Barhopping In The Grenadines
Mike Bernhardt January 31, 2018 1 Comment
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, nearly every beach has a broken-down little shack on it selling cheap rum, beer, and cocktails. A single sparsely-covered shelf on the back wall displays a few bottles. There’s usually one customer, a friend of the proprietor, perched on a barstool planted in the sand. They talk for a couple of hours in Creole until lunch, when the palm trees behind the shack no longer provide shade. The owner ducks under his counter, closes up the plywood shutter doors, and the two of them take off. A couple of hours later, the bar reopens and another friend visits until it shuts down for the night, just when a tourist like me might be looking for a drink.
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On our first afternoon in the Tangier medina, a soft-spoken, bespectacled old man invited my wife and me to step inside his carpet shop to “have a look.” When we showed interest in a small piece, he suddenly vanished, to be replaced by “The Closer,” the younger and rabidly aggressive owner of the store. After being served mint tea and then cajoled, manipulated, pressured, and begged for far too long, we finally stumbled out, exhausted. Undeterred, we continued our walk, dodging one shopkeeper after another, each shouting: English? Espanol? Just have a look!
The most fear-inducing potato in the world, or at least in the Andes, is called cj’achun wakachi in Qetchua, which literally means “the daughter-in-law cries.” Traditionally if a boy wanted to marry a girl, his mother would hand his intended one of these demonic, knobby potatoes as a test of her skill in the kitchen. She had to peel the entire potato in a single, unbroken pass or she wouldn’t be permitted to marry him. This is still done in some homes, and girls practice peeling for months. And you thought your mother-in-law was mean. …
Every Andean village has its own opinion regarding the best method for killing a cuy. Some people twist its head. Some pull its head. Some, like our host Eucevio, prefer to give it a karate chop to the back of the head. After all, you don’t want the entree to look mangled when you’re serving guests. …
There are only two ways to get to Machu Picchu for most people: By foot, on the famously grueling Inca Trail; or by buses that shuttle up and down from the town of Aguas Calientes (well, a few people hike up from the town). And the only way to get to Aguas Calientes is by train, which is how we went.
The sound of rushing water, everywhere we go. My ears are filled with gurgling, splashing, and bubbling, pleasantly overwhelming at its loudest. Stone canals line the edges of every cobblestoned street in Ollantaytambo. They still deliver water from the adjacent Patakancha River to the town’s residents, just as they did over five hundred years ago. A wooden bridge crosses the Patakancha a block from the main plaza, connecting the town to the ruins just beyond. Even the courtyard of our inn has a canal running through it; the sound doesn’t disappear until we close the door to our room. …
