Cruise Recap - St. Lucia

Okay it's finally time for the cruise posts to begin! We had planned to fly to Puerto Rico on a Saturday for the first day of the cruise. But due to my appendicitis, we were in the hospital that day instead. Dave made arrangements so we could still catch 4 of the 7 nights on the cruise. We hopped a Liat flight to St Lucia on Monday, where the ship arrived on Tuesday. We could have flown straight to Barbados, where the ship was on Monday, but given Liat's reputation for being late, we weren't willing to risk it. Flying on Liat is always interesting and it reminds us how we live on one of the island's where it's relatively easy to buy things (though generally we don't feel this way). For instance, we've seen passengers checking huge bags of toilet paper and paper towels. St Lucia is only about 400 miles from St Thomas, but Liat flights involve a lot of island hopping, so we first landed on St Kitts, then Antigua, and then St Lucia. The longest flight was 40 minutes. (We've been in the Antigua airport a few times now. It's most enjoyable when they have running water.) The St Lucia Pitons are pictured to the right here - the twin peaks are on the south side of the island and are a popular beautiful tourist site.

On St Lucia, they drive on the left side of the road, but with the driver's seat on the right - just like in Dominica (oops - we haven't blogged about that yet have we?). We took a taxi to this great hotel Dave found (Caribbean residents get great deals on some really nice hotels!). We wandered around a little at my very meager pace and Dave took pictures of me trying (unsuccessfully) not to laugh at the decapitated palm trees (it hurt to laugh 3 days post-op). We tasted the local beer - Piton Beer . For lunch we also had chicken roti, but we both decided roti is better on St. Thomas. We went to the beach near the hotel too. We heard someone say it was the best beach on St. Lucia. Maybe we're spoiled, but we just thought it was so-so.





After we got on the ship the next morning (pictured above), we took an uninspiring taxi tour of the island. There was no narration or explanation to the places at which we stopped, and the driver only said things like "hurry up". Supposedly a 3 hour tour, the taxi was so slow up and around the hills of St Lucia that it was closer to 6 hours and there was great potential for the ship to leave without us. We did get to see a "drive-in volcano" steaming (pictured to left), a few overlooks, and the Pitons. We also tasted a banana fresh from a banana tree along the road, and we ate lunch at a cacao plantation (the bean used to make chocolate - pictured here). St Lucia was really beautiful - very lush and green. The people we met seemed very friendly (minus the taxi driver). We would both like to go back when we are both feeling well, so we can take advantage of all the beautiful hiking and swimming opportunites and enjoy the rainforests. The picture below is of one of the towns we drove through. More pictures are on our shutterfly account.