Kiss And Tell Saint Helena

What is it like to be kissed by a whale shark? As with any first kiss, once you get over the initial shock, the experience leaves you wanting for more.

After tiring myself out swimming vigorously in my quest to photograph the five whale sharks we’d spotted, I started to treading water in place to catch my breath. That is when these curious, ginormous creatures started heading my way, apparently preferring to be the pursuer rather than the pursued. 

Whale sharks are harmless despite their name and their size; the largest confirmed individual had a length of 12.65 meters/41.50 ft and a weight of more than 21.5 metric tons/47,000 lbs. They have a large mouth but a narrow throat, smaller than a fist, preferring a diet of plankton to the flesh.

Our knowledgeable guides Craig and Keith from Dive St. Helena introduced us to this pod, having brought us to a feeding area on the northern cape by powering through crashing waves for forty minutes; a surprisingly comfortable journey in their large, rigid keel dinghy.

Whale sharks frequent St Helena’s waters from November of any given year, and general disappear April/June, peaking in Jan/Feb.  Unlike my traumatizing whale shark experience in The Maldives, this one was dreamlike given St Helana’s strict rules about interacting with whale sharks ….

 …and few tourists; it’s remote location and limited options to access keeping the masses away.

An uninhabited island discovered in 1502 by Portuguese admiral Joao ad Nova, St. Helena grew over time as a stopover for ships traveling the world, becoming home to soldiers, refugees, freed slaves, and prisoners of war. But with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, its popularity as a port soon diminished.

Until October 2017, most tourists found their way here via the RMS St. Helena, a romantic 6 days passage (one-way) from Cape Town.

‘The age of the airplane bypassed St. Helena because it offered no flat land for a runway and was consistently buffeted by treacherous winds sweeping off the water…

But in the hope of stoking the tourist trade, the British spent almost $400 million to fill in the valley with some 800 million pounds of dirt and rock to solve the runway problem and build an airport…

The expense did nothing to mitigate the winds. Today, only a special, stripped-down Embraer 190 jet with the best pilots in the world can stick the landing”

The six-hour flight to Jo’burg departs each Tuesday and Saturday, weather permitting.  In 2018, the airport welcomed 991 non-Saint Helenian tourists.

We reached St. Helena’s shores the old-fashioned way, under sail, traveling 1900 nautical miles from Cape Town via Lüderitz, the halfway point on our trans-Atlantic passage to Brazil. (I’d come full-circle en route, sailing across my 360th degree of longitude at 04° 53.42 E.)  

St. Helena’s most famous resident, Napoleon Bonaparte was top of mind as we approached this ‘lonely black rock’ from the sea, imagining his first impressions after a 2+ months voyage from Plymouth in 1815, defeated and exiled for the remainder of his life.  The sounds of waves crashing against a barren, craggy coast with squawking birds circling an undulating anchorage lent to the sense of hellish desolation. He only spent one night in Jamestown, the coastal Capital, before heading inland to live amongst gentler, verdant backdrops.

It is here at Longwood House where he wrote his best-selling memoirs ‘Memorial de Sainte Hélêne’. ‘

During his time on Saint Helena, The Emperor of France would visit every corner of the island, sometimes on foot, at other times on horseback, selecting the picturesque Sane Valley for his posthumous entombment.

In1840, nineteen years after his death, his remains were exhumed and returned to Paris with full honors.  

Unlike Napoleon, I enjoyed our time wandering colonial Jamestown as much as our time spent inland.

We’d picked up one of the twenty-three steadfast moorings supplied by the Port Authority for a nominal fee and reached the shore using the town ferry.

Disembarkation was an adventure in itself, needing to be timed with the rising surge and executed quickly with a leap of faith onto a concrete platform, grabbing hold of a rope or hand offered by locals ashore.

The locals or Saints as they are called are a friendly, colorful lot with many stories to tell. While the Queen’s English is spoken here, a local dialect sounding more like a mix of Downeast Maine lobsterman and seafarer-Pidgin dominates. 

The Consulate Hotel was ‘the meeting place’ for Saints, guests, visiting sailors, and even for tourists staying at other accommodations.

It may have been the cakes and coffee (or something stronger when the bar opens at 17h00) that attracted the diverse clientele but I think it was more likely the innkeeper, Hazel Wilmot with her finger on the pulse of the island and the comfortable surrounds decorated in all things Napoleon that made the place feel so inviting.

We ended up taking a few days of relaxing shore leave here during a particularly rolling period in the anchorage, sleeping in a stable bed and delighting in hot showers and the hearty breakfast served on English ceramic dishes each morning.    

A Jamestown highlight for me was an ascent up the 699 steps of Jacobs Ladder to the fort at Ladder Hill. Originally built as a tramway in 1831 to haul manure out of Jamestown for use by inland farmers, it eventually gave way to regime changes, disuse, fire, and insects.

The step remained after the incline was dismantled in 1871. Today it is either ‘an exhilarating climb’ (my perspective) or ‘699 steps of torment’ (The Captain’s view which kept him at sea level).

Unlike Napoleon, we were free to leave St. Helena at the time of our choosing.  We’d been buddy boating with three other vessels since Cape Town and when they lifted anchor, we decided to continue with them.

In hindsight, I wish we’d stayed longer to snorkel one or more of the numerous wrecks, to crisscross the island on foot along St Helena’s many scenic trails, and/or to swim with the whale sharks again; two days after our departure two friends that had remained here swam with twenty whale sharks.

I wonder whether Napoleon would have liked St Helena any better if he’d swum with the whale sharks. One kiss from them and his quest for world domination might have faded away; the glory of the present moment superseding that of past victories or at least softening the blow of unending internment.

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Next up: Olinda, Devil’s Island, and the Caribbean Sea ⛵️