St. Lucia, Day 4

November 20, 2006

Day 4

This morning, after our improvised in-room breakfast, we were picked up by the shuttle to the Rain Forest Sky Ride. There are a few ways to experience St. Lucia’s National Rain Forest, which covers 19,000 acres of mountains and valleys. You can hike it… which would be the most immersive experience but we knew right off the bat that it was a bit more effort than we wanted to dole out while on vacation. You can fly above and through it on a zipline, which Kathie the skydiver would have loved, but which I, with my fear of heights, would probably not have enjoyed. Or, you can do what we did – the Sky Ride, which was an hour-long gondola ride through and above the rain forest canopy. We saw lots of interesting trees, plants, and birds, and our tour guide was very knowledgeable. After the ride was over, we finished with a 30 minute guided walk along a marked trail to experience the rain forest up close… which unfortunately included its mosquitoes. The forest was amazingly quiet, very pretty and offered some amazing views of the island from the top of the mountains. We did expect the rainforest to have more noise with birds and animals but it was almost completely silent. There were a lot of hummingbirds in the forest but since they zip around so quickly we had difficulty getting any good pictures.

Near the forest, we passed large groups of banana trees. Apparently banana trees only grow for 9 mos, can be harvested once and then die; however the banana tree will propagate a small sapling right next to the main trunk. After the original tree has been harvested, it is cut down to make room for the sapling and the cycle continues. To prevent insects from eating the fruit, blue bags are wrapped around the banana bunch while still on the tree. Bananas are the primary agricultural crop of St. Lucia.

Along the drive back we passed the local “car wash”, which was a shallow area in the river coming down the mountain, where someone had driven his car into the river and was washing it down with buckets of water. We also passed a tiny shack right alongside the road that was a road-side barber shop, and lots of local homes, which often were tiny and looked like they would fall down in a light breeze. We also passed quite a few random animals – goats, pigs, dogs, cows, chickens, horses, etc., either in people’s lawns, tied to trees, or wandering freely.

After our drop-off at the hotel, we grabbed a taxi up to Pigeon Island. This island just off the northwest coast of St Lucia was connected to the mainland recently by a causeway created by using the earth dredged during the construction of the Rodney Bay Marina. Pigeon Island was used by the British in the late 1700s to monitor the French fleet’s activities on Martinique just to the north, and to launch the British fleet in one of the most decisive sea battles in European history. St. Lucia changed hands from the British to the French and back 14 times before finally stabilizing as a British colony before becoming independent. The St. Lucians therefore almost all speak English as well as a unique creole derivative of French. On the island we had some simple but tasty sandwiches at a tiny restaurant on the beach, before hiking up the shorter of the island’s two peaks to explore the ruins of the British forts. The view was exceptional and we could see Martinique to the north, and the beautiful water of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. After exploring, we took the taxi back to the hotel to relax for the evening.

Something that’s a little hard to get used to here is the fact that Christmas is coming. Walking around the beach in 85 degree weather hearing Christmas music playing from restaurants and seeing inflatable Santas and Grinches seems very incongruous. I guess it’s no different than some southern parts of the U.S., but it’s definitely not what we’re used to — it somehow doesn’t seem like it’s really Christmas season unless it’s cold and the leaves have fallen!

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St. Lucia, Day 3

November 19, 2006

Day 3
We slept in this morning, ate breakfast at the hotel, and then took the local bus south to the capital, Castries. Castries is home to a large trading market (see photos) where the St. Lucians buy and sell local fruits, vegetables, fish, and other foods. Past the local market was the tourist market, where dozens of vendors had stalls set up selling necklaces, tee-shirts, wood carvings, spices, and the like. Pretty much all of the vendors had the exact same merchandise, and pricing varied widely, so going from one vendor to the next helped figure out what a realistic price was for the merchandise. We then wandered around some more of the city and got a good sampling of the local “flavor” before heading back to the hotel on the bus.

The local bus is a great cheap way to get around St. Lucia, but you really have to know where you’re going. The buses are vans, each holding around 10-11 passengers, and they run very frequently. We never had to wait more than 15 seconds (really!) for one to come along. They will pick you up anywhere alongside the road, if you see them and wave. But, they also won’t stop and let you off unless you tell the driver to stop, so you have to know where you’re going and when to get off. The 15 minute bus to Castries from Rodney Bay was only EC$2 per person (about US$0.75). Our taxi on Thursday was US$15 for the same route.

We relaxed at the hotel for a bit, then walked back down to Reduit Beach and had lunch at Pizza Pizza. We weren’t too hungry, so we were looking for something fairly small and cheap that we could split. Not quite having the highest expectations for pizza in the Caribbean, I have to say we were pleasantly surprised. I’m from New York, and am definitely a “pizza snob”, and I really enjoyed the pizza there! We walked down the beach a bit and sat on two lounge chairs until someone came over and said we need to rent them. Since we weren’t planning on staying long, we spread our beach towels out instead and relaxed on the beach reading books for a while. Unfortunately a rain storm came in suddenly so we packed up, but saw that we had perfect timing as the hotel’s beach shuttle was nearby and saved us a mile walk in the downpour.

We decided this afternoon to head to the local supermarket and pick up some food since our hotel room has a fridge. Rather than eat a big breakfast each morning, we got some muffins, OJ, and yogurt to tide us over. It’ll also save us some time since the next two days we are getting picked up in the morning by tour operators for our rainforest tour (tomorrow) and full day sail down the coast (Monday).

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St. Lucia, Day 2

November 18, 2006

Day 2

St. Lucians are pushy!

We knew we were going to stay around Rodney Bay today, but weren’t sure exactly what we were going to do. We thought we’d start out the morning with a walk to the marina, but the hotel staff suggested a taxi or a local bus. We decided to take the bus, but on our way to the street, a taxi driver approached trying to negotiate an hourly rate for giving us a tour of the island. From what I’ve read online, some of these can actually be a good deal, so we’re thinking we might try it on Tuesday since we need to get a Taxi to the other side of the island to catch our plane in the afternoon anyway. We did take the bus into town, which was US$2.50 total for both of us, but when the rest of the locals got off the bus, the bus driver tried to talk us into letting him give us a guided tour of the island. I guess his local bus route isn’t that important! We said no a few times, and finally got dropped off.

In Rodney Bay we thought we’d walk around checking out tourist sites and scheduling excursions at the tour establishments, but it turns out we were not really in the right area to do that. After walking a while and giving up, we decided to walk to Reduit Beach, not realizing how far it was. What appeared to be a bus/taxi driver saw us and convinced us to let him take us to the beach for EC$15 which is around $5.60US. When we got near the beach he headed down an abandoned looking dirt road, dropping us off next to his friend who was holding a large machete and small knife. A moment (or two) of panic set in before the new person started telling us that he is responsible for getting people beach chairs and umbrellas for this part of the beach (which sounds a little fishy)… which we told him we weren’t interested in doing, at which point he started trying to sell us volcanic rock necklaces which he said he made himself. After a while we were able to extract ourselves without buying anything and wandered back to the more populated part of the beach. I never did figure out what the machete was for… coconuts perhaps? Not surprisingly, every place we’ve gone since has had pushy locals selling the exact same necklaces after telling you their life’s stories.

After a walk down the length of the beach, being offered more chairs and umbrellas, necklaces, boats and other watersports, taxis, etc. we decided to walk back to the hotel along the main road, now that we’d gotten our bearings and realized that the hotel was only about a mile from the beach. The only thing we were offered on the way back was a wooden carving which we politely refused.

Introducing guest blogger Kathie:

Back at the hotel we made arrangements for a 2-hour horseback ride with Trim’s Riding Academy. I guess they weren’t too busy that day since we were able to make a reservation for the 2-4pm slot and we ended up being the only people going for the ride. They picked us up from the hotel and brought us to the stables. They fitted us with helmets and sent us on our way with our horses, Larry (mine) and Spunky (Mike’s) and Sport (our guide’s). The scenery wasn’t much, a dirt trail with a lot of brush. We ended up on the north side of the island by the Atlantic Ocean. The view was great and the water looked inviting. We stopped here for a break, coincidentally where there were more vendors selling necklaces and carvings. We need to become much more firm about avoiding them before they start their hard-sell, or shooing them off quickly. They don’t respond to a polite “no thank you” or even five. After the break, we were allowed to take the horses into the water up to their necks. The water felt really good and warm and the horses just walked around. Riding bareback was rather difficult though since the horses have rather substantial spines you’re sitting on. We kept slipping to the sides of the horse. After the horse swim, we just took a nice swim by ourselves. Very small waves (rocks further out broke the waves) and overall calm, clean, and warm. While we’ve enjoyed horseback riding in the caribbean islands before, we weren’t too crazy about this one. The trail wasn’t picturesque and having the vendors bother us was annoying. The ocean swim was a neat novelty though. Both our horses were tough to control. I think both of them wanted to run instead of plod along so they were both chomping the bit. Spunky definitely lived up to his name!

We got back to the stable in time to see the next group of six or eight tourists in their early 20s getting their horses. Boy, we thought we were novices, I don’t think any of this group (I think they were all together) had ever ridden horses before. It was entertaining to watch them as they mounted the horses and tried to control them.

As in most developing countries we’ve been to, we saw lots of wandering cats and dogs. There were these cute little cats/kittens at the stables that were begging for attention. As soon as you stopped petting, they’d start yowling and rubbing around you. There are also several stray dogs we saw on the trail. Unsure whether the dogs are owned by anyone or if they just wander around for food. None of them seemed aggressive or feral but for the better, Mike wouldn’t let me get near any of them.

After we got back to the hotel and cleaned up, we hung around and rested until dinnertime. People eat dinner here later than we’re used to and most restaurants don’t open until 7pm. We went to Charthouse (not the chain restaurant) in Rodney Bay for dinner. It’s come highly recommended by critics and a lot of tourists. Mike had the teriyaki steak and I had the red snapper (fish of the day). The steak didn’t live up to the reviews, but my fish was pretty good and the rice was also good. Charthouse is and we weren’t as impressed as we thought we’d be. I don’t think we’d recommend it for anyone else – you can probably get almost-as-good food for half the price at the other restaurants in the area. Ice cream at Elena’s Italian Ice Cream & Coffee shop however is a definite repeat for us. Their ice cream is very sweet, creamy and rich and worth getting again.

All in all we probably walked 4-5 miles today, which on top of the horseback riding, swimming, and hot sun has us feeling pretty tired. Tomorrow we’re going to take a bus or taxi down to St. Lucia’s capital, Castries, and explore the area.

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St. Lucia, Day 1

November 17, 2006

Today was mostly dedicated to travel, starting with a 4:45am alarm setting so we could get to Dulles Airport by 6am for our 8am flight. Of course, the security line took three minutes, so we ended up waiting around for a while for our flight. Of course, Dulles is unpredictable enough that if we had gotten there later, the line could have taken an hour, so better safe than sorry.

For the trip down, we had a long leg (almost four hours) on a 757 down to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and a short leg on a little propeller shuttle for about two hours to get to the northern airport on St. Lucia. The airport is teeny tiny… just one short runway (small planes only) and a small terminal building. On the way home we’ll be leaving from the bigger, southern airport on a real plane (757 again), for a four hour trip up to Miami, then a two-plus hour trip the rest of the way to Dulles.

On a side note, I had my first listen to the new Sarah McLachlan Christmas CD, “Wintersong” on my iPod during the flight – it was very good, and the first new Sarah disc in a few years so it’s great to hear some new songs! She’s been one of my favorite musicians (perhaps even favorite) since before I moved to Virginia… Caleb and his friends Rich and Danielle introduced me to Sarah’s music (and Tori Amos’) up in Port Jefferson, Long Island around 12 years ago.

The little we’ve seen of St. Lucia so far drives home the fact that it’s a developing country. We’ve been to many Caribbean islands, but we realized they were all via various cruises, with organized excursions, so we didn’t need accommodations, taxis, etc. Traffic was actually pretty bad on the seven mile drive to our hotel in Rodney Bay, and we drove past lots of pick up trucks packed full of people in the back, presumably on their way home from work, and many old and run-down looking buildings. Tomorrow we’ll be able to get a better feel for the Rodney Bay area, and will be able to make some observations based on more than a taxi ride! People here so far seem pretty nice. The hotel is clean and has free wireless internet, so nothing to complain about there!

Our hotel has a Caribbean Night Buffet on Thursdays with a band and free Rum Punch, so since we didn’t get here until 5pm or so, it seemed like the thing to do. The food was pretty good – I liked the beef stew and Kat liked the seafood, including Dorado, which we’d never heard of, but the Internet tells me is just another name for Mahi-Mahi or Dolphin-fish. I tried it too, since I don’t normally like fish but I’m always looking for types of fish I might like. It was pretty good… mild flavor, not too fishy, which is important. I think I like the flakier texture of Swordfish or Salmon better though. Most things here are priced in Eastern Caribbean Dollars, which are the equivalent of around 37 cents US. So the $60EC per person dinner was really only $22 U.S. Whew!

Tomorrow we’ll explore the Rodney Bay area, including Reduit Beach. We’ll also make some advance plans for a few other things we need to arrange for other areas of the island, like horseback riding, a rainforest visit, etc.

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Vacation Prep

November 14, 2006

Early Thursday morning we leave for our trip to St. Lucia in the Caribbean! This will be our first vacation since last winter, so we’re really looking forward to it. We’re staying at the Bay Gardens Hotel on the north-west side of the island. It’s about a 10 minute walk from the beach and various tourist activities. We’re still planning out all the things we want to do while we’re there, but there are plenty of options. St. Lucia is just north of the equator, but even so, the weather should only be around 80 during the day, and around 70 at night. Hopefully we’ll have lots of fun things to report on and photos to upload when we get back! Once we’re back, we get a few more days off due to the Thanksgiving holiday, so that’ll also be nice and relaxing.

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