DFR Travels: A delightful day in St. Helena

Tuesday, April 8. Some cloud, sprinkles, nice moderate temperature.

As usual we were early off, the first tender this time and soon ashore in Jamestown, St. Helena. The RMS St. Helena was anchored in the harbour and still loading or unloading when we sailed in at 7.30 am. We had a cabbie within one minutes of seeing the taxi rank and toured the island for about 2 1/2 hours.

There were many stops along the way: Napoleon's now empty tomb, Longwood House, [his home in exile], a couple of very old churches, the top of Jacob's Ladder and then back to town. We went to the museum in search of the new RMS St. Helena ship model, then we meandered through the quaintsy town where we were greeted by smiles and 'hellos' by the inhabitants.

It was a lovely day, much better than I had expected, however a few days ago we happened to see a travelogue on the island and I had a better idea of what to expect. Very nice.

The place does look and feel a little 'tired' or 'shopworn' though. There appear to be two levels of citizens here, the dark-skinned obviously mixed blood folks, they call themselves Saints, and then you have the white-skinned folks; St. Helenians they are called. I had a chat with the fellow in the museum and he filled me in quite matter-of-factly about that. He mentioned that The Saints consider themselves to be second class citizens. I could see it and sense it myself prior to him explaining it. I suppose in reality they are all St. Helenians but people do have a way of sorting out their 'place' in society don't they?

The Jacob's Ladder, that runs up to Ladder Hill was originally built as a method transporting manure from the town up the hill to improve the soil in the fields on the other side of the island. People went up in boxes, manure went up in manure boxes on a tramway driven by donkey power. In 1871 it was reconstructed in its present form of 699 steps. It is the thing to do here, climb the steps.

There is a hilltop fort called High Knoll Fort that we caught a fleeting glimpse of when driving in the hills. It was built in 1798, among some of its interesting uses was it housed and schooled freed African slaves after the British abolished slavery but the Americans did not. The British often intercepted American-bound slave ships and I suppose, some ended up here. It was also used to house Boer war prisoners; officers and recalcitrant prisoners, separated from the others in 1900.

We had a light lunch in a rather run-down but quaint pub called Ann's Place. I was hopeful of a meat pie and English beer, but settled for a toasted ham and cheese sandwich and Namibian beer. [Namibia was a German settlement and they taught them how to make good beer.]

Many, many Amsterdamians did climb it, up and down. Jim did after lunch, I was going to but I had a second beer and better judgement said not to do it, the nearest decent hospital is in Cape Town and the St. Helena sailed at 12.30!

Three of us were back on the ship around 12.45, Jim much later as one of the tenders got damaged in the swells and was taken out of service. I had a wee nap, Fellette played Free Cell. The ship sailed at 5.30 and I had the blog done by then.

We are now looking forward to five days at sea to Cape Verde, three days there and five more sea days to Barbados. The test of patience is about to begin.

Pics.

- Officials, post office and tourism people from town waiting to board this morning.

- Our Taxi

- Napoleon's Tomb, empty now.

- Entrance to Napoleon's home in exile.

- Plaque in church Napoleonic era wife.

- Governor's Home, the Plantation. Two people live here!

- Ladder hill Fort at top of the ladder.

-Artillery 1873.

- Table mate descending Jacob's Ladder.

- British Coat of Arms, 1873.

- Jim at the bottom.