At nine o’clock we took the .water taxi ashore, taking three empty, 20-liter, water jerrycans with us. We always do, fill them, and leave them at the water taxi terminal until we’re ready to take the taxi back to the boat. This way, slowly, but steadily, we fill our tanks on the boat, 60 liters at a time. The same with diesel, we drop them off with the diesel guy, pay for the liters we want, and the jerrycans will be waiting for us at the terminal. Theft does not seem to be a word in the St Helenian vocabulary.
Ken, who bought a SIM Card with those ridiculously expensive minutes, no data, phoned Colin Fagan of Fagan’s taxi to arrange a tour around the island. It had to be Fagan’s taxi, as Ken’s last name is Fagan, apparently not a common name. Ken’s dad was here many moons ago, so we figured Ken was meeting the family. Not so.
We crawled into Colin’s Ford Fiesta, first stop was to be the Briars Pavilion, the place where Napoleon, after the first night spent in Jamestown, arrived on October 17, 1815, and lived until December 10th of that year.
However, the Briars Pavilion is only open to the public on Mondays and Fridays from eleven to one. Not on Tuesdays. The best we could do was a stop at a viewpoint looking down on the Briars. It is just a building, nothing spectacular. One also sees the home of the French consul. The French consulate is solely here to look after the Briars Pavilion, Longwood House, and the Tomb as they are all owned by the French government. It’s all Napoleon’s fault.
When we sailed up to St Helena, the island looked like a barren bottom of a volcano. The base of it really, with the top completely eroded away. But now that we were on top, the surroundings are mostly a lush green, and although Jamestown doesn’t get a lot of rain, the higher parts of the island do. And we found out. Foggy and misting rain all the time we were on tour, only to stop when we got close to Jamestown.
Colin let us off at a fork in the road, the tarmac road continuing to the right, the fork to the left, no vehicles allowed, leading to Napoleon’s tomb. We followed the pathway, two meters wide, and so little trodden on that no trail has developed. Like walking on a lawn. We followed it for about a kilometer, and at the end, there was Napoleon’s tomb.
It was Napoleon’s will to be buried on that spot in the Sane Valley, now called the Valley of the Tomb, if he had to be buried on St Helena. In 1840, nineteen years after his death a French Mission oversaw the exhume and transfer of his remains back to Paris.
In this beautiful tranquil setting, we could see, from a distance, about twenty meters away, a concrete slab surrounded by an old fashion wrought iron enclosure. The word ‘dignified’ came to mind.
Back in the car, we continued uphill to the airport on the other side of the island. Ken wanted to see this, but when we arrived, we could barely see the terminal and the tower through the fog. Very nicely built from volcanic rock, but closed, as it services only one plane a week and that wasn’t today. The word on the street is that they will be adding a second flight from Windhoek this year and in the spring of 2024 a direct weekly flight to Cape Town.
The roads are all in decent condition, narrow, with pullouts to facilitate oncoming traffic, not that there is much of that, and lined with rock walls made from volcanic rocks.
We were now on our way to Longwood House. The rain really started to come down, so we spent very little time in the, rather insignificant, garden, and made our way quickly to the house. Paid our dues, headphones on, tour of the place. All the original furniture was still there, the walls lined with grandioso paintings of Napoleon in France, and Napoleon in Egypt, but also with paintings of Napoleon on his deathbed. Interestingly, the latter were painted from the memory of people who were there, and those memories were shared with artists who had never set foot outside of France.
In every single painting, Napoleon is depicted as short and tubby, a man who seemed to have never missed a meal in his life.
On we went. Next stop is the Plantation House, home of the Governor. Flags all half-mast, as the governor of Trista da Cunha, part of this Constituent, passed away last Saturday.
In the garden, Johnathan the tortoise, a gift from the Seychelles to the Governor of St Helena in 1851. Johnathon was thought to be 50 years old at the time. Imagine that. On the way out Ken told me to leave the gate open, give the old boy some freedom he said. I said it would take Johnathan ten years just to get to the gate, let alone take that step to freedom, he’d be crossing the road for the next five years.
Next stop was High Knoll Fort. A proper fort, which was part of the fortification, still to be seen on many parts of the island. Great views from the walls as the fog had lifted, and we could see a newly arrived French research vessel in the harbor.
The mono-crop economy in the 1900s until 1966 was the cultivation and processing of, New Zealand flax for rope and string. The flax initially introduced to the island for this purpose now grows wild and isn’t harvested anymore. Colin said the introduction of nylon in the rope and string industry pretty well killed this business.
And on we went, to the top of Jacobs ladder, starting in Jamestown and running up to the top of the cliff, 699 steps. The view of Jamestown is all-encompassing from here and really showed how the town is squeezed into the valley. Also looking down on many a solar panel. I know the pub Ken and I frequented had more than a few panels on the roof and a big Vitron Controller on the wall.