Whelks

The first time I went to Hope beach, Mac taught me how to locate and pick whelks, a local shellfish (sometimes referred to as “topshell”) that was completely new to me. Borrowing Momma’s land-rover, he filled it with a cooler, cooking pots and several friends, then drove to the very top of Mount Pleasant. I had never been to beaches on the windward side of the island, and gazed in awe when I saw the wild beauty of Hope Bay. This was a different view of Bequia; with its windswept trees and rough, pounding surf, it offered a beautiful and quite dramatic change of scenery. The walk down to the beach was easy but very steep, I could see that the return trip was going to be more of a challenge!

We walked through the tall coconut trees, stopping now and then to collect water nuts. The palms swayed with the stiff sea breeze, and I kept a sharp eye out for falling coconuts! There was a clearing just behind some bushes that provided shelter from the wind, and that’s where we deposited the items Mac had brought to make lunch. Two fires were started, one for roasting some breadfruits, the other for boiling the whelks we had come to collect.

Walking onto the beach, I saw huge waves rolling ashore, and was told we would be body-surfing that day. Being new to the Caribbean, I didn’t know what body-surfing WAS, but it sounded like fun and I was game to give it a try. Twisted pieces of bleached driftwood were piled on the beach along with miscellaneous bits flotsom, treasures from the sea that had been thrown ashore by the large waves. Mac interrupted my beachcombing with a shout;

“C’mon nah! We need to get de whelks early! De beach can wait”.

Grabbing the pail he handed me, I followed Mac as he jumped nimbly from slippery rock to slippery rock. These rocks were covered with matter that looked somewhat like barnacles, and they hurt my tender feet as I tried to keep up. Mac stopped suddenly and, holding up a warning hand, signaled for me to be quiet. He firmly believed that whelks can smell and hear humans, and had chosen to approach the mollusks against the wind. Sure enough, there was a large cluster of  black and white shells clinging to the rocks, and we quickly picked the largest of them until our buckets were full.

Mac and I transferred our “fruits of the sea” from the buckets into a large pot of salted water, the whelks couldn’t be removed from the hard shells until they had been boiled. Several large breadfruits were roasting, already black from being turned in the hot ashes. Lunch would not be ready for quite some time, the whelks had to cool once they had been boiled, and we eagerly headed for the pounding surf to play.

I was rather startled when Mac and his friends went into the sea stark naked, they had removed their bathing suits right in front of me!  I refused to take off my suit, and as a result came close to losing it several times in the waves. The pull of the tide was incredibly strong and the crashing waves powerful, but Mac and his friends seemed unafraid as they body-surfed ashore. They coaxed me into the water, and showed me how to catch the waves at just the right moment. It looked easy, but I was bounced quite painfully several times along the ocean floor before I caught on.  Body-surfing was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it, and we played happily in the waves until it was time for lunch.

Mac had told me that once whelks had been boiled, they were easy to remove from the shells. This process was a little harder than he made it sound, but with several hands helping we soon had a large pile of meat. Mac threw the whelks in a large pot with some butter, garlic and fresh lime juice, then added some of the water they had been boiled in. Covering the pot, he left it to simmer while the still-warm breadfruits were peeled and sliced. By the time lunch was ready so were we, our bellies had been growling with hunger for a couple of hours!  My first taste of whelks, fresh from the sea and cooked over a beach fire, is one I have never forgotten. They were incredible! The snails looked quite a bit like escargots but tasted a LOT better, and I listened carefully as Mac described other ways in which whelks can be prepared. I was delighted to have come across yet another source of free sea-food on the island, and looked forward to trying my hand at pasta sauces, souses and stews with the tasty snails. Mac also mentioned that whelks, like conch, are a West Indian aphrodisiac, and I wondered if that was true!

I went home that day with sore feet and a stiff neck, the rough rocks and even rougher waves had not treated me kindly! However, a day spent collecting, cooking and then eating delicious whelks cooked over a beach fire with friends made up for any aches and pains, plus I had learned how to body-surf! It was a magical day.