66) St. Lucia

Rodney Bay Marina

Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, West Indies

14° 05.5 N 60° 58.2 W   

                                                                           

 

  

This morning I found the Internet café/car rental place upstairs near the marina office.  They accepted USD and ECC (Eastern Caribbean Currency) and I was in luck.  I have less than 100 USD and no ATM card or a pin number for my Visa or MC.  They were fairly reasonable at about 7-8 USD per hour.  Amazing how some of us are so addicted to e-mail and the Internet.  The disc that went home with Clive had a huge amount of data on it and I was dreading downloading all of it because the Internet has been pretty slow in places.  I am all caught up now and hope to keep on it.  I am going to try to write each night as it happens.

 

We left the marina around 10am in the rental car.  There was total chaos in the marina parking lot.  The first few miles are pretty much a blur.  One of the most memorable items is that KFC is everywhere on this island.  I saw at least 6 today on this little island. 

Our first touristy stop was an overlook above the commercial harbor where 2 cruise ships were docked.  This particular overlook is a sanctioned trinket market and we were hounded upon leaving the car.  They spoke English, as it is the official language and were polite but very persistent.  They were good at working the crowd by asking where you are from, etc.  I said California and was repeatedly called Chicago by the same guy who wanted to sell me some local stuff.

 

   

This island is a jungle.  It is amazing how they cut roads in this place.  The roads are twisty with switchbacks everywhere.  Lots of potholes and then in some areas the roads are perfect.  We did notice lots and lots of people just sitting in front of their houses, on the streets, etc.  It appears there is a lot of unemployment.  Yet, there are nice cars, nice clothes, and nice homes amid ramshackle places.  On just about every corner in the hills there is a drinking establishment with a major liquor manufacturer’s label and colors painted on the entire building.  It seems they also sell food and drink out of their houses.  Many cattle and sheep tied off in yards and along the roads and lots of skinny happy dogs roaming the streets.

                 

Our next stop, which took forever, was a botanical garden.  We planned our route so as to have Danielle at the airport in time for her 3pm departure.  I was looking forward to seeing some exotic flowers and plants as I enjoy that.  But, it was a letdown.  It was pretty sparse and the only thing of significant interest and even that wasn’t much was the placard in front of a ruin, although, there was nothing much of a ruin to see.  We were able to get Danielle to the airport on time and then decided to get lunch.  There are not many places that appealed to us and after asking around we were told to go to the restaurant called ‘Four Doors’.  After some driving and asking for more directions we came upon a place in the area described and it was called ‘Foun Doux’ (sp?).  We thought this was what the locals told us about and that they just had a dialect that we couldn’t understand.  We eventually found out that we were referred to a restaurant on the other side of the island.  We thought they said 4 doors and really meant ‘fondue’.  Ugh.   

    

                     

We stopped at many overlooks to see the ocean and cliffs.  The scenery is spectacular and you realize how much of a jungle this place is.  Didn’t see many birds or animals other than mentioned. 

 

Bananas in blue plastic bags.

  

                                                               

We were pretty interested to see the only ‘drive-in’ volcano in the Caribbean and after seeing it realized it was kind of a letdown, too.  The hype really sets up the experience.  We pulled up to the vendors selling trinkets prior to the ticket booth.  From this vantage point you can’t see much but you can smell the sulfur in the air.  We paid and they lifted the gate and we drove a few hundred feet and stopped.  We could have walked in.  Anyway, we walked to the lower vista point, then down the steps and across a stream and then up the steps to the closest vista point.  We were upwind and the smell was not bad.  We saw water gurgling where the gases and steam were escaping.  And that was it.  For the full journal experience this would be a great place for a smellavision video clip.   

They drive on the opposite side of the road here and it takes getting used to. 

 

On our way back to the boat we stopped at a grocery store and were able to replenish some food.  Going into foreign grocery stores is always interesting.  American products, or things we associate with home, are everywhere.  We now have lots of food and snacks to keep us going for a few days. 

This driving around stuff can make you tired by the end of the day and after loading all the food on board we all took a rest.  I typed and the rest read.  John, Nancy and I ventured out to the other side of the bay for dinner, as it was our last night here.  We ended up at the restaurant that is in the channel entrance for this inlet/marina.  Steak and lobster was on the menu and a little hard to pass up.  Well, the steak left something to be desired and lobster is pretty hard to mess up and that was good.  We tried conch cakes and they tasted similar to Abalone.  The coffee was great and the banana split really was a banana split in half and 1 scoop of ice cream.  We are so spoiled with what we are accustomed to.  While sitting there we watched a couple people on the other side of the narrow channel moving around in the dark.  I just happened to see them light something and then casually walk away.  They lit a firework that apparently they shouldn’t have.  It was of the type that should have launched a hundred feet in the air and then explode but instead it exploded on the ground.  The sound was powerful, the explosion of red and white sparks spectacular and looked odd in that it was muted into a half circle shape instead of a full round circle due to the ground deflecting it.   

It looks like we will take off from here tomorrow and head to an anchorage on the south side of the island.  This way we cut in half the 70-mile +/- trip to St. Vincent.  I’m OK with getting out of here and moving on quickly so as to have more days to stay when we find a great place.  And, there is no good scuba here so… 

If the seas are friendly for the next passage I will drop the fishing line in the water.  It’s not so much the rough conditions making it hard to trail a line but the cleaning, bagging, meal preparation that is difficult.