The Island Lost in Time

A little background on St. Helena Island. It is too much to write in one go so will share it in stages over the next couple of days.

This is a strange and interesting little island, one of the most remote in the world with a population of just over 4,000 people. Unspoken etiquette is that you greet every single person that you walk past or drive past. I am pretty sure we greeted all 4,000 and something and probably chatted to half 🤣

There are only 2 places that accept via and master card, on the entire island, one tiny grocery store and the Mantis Hotel, for the rest it is all crispy cash notes, this really is a challenge as you can pay in British pounds, but will get back St. Helena pounds which cannot be used or exchanged anywhere else in the world. British Pound and St. Helena pound is 1:1

FYI this island is expensive, understandably so, due to how extremely remote it is.

There are no ATM machines and no road rules, wearing a seat belt is not law 😳. Very few stop streets. The only place to get money is from the actual bank of which there is only one, oh and there is a bank kiosk at the immigration office. For an island that is so severely lacking in technology they have recently introduced the "Tourist Card" that you are able to download from the bank's website and load with your funds accordingly, with the ability to top up as needed, and you can return the balance of funds to your account again.

You can only get fresh product once per week and that is on a Thursday, even so it is extremely limited, my choice of fresh produce when I was provisioning on Thursday was ... baby marrow, apples, pears, eggplant, then on Friday a few onions and some very green tomatoes showed up. I find it rather odd that there is so little fresh produce as the land is extremely fertile and the climate is perfect to grow almost anything, well so it appears anyway.

In the wold there are bananas, which are known to be disease free, and this is one of the only places in the world that you get these. Someone grabbed me a whole bush of bananas 🤣 you do not see them in the store at all, another weird fact, but i guess you can just pick them as you wonder around.

Please Note!!! No potatoes, No eggs 😭 now that was one I never saw coming, oh well, we make do with what we can have, I think this is something we will be experiencing a lot so may as well get use to is. 

The challenges they face living so isolated is very evident. 

Fun Facts

-They only got mobile phones here in 2015,
-There are no car dealerships, if you want a car, you import it yourself and it comes in a container, strangely enough despite the extremely high costs of doing this, there are more cars than there are people,
-Medical is free and if they need a surgery or specialist they are flown to Johannesburg, before the airport they would be sent by boat. This is all paid by government,
-The airport was built in 2016 and has only 1 flight per week from Johannesburg via Walvis Bay, landing on a Saturday so if you are flying from the UK you will always go via Johannesburg,
-There is only one high school and 3 primary schools and no university,
-There is only one beach and the sand is black,
-There are absolutely no fast food chains,
-St. Helena's residents are called Saints, when you walk through the very tiny town of Jamestown, it almost feels like you have gone back in time to ancient Britian, only thing missing is the horse and carriages 🤣 The entire town is built through the centre of 2 massive rocks,
-St. Helena coffee is one of the world's most highly valued. The bean is called green tip bournon Arabic, which was imported from Yemen in the 1700s and has remained free from cross breeding and disease ever since, because it is so rare you can buy it in Harrods in London for a whopping £150 for just 250gr. Once again, I think the price is largely due to the lack of resources to process it and of course it is Harrods,
-St Helena is closer to the international space centre than any other continent.
-I guess you all know about Napoleon being exiled to St. Helena, I won't get into that because to be fair we did not go to the house he lived in or the grave, I think most people know the Napoleon story. We decided instead to visit Jonothan the 192 year old tortoise and have tea and scones at teh governors house, where Jonothan also lives. Interesting fact there has only ever been one Saint as a governor the rest I do believe are brought in from the U.K. 
-Queen Elizabeth also has never been to St. Helena Island as Queen, however she was here as a Princess.
-We also saw the 699 steps of Jacob's ladder both from the top and the bottom.... no we did not walk up, however Makyla walked up and down and Lester and Angela walked down. Well done guys!
-Absolutely everthing is closed on a Sunday except for the Mantis Hotel.
-In Jamestown it is extremely hot and humid, however when you take a drive up the mountain the temperature is completly different, in fact it is quite cold 🥶 so I was very under dressed for the occasion. 

So that gives you the basic of St. Helena Island, if I tell you anymore, I would have to become a history teacher 😎

So back to sailing stuff!