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Sulphur Springs
Sulphur Springs bubbling
Dolphins
Pilot Whale with baby whale
Carol in the botanical gardens
The Gros Piton viewed in the botanical gardens
A yellowfin fish
Carol holding a red carnation that she received on her birthday
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Wednesday Dec 24 Merry Christmas Eve !!!
Again with the alarm – we woke up at 8:00 and went down to Doolittle’s for breakfast. Carol had scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice while Sarah had scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. We sat down for breakfast at 8:45 and didn’t finish till 10:00. There’s one thing I can say – dining in St. Lucia can never be called fast food. While the service was good, anything and everything took a long time.
Time for our Island Taxi Tour – we met Andrew at 10:30 for about a 4 hour tour. We headed south past all the banana plantations in the Rosseau Valley. This is where we would see men walking around with machete’s in their hand. Bananas are the main cash crop of the island but they also grow cocoa, cashews…. etc.
We drove through a couple of the poor fishing villages – Anse la Raye & Canaries. The major trade was fishing with no other real industry. These villages had houses that were basically right on top of one another, very colorful – looking down upon the village, you saw a rainbow of rooftops, and they were very small. Some of the houses we passed were totally open or to where you could see in – most didn’t look larger than our garage. Chickens could also be seen in various random places in these villages – we saw one at the gas station when we stopped along the way. Women carried baskets and, well, just about anything on top of their heads as they walked down the street. People also had very little clothing on – a lot of the men without shirts on (probably b/c of the warm weather), no shoes on many… The inlets the villages were on also had boats lined up on the beach as well as along the docks. The boats were also very colorful – many having murals of fish / palm trees, etc.
Then it was on to the village of Soufreire. There was a church in the middle of town where many in town would hang out – both old and young. We also noticed a cemetery – they bury their dead both above and below ground. It was quite curious though that the cemetery was not that far from the water. We saw a ton of people walking the streets in town and a Coconut Mill where they make a ton of items. Then it was off to the Sulfur Springs located just outside of town.
Sulfur Springs smelled absolutely horrible – like rotten eggs that you could smell from far away. Our tour guide took us down past a small waterfall over a bridge then to lookout over the springs. It’s considered a dormant volcano – meaning that lava doesn’t come bursting out. Instead, there is a bubbling liquid from the hot earth with steam coming from everywhere (source of the sulfur smell). This is considered the only “Drive In Volcano”. The soil and rock deposits in the area are all from different mineral deposits and are very colorful – purple = magnesium, white = calcium, rust = iron, green, orange… etc.
Next was the Botanical Gardens and Waterfall. It was funny because Carol didn’t know we were in the Botanical Gardens – she thought they were on our next stop of the island tour – oops… So while Sarah was taking pictures of the pretty flowers and enjoying the surrounding tropical gardens (there were Poinsettias growing wild), Carol was trying to find the way back to Andrew and the van. There were lots of tropical plants and trees everywhere as well as lizards all around.
After the tour and back in Marigot Bay, we bought some snacks and sat at the bar and had a couple tropical drinks. Then we were off to dinner at JJ’s restaurant. It is another restaurant across the bay that had a separate water taxi service for taking any guests of the resort. It is also frequented by other boats that can dock and eat. Quite a popular hangout.
Thursday Dec 25 Merry Christmas in Paradise !!!
Finally – no alarm today. We got up around 9:15 and got ready for another breakfast at Doolittle’s. Carol has the scrambled eggs, toast, fried potatoes and orange juice while Sarah had French toast with maple syrup & bananas, coffee and pineapple juice. Most places on the island were closed because of the holiday and it rained most of the day so it was a great time to do a lot of relaxing on our veranda and enjoy the beautiful view.
Dinner was spent at Doolittle’s. They were very busy and we didn’t think to make a reservation so we ordered our food and brought it back up to our room and ate it on the veranda which had a table to dine on.
Friday Dec 26 Happy Birthday Carol !!!
The alarm went off at 6:50 AM!!!! UGH!!! But, it’s all for a good reason right ? We got up and ready to meet Andrew at 7:40 to get to Captain Mike’s Whale Watching Tour. The boat we went cruising on was called the Hack Attack where we sat on the fly bridge – where Carol could watch the captain, the GPS and all the other gadgets. As we started out heading south, clouds began pouring in behind us and finally caught up but luckily it passed through pretty quickly.
The first sighting on our cruise was dolphins, lots of them. There must have been at least a 100 of them all swimming towards our boat. It was an awesome sight to see. They were so funny – they would be swimming and jumping out of the water and then out of nowhere they would suddenly disappear all at once. We also saw a pod of Pilot whales where we saw a baby riding on an adult back – too cute !! Our captain kept contacting other boats to let them know where the dolphins and whales were.
For dinner that night, we spent an hour an a half in the taxi driving to Ladera Resort to eat at Dasheene's. It was a lovely place that overlooked the Pitons. It would have been a spectacular view during the day, but a little hard to see them at night. Dinner was good. Carol loved the half coconut shells that the salad was served in. We looked for them in the gift shop after dinner. They had everything but those. Too bad.
Our last hour on the veranda |
