Now that we’re back to receiving about twelve hours of daylight Tango likes to warm himself in the sun in the afternoon, sitting on his cage next to our dichroic glass samples. I feel compelled to take pictures of the scene which seems tropical and exotic, despite the snow outside.
A Bad Guide 
It looks very mystical and hippy. Do you hold seances in that room ?
The parrot does.
Neptune’s Cave:
The video could be a lot shorter, but you get the idea of the colors. And they could have used the Beatles’ Octopus’s Garden for the music.
I’d love to be diving right now–I mean snorkeling (I don’t do diving).
I always liked this island
http://www.svgtourism.com/index.php/en/theislands/stvincent
for getting away from the tourists.
If you really want to get remote you used to be able to hop on a sailboat and sit on the cases of Heineken destined for Bequia (pronounced BECK-wee). I”m sad to say the Friendship Rose is no longer doing that route and they now have a slick fast ferry (scroll down). Things never stay the same.
http://www.bequiatourism.com/around.htm
The parrot fish are legendary, all turquoise and yellow.
My current decorating plan is I want a book room that looks like Inara’s shuttle from Serenity.
Bequia (pronounced BECK-wee)
Reference books say BECK-way, as does Wikipedia.
BECK-wee/BECK-way
At this point I don’t remember who I learned it from–we were there in the early 80’s. The locals have two ways of speaking, one in English with what sounds to me like a heavy Jamaican accent (“Take it light, mon,” with the t’s pronounced crisply), and a patois that I couldn’t understand. A former coworker who used to live there told me it was a form of Shakespearean English that had mutated. She said a marital argument would be described as something like “she vixen me, I vixen her”. There was also a group of expats who are either retirees (many of them live at a nude beach on the northern end of St. Vincent) and like to watch WGN and discuss snow, or a younger crowd with their own yachts — some of them living on the neighboring private island of Mustique and go to Bequia for the outstanding lime pie and fresh tuna. (If you have only eaten tuna out of a can, you haven’t eaten tuna.)
Here’s someone who says it’s pronounced “(Bek-we)”.
http://www.aqua-safaris.com/Bequia.asp
I see they have met the versatile blue-eyed taxi driver Charlie Tango as well. When I got a severe ankle sprain, he drove me up into the mountain to a faith healer who does the local soccer team’s sports injuries with a combination of otherwise unintelligible prayers to Jesus Christ delivered from her front porch and an excruciatingly painful deep tissue massage.
Of course you realize that I am envious of that corner. I’ve moaned before about not having much ability to make places look mystical and happy, so there’s no point in reheating that topic. Some day I’ll win the lottery and hire a decorator.
Yes, mystical and happy is unusual. It’s usually either/or, so you may have to pay extra. Ours doesn’t look quite so mystical or hippyish in broad daylight, though I agree you can practically smell the patchouli in in the photo.