St. Lucia

St. Lucia was beautiful. Without going into too much detail (it was our honeymoon afterall), I'll give you my thoughts on the island and it's people.

The natives are down-to-earth, kind, inquisitive people. They have this sense of brotherhood amongst themselves (hell some even towards the tourists) that I've never witnessed anywhere. St. Lucia's general population, from what I observed, is what would definitely be considered poor amongst American standards. But that's only a money thing. Frankly, in my opinion, our culture puts way too much emphasis on money and objects, but that's a blog for another day. Their culture is rich with life. Every person I encountered seem to take pride in what they were doing for work and actually seemed to enjoy it. A couple of examples...

The first night we went out for dinner, we misktakenly left the lights on in our rental rollerskate (M's name for it due to it's petite stature). We returned to a dark parking lot after dinner with a dead battery. No cell phones either (we turned those off in Miami since they don't work overseas). There was a man and his wife, John and Vera, parked not far from us that were sitting in their car. John came to us and told us that he saw our lights on when he pulled up and he said to himself, "shit shit". Being a mechanic he knew he'd be able to help us and he and his wife waited for us to return to the vehicle. This had to have been for at least 45 minutes to an hour. He had no jumper cables, but he took his battery out, hooked it to our car, started it up and switched our old one back all whilst running and in the dark. He saved the day. Thanks to John and Vera – truly wonderful people.

We went on a day long catamaran sail. Mostly on a catamaran, but spent some time in the botanical gardens, drive in volcano and sulfur springs, once we docked in Soufriere. The people working on the boat were pumping reggae and they were all singing, dancing and smiling. Nobody treated you as if you were inconveniencing them. They looked forward to talking to you and asking what you thought of St. Lucia. I highly recommend that trip. It was a great way to see hard to reach parts of the island.The island is economically diverse, it's clear some areas are struggling. Tourism is what keeps them going. The island is very mountainous and quite beautiful. There is a ton of wildlife. Not a car ride into town went without seeing goats, cows, horses, chickens or wild dogs loose either in the road or on the side. Driving is slow, as with most islands and people honk constantly. They stop and honk to let you out, they honk to let you know they're going to pass you. They honk to say hi. Road rage doesn't exist here. Nobody is in enough of a hurry to be rude to somebody else, though they drive a lot faster then we were comfortable with sometimes hahaha.
I prepared most of our meals, but we did have a few out. The local cuisine is a mixture of "west indian" or carribean and creole. Lots of plantains and potatoes, pork, chicken, in spicy sauces. I really enjoyed it. M, not so much. I also really liked the local Piton beer. Rum is cheap too...Many daquiris were had.It rains almost everyday but never for more then 5 minutes. It was in the mid 80s, pretty humid. Biting bugs were minimal. I only wore bugspray during the botanical garden portion of our land and sea tour. We spent a lot of time at the rental house in the pool. The views were phenomenal and the breeze on the top of the hill was amazing.
There were things that went wrong, sure, but this place is paradise. We had a great honeymoon in St. Lucia and if you plan on going, feel free to shoot me a message. I am happy to offer advice on where to stay, I have a ton more photos, etc.