March 21 - St. Helena

This morning we arrived at the island of St. Helena.  This small volcanic island in the middle of nowhere in the Southern Atlantic Ocean is most famous the home for Napoleon after he was exiled from Europe after his defeat at Waterloo.  The island belongs to Great Britain.

Much of our tour focused on him.  The island gets very little in the way of large tourism with only 2 or 3 cruise ships arriving each year so they don’t have a lot of the typical tourist “stuff” or a lot of tours.  We had well over 200 people on the ship doing the main tour – a trip to Longwood (Napoleon’s home on the island) and his tomb.

It looked like they had commandeered every available largish bus/shuttle/van/taxi on the island to accommodate the group.  There were over 22 vehicles used to tote us around the island.

The island is covered with deep, sharp valleys (they refer to them as “guts”) and consequently the roads are steep, narrow and windy.  

The up side is that the island is really green, lush and beautiful.

Our first stop was Napoleon’s tomb.  He was buried here for 25 years after his death before his body was moved back to France.  The empty tomb is reached by walking down a long grassy lane that leads to the Valley of the Willows (now Sane Valley).  

It is in a lovely, serene setting.  There are terraces around the tomb area and an iron fence around the tomb itself.  The tomb area (and Longwood hours where Napoleon lived) are now owned by the French.

The next stop was Longwood House where Napoleon lived the last years of his life.  It is furnished with some of the original pieces.  Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside.

We took a short drive down to see the airport.  Construction required over 500,000 truckloads of fill to fill in the massive valley, or gut so that there would be a flat area long enough for a runway.  And the runway ends at the edge of a tall cliff.  Currently there are 2 commercial passenger flights a week to St. Helena from South Africa.

Then it was off across the hills to an overlook where we could see Castle Rock Point in the distance.

We then had a short stop at Plantation House, the governor’s residence.  The residence is closed to tourism...

but we weren’t there to see the house.  We were there to meet Jonathan, the oldest resident of St. Helena, a 180+ year old tortoise.  He was across the meadow...

so we only got to visit with the tortoise David, a youngster of about 80 years.

Our route back to town took us along the hill tops with a stop at the top of Jacob’s Ladder.  The views of Jamestown and the harbor were pretty awesome from the top of the cliff.

Jacob's Ladder was originally a funicular that was used to bring supplies up the hill to supply the fort.  Once roads went in the funicular was taken out and the route converted to stairs.  The ladder has 699 steps straight down (or up) the side of a pretty steep hillside.  Paul decided to walk down.  Mary took the bus and got off in downtown Jamestown, the capital of St. Helena.  

After walking around a bit to take some photos...

A statue of Napoleon on the balcony

she headed to the harbor and dock for more photos...

to catch the tender back to the ship.  Paul beat her back.

Everyone we talked with had really enjoyed our time on the island.  It is lovely and seems to have a reasonable amount of things to do.  It really deserved more than a short day.  Don’t know if we will ever go back though.  Not the easiest place in the world to get to.