Gym's Ramblings: Winter 2022: The Amazon Expedition

On the way to the mighty Amazon, our hero and his fetching sidekick visited Gustavia, St. Barts. St Barts is a tiny little island with a total area of only 25 square kilometres and just 10,000 inhabitants. Although our travellers have not visited many of the islands in the Caribbean, they have been here before. They were here in 2006 ,on an infamous cruise with their two teenage children. They shuttled into Gustavia on the morning of Christmas day and there was no one around. It was raining and no stores were open so they returned to the ship to exchange the gifts that they had purchased in the British Virgin Islands and celebrated with Christmas Dinner in the dining room. In 2022, the weather was warm and sunny, everything was open and the streets were filled with tourists and locals alike. It was great to get a second chance to see this place.

This island was named after the brother of Christopher Columbus, Bart Columbus (actually his name was Bartolomeo). Christopher happened by this place in 1493 on his second voyage. It has no arable land and little fresh water, so no Europeans tried to populate it until the French came along in 1648. They tried to sell Gucci and Prada to the pirates for a while but the pirates weren't buying it, so the French sold the island to the Swedes in 1784 and the Swedes named the port Gustavia, after King Gustav III. The French bought the island back again in 1877, to try selling Luxury consumer goods again and this time it stuck. Today St. Barts is a separate collectivity of France, independent of other French islands in the area.

St. Barts is full of rich people. French nationals and Americans ex-pat that can afford to buy Gucci and Prada. They can also afford multi-million dollar villas here. They let their rich daughter bomb around the island on new Vespas that match the colours of their Dolce and Gabbana jumpsuits. The rich sons' bomb around the harbour wearing on neon jet-skis wearing Versace silk shorts.

Gym and his dear wife tendered into Gustavia and embarked on a 300m hike across town to Shell Beach to inspect the quality of the sand and pick up a couple of shells. They avoided the high end shops. They deemed the beach very satisfactory. On they way back to they lingered over the nursery school and have decided that their granddaughter should go there because it looks great and its right next the the beach. building