Honeymoon: St. Lucia

There we were, on the cusp of a new day in Sunny St. Lucia! I roll over and look outside to see the island has already arrived at the boat. I shake the inanimate mass next to me and step out onto that beautiful deck of ours. Minutes later I am joined by the love of my life; she is alive and bubbly with anticipation for the new day ahead, it's as if she had been awake in bed for hours and was just pretending to sleep for my benefit.


We snapped many pictures of the beautiful port from the boat, ate a nice sit down breakfast and then deboated with no idea what we were going to do with ourselves. We figured less planning = less stress. This lively looking fellow (Lester) walks up to us and offers a tour; pick mangos, visit the beach, see all the best sites and have a blast doing it. We figure why not and he instructs us to go hide in the corner while he ropes in 8 more unsuspecting victims (not his exact words but that's how one would interpret it if they felt every stranger they met was a human trafficker). Well 8 more folks fall for what he is selling and we are off; well sort of. He grabs the oldest lady and her daughter and walks them behind all the buildings down a narrow gap between the tourist trap shops and the chain link fence that keeps St. Lucia riff-raff like Lester from stealing their business. Lester then instructs us to follow two at a time as soon as the group ahead is out of sight, to ignore all carnival employees and to continue walking until we are clear past all the non-human traffickers. We comply.

Lester begins by pulling over to give kickbacks to a few of the employees of Carnival and continues to pull over once outside the Carnival Kingdom to hit on every girl he sees. It is a well rehearsed gig and he delivers elaborate pick up lines with the confidence and a bit of swagger. The girls are all thrown off at first but, to Lester's credit, all end up having huge smiles on their faces. We stop at scenic vistas. That's our boat down there.

We stop a Lester's grandmother's house which is surrounded by local fruiting plants. Limes, Bananas, Golden Apples and dozens of others. The house is small and run down, the yard is small too but they clearly all have very green thumbs! His little nephew picks us all these 'Apples'. They have hard inedible skins but once cracked like a nut in your teeth, the insides are quite tasty. The grandmother and some other kin folk stepped out on the balcony to observe the weird tourists snapping up pictures and grinning from ear to ear in their front yard. It had been a wild van ride getting there. The roads were windy, the terrain steep and the cute girl next to me was glad to be on terra firma so her stomach could settle.  All things must end though and shortly after arriving at grandmothers house we piled back in.

It has been a fun ride so far. I can't overstate the zaniness of Lester he has driven at an old lady in an electric wheel chair and made her back up out of his way, there was no reason to do this other than he thought it was funny and by-god the old lady (after initially being upset) ended up laughing and waving. He hit on no less than 20 women; old/young, attractive/not so much, big/small....... Lester's lust knew no bounds other than he was married and gave the girls all different made up numbers to call him at. He pulled up to some drug dealer looking guys in the middle of a poorer area. He rolled down the window and said; these are the drug dealers. They came up and told us all about the drug trade and how much the motherland (Great Britons) bought from their farms. Lester knew them and I believe they were fearsome, rich, druglord king-pins just as much as I believe they were unemployed laborers looking for work. Pictures not taken here for fear of human trafficking.

The highlight for me? We stopped here (picture). Now I have my intestinal fortitude to look after; this is an all you can eat cruise and I intend to eat all I can. So I am not inclined to take a chance on (picture) but if Lester says they have the best chicken........ then I can use this info to rate the validity of the millionaire, druglord, homeless looking fellows claim. Well friends and neighbors, I am here to tell you that those shirtless vagabond looking fellows were some of the wealthiest people on that island and I hope their fields of cannibus do well because that chicken would put KFC out of business.

From there we drove through a rain forest, stopped at a beach, did some general site seeing, in a clever twist he talked his way onto a guarded high-end resort so we could use their restrooms and lounge in their semi-outdoor reception area, and then went back 'home'.


From Kari: Our dining time was at 6:00 pm every night which meant that we missed the sunset.  After getting sneak peeks of the beautiful colors that coincided with the sunsets, we decided to skip the formal dining evening and have a date night ... yes, on a cruise ship.  We headed to the top deck to the adults only area to watch what we were sure was going to be an absolutely gorgeous sunset.  Well.  The clouds that day did a fantastic job of blocking the sunset.  We still had a great time together watching the few glimpses we could see and the effect on the clouds was pretty.  We stopped by the food court area and picked up some desserts and headed back to our room.

We ordered room service and while we waited, Stewart propped the door open.  He had knocked off our towel animal and was attempting to make a different one when our steward, Ketut, came by and asked what we were doing.  Stewart then got a lesson in how to make a towel elephant!


When our food arrived, Stewart set up a picnic on our bed.  We had a grand feast that included a grilled cheese sandwich, pastrami on rye, fresh veggies and fruit, a slice of cheesecake for Stewart and the two desserts I had previously picked up.  We settled in and watched Will Ferrell's "Everything Must Go".

We went to bed early in preparation for St. Kitts the next day.