Photo of the Day - Gros Piton, St. Lucia

Another from our honeymoon...

Photo of the Day - Fruit man

When we were at one of the public beaches on our honeymoon, fruit man paid us a visit.

Photo of the day - Seussian trees

This tree-lined hilltop intrigued me during our stay in St. Lucia. It looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. I took lots and lots of photos of it, with hopes that I'd end up with one good one. The best one (in my opinion) was the one I took on the morning of our departure.Oh and as a side note, I'll be travelling for the next week and should return with some fun photos and food experiences! San Francisco here I come!

St. Lucia botanical study

As I previously mentioned, we took a day trip around the island. This included a tour of the botanical gardens. And of course, lots and lots of photos of the botanical sort. Some of my favorite plant photos from around the island.

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.

I'm back

Sigh. How quickly a week goes by when you're actually savoring every moment. We got back late friday. We spent yesterday taking down some trees (well M did) and doing housework (me). I uploaded a bunch of photos to picasa from the honeymoon and I fully intend on writing a nice long blog about St. Lucia some time this week. I promise.

I finished reading The Kite Runner while on vacation. It was excellent. I was curious about the movie so we picked it up last night. The book was far better. The movie skipped over a lot and left out a lot of things that made the book so emotional. Pick it up when you get a chance. It's a pretty quick read.

Sunday dinner will consist of some sirloin steaks, grilled no doubt and some zucchini and mushrooms and whatever else looks good. I'll photograph and post back tomorrow my results. Until then, here's a photo from the honeymoon. It's Fort Rodney, taken at Pigeon Point National Park near Gros Islet in St. Lucia.

Life's a beach...

I figured I'd leave you with some lovely beach photos taken by Mrs. Melanie Busbee.

Lovey

A week from now we'll be beginning our honeymoon. Love is on the brain.

Honeymoon!

Here's where we're staying for our honeymoon. 7 days, just us. I can't wait!!! Though I have to say I'm not too enthusiastic about getting into a swimsuit so soon hahaha.