in our pockets that steal our attention away from the beautiful world around us.
Unlike in a lot of places with slightly-too-loud live music. No one was trying to maintain shouted conversations or carry on with their evenings like the band wasn’t there. Instead, all faces were looking to the stage and smiling as Ard sang. We were so lucky. Instead of buying tickets to sit way in the back, Maryanne and I had a table right at the front of a free concert that Ard had put on just to thank the island for being so good to him. When he finished, we stood up and clapped long enough for him to get the message that we didn’t want him to stop. He ended the encore with a cover of Louie Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World that started so like the original, with a perfect recreation of Armstrong’s raspy voice, then gradually switched his own soaring cry. It was fantastic. He was about to get up again when he thought of another perfect encore song and did a slightly changed version of his own Land of Milk and Honey, inserting St Helena where appropriate. That got the crowd cheering.
So now I guess Ard is world famous in St. Helena, too. They’re not a convenient stop for well-known bands on tour, so this was a special night, indeed. Ard said it was he who was lucky to break down and find such an unexpectedly wonderful place.
We naturally felt like taking it a bit easy the next day and sleeping in. We were foiled by the tide, though. Low tide was at 8am, so we needed to be up bright and early for a snorkeling tour of James Bay. We swam from Begonia to the wreck of the Papanui.
A snorkel in James Bay
Papanui was a coal ship that was passing by St Helena when its cargo began to smolder. They diverted to St Helena and by the time they got there, the fire was so bad that the decision was made to ground the ship in James Bay where it could be grounded and flooded, even though the weather was dreadful at the time, almost all of the occupants were able to escape to shore where they were looked after by the locals for several weeks until they could leave the island. What is left for us to see is the outline of the ship with lots of slowly decaying machinery scattered about, like boilers and windlasses. It now serves as an artificial reef that is very popular with all of the bay’s fishes. From there we swam to a much older wreck of a wooden schooner before poking our way along the cliffs and inlets at the edge of the bay.
That pretty much wrapped up our time In St Helena. We went ashore the next day for one last amble around Jamestown and the nearby cliffs. Then we made a point of spending the rest of our soon-to-be-defunct cash on a big lunch. We made use of the lovely free showers at the pier and headed back to Begonia to prepare for our next leg as we hop across the Atlantic.
Last day ashore - the officialdom of clearing out followed by another clifftop hike with old war fortifications, before returning for our last water taxi trip back to Begonia
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