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| Sunrise in St. Lucia |
Next verse, same as the first.
After another overnight cruise we wake up in the port and capital of Castries,
St. Lucia. The island has been part of the British Commonwealth since 1803, but
prior to that it was often occupied by the French as evidenced by much of St.
Lucia’s culture.
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| St. Lucia landscape |
Someone on board told us that St. Lucia was not a very safe
place for individuals to wander around, and based on this information we booked
a shore excursion. Our excursion was described as a “panoramic tour” of the
island and once we boarded our bus we started to ascend Morne Fortune, the“Hill
of Good Luck,” a mountain that had 180°
switchbacks and a grade so steep that we wondered if we had ever been on any
steeper (and we’ve see some steep grades!). Numerous battles between French and
British soldiers were waged on this slope during the 200-year colonial tug of
war.
At the top was Fort Charlotte and a beautiful panoramic vista of Castries
Harbor. The buildings of Fort Charlotte have been renovated and now house the
Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, St. Lucia’s only institution of higher
learning.
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| Home of St. Lucia's governess |
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| Caribelle Batik |
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| Sir Arthur Lewis Community College |
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| More orchids |
To attend a university, St. Lucia students must leave the island.
Castries was built on an extinct volcanic crater and over the years fires and
volcanic eruptions destroyed many of its colonial heritage buildings. We left
Fort Charlotte and rode through St. Lucia’s lush rain forest landscapes,
finally arriving at Caribelle Batik. H
ere we saw a batik demonstration which is an
art form technique of wax-resist dyeing of cloth. Batik is primarily performed
in Indonesian and South Pacific countries, but was presented to us as a West
Indies creation. We browsed the gift shop and made a few purchases, including
St. Lucia’s famed banana ketchup (it’s really good!). We continued our tour,
riding through some more breathtaking scenery until we arrived at a private
villa named Stony Hill. This residence is situated high atop a ridge in north
St. Lucia and used for weddings, retreats, and parties of all kinds. As we
arrived, the staff was setting up for a New Year’s Eve party for 700 people.
The property was purchased by a retired British neurosurgeon and turned into a
business. We were served refreshments and encouraged to tour the property. One
really neat feature of the gardens was the labeling of all of the trees,
shrubs, and flowers we viewed. We observed the gardens with beautifully cascading
magenta bougainvillea and made our way down (and it was quite a drop) to the
orchid house to view the orchid collection. It was great. Great, that is, until
we had to ascend some stairs about 200 feet back up to the house (there were a
series of ramps going down, but the steeper stairs considerably shorter).
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| Beautiful orchids |
After we caught our breath, we said goodbye
to the owner and boarded our bus. Our return to the ship was delayed about an
hour due to a major wreck and traffic jam a couple of miles from Castries. We
picked up a few souvenirs at some of the shops in the cruise terminal, and had
a couple of locally brewed Piton beers, before boarding the ship.
Our last port of call- St. John’s
Antigua. Christopher Columbus sighted the island and named it after Santa Maria
la Antigua, but it wasn’t settled until British settlers arrived in the late
1600’s to introduce sugar crops to the island.
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| St. John's shopping district |
At its peak, the island had more
than 150 cane-processing windmills. Admiral Horatio Nelson established Antigua
as Great Britain’s most important Caribbean base in 1784, and slavery was
abolished in 1834.
This history today affords Antigua visitors a culture rich
in African and British influences, and with its ideal climate, beautiful
landscapes, leisurely lifestyle, and 365 beaches- one for every day of the
year, tourists are easily attracted to this tropical paradise.
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| We're joined by other ships |
We had hoped that we could visit Nelson’s Dockyard, but
after finding out that it was 12 miles from the cruise terminal, we decided to
stick to the shopping district which was located in the heart of St. John’s.
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| All the ships in Antigua |
Jane immediately found a shoe shop that had several pairs that were calling her
name. The shopping district is divided into the comfortable tourist’s shops
(within sight of the ships), a newer section featuring the chic island options,
and the downright gritty people’s market that we ventured into for that local
flavor that only stepping over dog shit in the street will give you.
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| Sunset leaving St. Lucia |
In the
people’s market we encountered this huge bust of some black political dude
staring into space at what might just be the star Polaris. At this market we
started to feel that we were really out of place (we couldn’t see any other
obvious tourists), so we started to make our way back to Jane’s shoe store.
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| Rusty pilot boat |
Believe
it or not, she found a pair of shoes that she liked and could live with. We
meandered through several other shops before finally settling down for a couple
of local beers at a café near the cruise terminal.
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| St. John's |
We finished our beers and
re-boarded the ship. Back aboard, Jane went to High Tea that was offered daily by the ship. Capt. Larry watched football games while she had High Tea, but thought that this event was something that he should have attended.
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| High tea |
We had to make Miami in two days, so we left Antigua early
for our 2 sea-days cruise to bring it all to an end.
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| More high tea! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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What a great trip!
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