23 hours ago, heidih said:Do people harvest the salt, and have you done it just for fun to taste? A local chef here at a resort on the water does it as his mom used to do back in Portugal I think.
People harvest it to use for cooking and to make things like salt scrubs. I have never done it personally. I think we are going over to Salt Pond Bay tomorrow, where the largest salt pond is, and if we do I will take photos. It will depend on my husband's knee--he bashed it yesterday and it's about a 3/4 mile uphill hike back out of the bay. It seems to be doing OK, but we will see.
22 hours ago, KennethT said:Beautiful photos - thanks so much for taking us along on your trip! I don't know if you know the answer to this but I'm curious - I've seen escargot on a few menus now - I assume they're imported rather than local, right?
Yes, it is imported. Almost everything is imported, other than the local fish such as tuna, wahoo, snapper, grouper, and lobster. There are other fish available to buy on the side of the road but it's not considered safe for people who did not grow up eating them because of the ciguatera risk. There is also one vegetable farm that grows greens for all of the restaurants on the island (you might have noticed "Josephine's greens" mentioned on almost all of the salads on various menus), and of course you can get fruit like mango, pineapple, papaya, banana, genips, etc. when they are in season. Neighboring St. Croix has a dairy farm and a beef farm, but those products do not seem to make their way here.
Yesterday we went to a beach we had not visited in about 10 years, Hawksnest.
Normally if we go here, we just dump our stuff and snorkel over to spend the day at neighboring Gibney (the beach you can see in the distance), but today we found a secluded spot and hung out for a bit
People don't set up on this end of the beach generally because the reef comes up to the shore, and you have to walk to the other end to get in the water. Of course, that's why we picked this spot 🙂 Here are some snorkeling shots. The elkhorn coral is recovering from the storms five years ago, but still showing some bleaching
Schools of blue tang were around
Hello from Mr. Parrotfish! These fish eat the coral with their strong jaws, and their waste makes some of the sand on the beaches. True story.
Last night, we had dinner at the Lime Inn. They recently changed to a prix fixe format. Four courses for $75, six courses for $95. We did the four course.
Restaurant interior
Here's the menu
For the first course, we both chose the wahoo tiradito. This was very good! The fish was super fresh
Second course, I chose the camarones nocturnos, and husband chose the curried Spaniard empanada. My dish was a salt lick. It was almost inedible. The plantain chips were good, and the eggplant puree under the shrimp was nice, but the shrimp itself was awful. It was too bad because the texture was good and they tasted fresh. Husband's empanada looked a bit sad just sitting there on the plate, but the flavors were OK.
Third course, I chose the tuna dish and my husband had the whole fish. Both were....not good. As salty as the shrimp was, my couscous had no flavor at all! No salt, no sauce, nothing! The tuna was nicely cooked, but again, terribly bland. It had a dill coating, but nothing else. I ate about half of the tuna and a few bites of the couscous, just to eat something.
My husband's whole fish suffered the same fate. No seasoning at all on the fish. Meanwhile, the broccoli with it was insanely salty! He also sadly reported that it was not the freshest fish he has ever been served, to put it nicely. The rice and beans underneath were good.
The meal was redeemed by dessert. You had a choice of semifreddo key lime tart, brownie a la mode, or coconut tembleque. We both got the key lime tart, and it was absolutely fantastic. It was by far the best thing about the meal, and one of the best things we have eaten this trip! It was very tart and limey, just the way I like it.
Despite the delicious dessert, this definitely counts as the most disappointing meal of the trip so far. Oh well, you can't win them all!
