The honorary consul

It’s hard not to get caught up in the ex-pat community when you spend an extended period of time in one place. It’s also interesting to discover the character of the various anchorages. Prickly Bay seems to be mostly American, the kid boats congregate in Hog Island, and our neck of the woods is very international, with English, French, Canadians, Dutch, Australians and South Africans.

As wine drinkers we perked up when we heard it announced on the morning cruisers’ radio net that there would be a wine tasting somewhere up in the mountains where we could watch the sunset and sample wines for sale. We signed up and were delighted to see that our driver was Cutty, the same man who took us on the turtle tour in July. Once again we stopped at all the bays to pick up passengers while Jack and I sat up front with Cutty and got running commentary on the places of interest we passed. I will always be grateful to Cutty for teaching me the difference between sheep and goats, and before you snort with laughter let me inform you that here they look exactly alike. I thought they were all goats but Cutty pointed out that goats have a short tail that sticks up and sheep have a longer tail that hangs down. That’s it. If you want to know if it’s a sheep or a goat you have to look at their bums.

We drove through a town called Grand Mal and up a steep road to our destination, a beautiful house in Fontenoy, overlooking the setting sun.

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It turns out that our hostess is the honorary consul for Germany who doubles as an importer of South African wines — go figure — and we spent a pleasant evening on a lovely balcony tasting six of her offerings and watching the sun go down. It was a very Graham Greene experience.

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