By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
To get to the highest point of Union Island you must walk for two hours through a dense blanket of trees with a machete in your hand. Almost every tree and flower on the island recounts the history of slavery that has scorched the land. We walk past the red hibiscus plant that the enslaved once ground and drank in a broth to combat bronchitis. The disease was left untreated by British masters who lived in Clifton, away from the plantations. The discovery of an endangered wild gecko means the whole forest, which spans 140 acres, is now monitored by closed circuit cameras and the authorities are watching us. Revolutionary leader Lennox Charles and I stand hundreds of feet above sea level looking down into Chatham Bay. I can see a dozen yachts dotted in the sea which was an inky blue that day. But no one from those luxury vessels will ever find themselves where I am. Just moments before, Lennox had loped off the head of a metre tall cactus with his machete to show me how it contained water in its belly. With no natural springs and surrounded by saltwater, the islanders and their ancestors were natural survivalists. They had to be. For Lennox, this western quarter of the Island was where he roamed as a youth. “I lived in the bush. I was wild,” he tells me. Where the yachts are now, there used to be fishermen in red, blue, green boats carved from Gommier trees that still pepper the island. A looker through a high-pitched whistle would let those below know when a shadowy shoal of fish was close. The forest is also where Lennox gathered his fellow townspeople just before he led the failed uprising of December 1979. A stone circle so perfect that it could have been plucked from Arthurian legend provided a debating space for the dozens of islanders who had become weary of mainland rule. St Vincent and the Grenadines became independent from Britain on 27th October 1979. While those on the mainland celebrated, the 1,000 or so inhabitants of Union were sceptical that they would see any change. From one master to another, they mused. There was a chronic shortage of teachers which saw teenagers lead classes, no medical facilities and very few politicians ever bothered to even venture to Union. Union and St Vincent could have been separate countries and how the Unionites wished for this to be the case. Even today, it takes about six hours to get to Union from the mainland - and that’s if the boat doesn’t break down. The ex Norwegian fjord cruiser is better prepared for breaking up ice than accidentally getting grounded on a silent sandbank. If you need to travel quickly to Barbados you can expect to pay $286 for the 126km journey. When a general election just two months after independence failed to return a politician from South of the capital, Union was silently seething. Lennox was 30 years old and had spent the last decade bouncing from container ship to port to ship again. On shore, the prostitutes affectionately knew him as “Bambino” . But he was called back home by his patriotism towards his home that is just three miles wide. The tipping point was the death of a 28-year-old woman who faced a breech birth. With no medical facilities on the Island she died on a boat on the way to the nearest hospital. “No Blood Spilt”, was Lennox’s cry for the revolution. But blood was to be spilt on the very first day.