Jamestown

Our first chance to explore the capital. Saint Helena has about 4,000 inhabitants, and 1,000 live in Jamestown. The town is like a very long high street, surrounded by two massive hills. It’s really impressive when you look down on the town.

We stayed about 3 miles’ drive outside the main town – about one mile as the crow flies and half a mile up! There were quite a few taxis on the island, and the fare was typically £6-£7 each way. So we usually got a taxi in and out of the town.

It doesn’t take long to walk around the town. There are a few shops, cafes and pubs – but not many of each.

We spent an hour or so in the town museum which was interesting. The museum was at the foot of Jacob’s Ladder. We promised ourselves that we’d climb it on our NEXT visit here!

We had tea and coffee in Anne’s Place, a kind of a treehouse/restaurant hybrid in the town centre’s park, which was a nice relaxing place to visit. The food was good here and we came back in the evening.

There were a few other restaurants we tried out too – most of them will need prior booking, or they may close early. The Blue Lantern was a quiet restaurant with a big TV showing Champions League games (like everywhere else here). I had a decent sirloin steak and chips for under £20 – twice Namibia/SA prices, half UK prices.

We also tried out the Orange Tree where I had a very mild chicken curry – it was more Thai than Indian or Chinese. We were the only people there all night apart from the Filipino owner/chef Gilbert who was a nice guy – we chatted with him a lot.

You can see from the last picture that there is no free WiFi anywhere on the island, but you can buy a voucher. The voucher only works in the place you bought it from though. If you do an IP search to see where you are, it tells you you’re using an ISP in Luanda, Angola.