As most everyone knows, Marc and I finally went on our honeymoon. We went to St Lucia for a week. It is wonderful, and we would recommend visiting to anyone. St Lucia is a Brittish commonwealth, and english is their main language. The St Lucians will speak Patois, which is a French-Creole mix. They also speak very fast in both languages, so I really had to concentrate to understand what they were saying.
Here are some views from our villa.
This is the view of some of the villas at Windjammer Landing Resort from the beach. This is where we stayed. The villas are beautiful and the beach is so relaxing. The only downside...the taxi ride from the airport was an hour and a half. If you've never traveled to an island, their driving skills do need some improvement. There's no speed limit except in a school zone, and there are no road rules. It's absolutely insane. For those with weak stomachs, I'd highly suggest flying in to the other airport that's closer to most of the resorts on the western side of St Lucia.
This is the "Fruit Guy" who came up to the beach at the resort to sell fruits and Konch shells. You can use the konch shells as a horn if you can figure out how that works. It sounds like a foghorn.
These guys came to the resort one evening for the limbo and fire dancing.
On Wednesday, we went on a day sail for sightseeing. We started on a catamaran in the morning to sail to the town of Soufriere. On the way we saw some dolphins that swam alongside the boat for a few minutes.
The Pitons are the landmark of St Lucia. Here's Marc's cranium between the Pitons as we're approaching while still on the catamaran.
We docked in Soufriere and took a taxi for some more sightseeing. We first stopped to see a waterfall. We were told if you stand under the waterfall you'll be 10 years younger. Unfortunately, I put one toe in and found the water to be extremely cold. So, Marc went in and got under the waterfall. Even though he was not thrilled about being forced to get into a cold pool of water and get beaten up by water, we still got a great picture!
From the waterfall, it was off to the sulfer pits. This place stinks like rotten eggs! Good thing our visit here was short. This used to be an active volcano, but after a huge explosion a really long time ago (I can't remember those details), this is all that's left. The water that is here is black from the iron and it's like 180 degrees.
It was soon off to the Fond Doux Plantation. This is a working plantation that has been with the same family for 6 generations. The house is still used by the current owner who lives here. They produce a substantial amout of cocoa here, along with other products. It's shipped to Canada and the USA to be used by chocolate companies (Hershey's gets some of their cocoa from here).
These are where the cocoa beans dry out.
Marc and I under a cocoa tree. The St Lucians referred to the cocoa beans as "Jungle M&Ms". They said they would suck this jelly-like stuff from around the cocoa beans once the fruit had been opened. Trust me, I had no desire to try that!
We departed Soufriere, but anchored the boat in Ti-Ki (means "Little House"). Another fishing village on the west coast of St Lucia. I cannot tell you how beautiful it was and how exciting I finally got to swim in an ocean where I could see the bottom. It was so clear you could see everything. It was a bit disillusioning because it's hard to remember even though you can see the bottom, you won't be able to touch the bottom. That's my kind of swimming.
Thursday we went on a Half Day Rain Forest Excursion. Since St Lucia's #1 export is bananas, there are banana plants (not trees) everywhere. This is a huge banana field. Mixed between the rows of banana plants are coconut palm trees. These are dispersed through the fields to help keep the banana plants from washing away. Their roots do not go very deep in the soil and the coconut palms help keep the dirt from eroding away. Of course, they also have to climb the trees to pick the coconuts, and we saw a lot of coconuts. It's a good thing Marc likes coconut so we can say one of us tried them.
This is a waterfall in the rainforest. We couldn't get in this one because the fishing village of Anse-le-Rey uses the water from this waterfall as their source of water for the village. The orange "thing" is a land crab we saw while hiking through the forest.
This is the fruit stand where we ate all the fruit we wanted for US $1.
Another day ending...as usual, we were at the bar having drinks with some new friends we met.
Farewell St Lucia. We definitely enjoyed our stay and cannot wait to return, on the other hand...how's our Charlie? We missed him so much, but I think he had too much fun with his Auntie Sarah & Uncle Matt to even pout about us leaving him.
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