We're All Irish Hash

So we celebrated St. Patty's day a bit early. No pot of gold, but we did have fun. We started at a place called The Hermitage. An old place that used to house sugar cane workers before the industry went belly-up. Apparently, Guyanese were trekked in for the seasonal work and stayed here. Now the buildings are becoming ruins with a view.



We actually had a crowd of 160 for this hash. I'm pretty sure that's because the hash setters said the walkers trail would be "easy." Hash setters are notorious liars, but this walk wasn't too bad (just a little longer than usual). There were a record number of dogs too.



Michael recycling his Christmas elf attire to be a leprechaun. Heather doing the same with her Carnival costume. John as the Irish Mad Hatter.



Here are walkers to the back and then to the front. Hi ho, hi ho...



A lot of it was along or near the train tracks. At one point we thought we would have to cross this trellis. There are a lot of people afraid of heights and even more dogs that would have balked at such a crossing, but the hash setters turned us off just before panic set in.



Ho hum...the usual fantastic views.



There was one hill on our trek that was really gravelly, which meant slippery. The trees were placed just far enough away to make grabbing onto them for a boost a challenge.

We passed and walked through some sugar cane fields and at one point a fellow hasher whipped out his trusty knife and whittled a cane for us to eat. As he pointed out, it was "missing its sweet." It didn't taste like anything; apparently it was too young (not sure why the field had just been cleared then).



While we waited for the runners to reappear, we got down to eating BBQ and chugging beverages.



Finally, the runners headed in exhausted and a bit crabby. Why I walk. Notice the dusky (some might say dark) sky...



As a matter of fact, Steve was so crabby during the run (he crabbily denies this) that he got called out at the end for being Fuss-ey (his last name).



Lots of virgins too, with Lena getting suckered into yet another atypical situation.



Heading out was interesting as we had to cut through the dark cane fields to the main road.



Today, we're experimenting with veggies. I asked a farmer last week to put together a bag of goodies, hoping I'd get better prices, better quality, and some surprises. Yep, that's what happened. We actually brought some stuff to the hash to see if anyone knew what it was and what we should do with it. Um, still not sure. Mike's using one that's likely a potato-like thing for morning fries. We shall see. We also got carrots, eggplant, and lettuce. We do know what to do with those...

The next challenge will be to crack open our coconuts. We asked how it was done and everyone started with "you take your machete..." Oh sure - let me just think where we left ours! Sheesh. Guess we need to get us one of those. If that doesn't make us true islanders I don't know what will. Better start donating my rare Type O- blood to the blood bank while I'm at it. We used to pay a lot for coconut oil to fry things up with when we could find it. Now we'll make our own!

Today, we clean this pig-sty we call home. It's not all fun and games in Paradise.