Our first full day in Anguilla!! We are still getting acclimatized and exploring the island in our “trusty” black gangster pimp car.

First stop was our 11 am meeting with the Department of Environment. We had a very informative chat and were given some valuable contacts in and around Anguilla. A nice GIS person did even produce some maps for us, of Anguilla and more detailed of the three communities we will be working in.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the Island and the three communities: Island Harbour, Sandy Ground and West End.

We went down all the way to Sandy Ground, which we can overlook from our balcony, and, to get into the real spirit, had lunch at Johnnos Beach Bar.

After a walk along the beach we decided to be adventurous and driving up the hill to see what was there, away from the tourist villas. Local people seemed to be quite concerned that we had got lost, and were offering advice!

On our way up towards the valley we stopped our gangster car- which, once we were on a nicely paved road started making strange noises and wobbling- on the curb to take a view over the ocean… and again concerned locals stopped next to us, asking whether our car was alright! Makes you really feel safe to see people are concerned, but we decided not to stop any more on the curb, after all, we do not know how well our car will manage the roads here in Anguilla…it is definitely  too low for all the speed bumps, and even worse, the reverse speed bumps- or ditches.

We drove up to Island Harbour, but instead ended up in Shoal Bay first. The map seems to be a bit old, especially when the yellow main road turns to be out to be more of a track while the small, white line, is a smooth tarmac road!

On the way out of Shoal Bay we suddenly passed a building looking like a massive, unfinished Dalek!

Next stop: Island Harbour! Before leaving the UK, we got given three envelopes to deliver, for three people based/living  in Island Harbour. We intended to deliver the first one, but he was not around, nor was any of the other two; instead we had a nice chat with a fisherman called Roy.

On the road again, having a drive through the village once again a nice local asked whether we were lost… they just could not understand why we would want to drive through the village!

Last stop for the day: West End! We travelled more or less from one end of Anguilla to the other in approximately 35 minutes; that is my daily commute to work in Newcastle!! We drove literally to the end of the road and ended up in front of an Italian Beach restaurant, opposite one of the famous salt ponds. This end of the island is dominated by masses of holiday villas.

After a drink and a walk along the beach, where we found large amounts of diadema, we drove home to our own villa and fell quite tired into bed… looking forward to day 2!!!