We return for our third article on the wonders of St. Lucia,
According to the internet, “Saint Lucia is named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 – 304). Saint Lucia is one of two sovereign states in the world named after a female and is the only one named after a woman (Ireland is named after a goddess). Legend states that French sailors were shipwrecked on the island on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, and therefore named the island in her honor. A globe in the Vatican from 1520 shows the island as Sancta Lucia, indicating that the island was instead named by early Spanish explorers. Saint Lucia was first known as Louanalao by the Arawak Indians in 200 AD, meaning “Island of the Iguanas,” and then as Hewanorra, in 800 AD, meaning “there where iguanas are found,” when the Carib Indians arrived and assimilated their culture into Saint Lucia.”
However, I have a different hypothesis. As you may know, there is an animal on this island called the “St. Lucia iguana“. Isn’t it more likely that they named the island after the iguana? Anyway…
Update: we’ve moved to a new location. We are now staying at a hotel (more on that later) on Rodney Bay.
Picturesque Rodney Bay.
This is the view from our balcony. The bay seems deserted. In fact, it usually looks this way. Just as with the beach by Sandals Resort: where is everyone?
Okay, let’s take a look around the area to see what there is to see.
Island Oddities
These guys…
We’ve commented on how cruise ships reshape island living, and this is a good example. They are relatively non-invasive and they bring necessary money to the island. But, it’s not really what you look for when you think of island living.
Pizza on wheels.
Apparently, this is the island version of takeout food. They come to you and prepare the pizza on the way. In that way, the pizza does not taste like a cardboard box.
Fine dining.
Chef Robby is an actual thing, with an entry in TripAdvisor.com. He just has a very small budget for marketing.
Maybe they can’t read English.
We’ve seen this in other places. We guess it’s a drop-off or pick-up. Or maybe that’s the car of the guy who lives there. Still, it’s a funny picture.
Donuts and beer: the best of island living.
This is a small cafe on Rodney Bay. Behind me were two people who appear to be working (rather than surfing) on their laptops. There is a phone call, and one of the people leaves the table to have the conversation.
Island business attire.
1. He is smoking. We see only three people smoking the entire time we are here, so this is unusual. 2. What’s with the pants, dude? 3. He has a phone that he is holding near his right ear. And he has an earbud in his left ear.
Alrighty then!
Sad but true.
This is an interesting situation on the island. There are a number of restaurants and hotels that are out of business. And, they are on beach-front property. We are told that, during the Covid Panic, the businesses were struggling, and the government encouraged them to close down, with the idea that foreign investors will rebuild the restaurants and hotels along modern lines.
In fact, this is slowly happening. An unfortunate side effect is that other businesses are being adversely affected by the construction activities.
<Sigh> Our hotel on Rodney Bay was not supposed to be. Rather, we had arranged to stay at the same hotel we stayed at ten years ago when we last visited St. Lucia.
Our place, just five minutes from the ocean.
Beautiful, isn’t it!!
Not our place.
And this is what’s happening now. Relentless noise and dust as a large hotel is being constructed right next to this quaint, lovely hotel. The sad truth is that our Airbnb host neglected to tell us about this, so we checked in and immediately checked out. Fortunately, Airbnb refunded the entire amount we had paid.
We feel bad for the hotel owners, and hope they can weather the storm and return to prosperity.
Home Depot!
Just another sign of progress on St. Lucia.
I’m tired.
This is nice. They’ve taken hundreds of old tires and built an erosion-reducing retaining wall.
I guess these would be called “rubber plants”.
The tires will help hold the moisture, promoting plant growth. Fast forward a few decades, and the rubber will be completely decomposed, yet the hillside will be completely vegetated. Win-win.
Wildlife. Sort of…
We don’t see a lot of wildlife during our visit to the island so, when I see an egret, I snap its photograph.
This guy is always crabby.
This is a good time to segue into island dining.
Island Dining
Since we are no longer staying in places with kitchens, we get to eat in restaurants everyday.
The local eatery.
This is the pub and restaurant attached to our hotel. We have no idea why it is called the Cockpit Pub. Fortunately, it is much nicer inside than the entryway would have you believe.
Island dining.
In a restaurant in America, those would all be plastic plants.
Island art.
This piece of art is hanging on the wall of the restaurant. We look at it closely. Perhaps it represents a face. See the two eyes, the long nose, and the open mouth? Perhaps it represents intercourse. See the two testicles, the long penis, and the receptive vagina?
Extreme close-up.
Note that, for the purposes of erotic pleasure, it could be an open mouth or a receptive vagina. Both work, in this case.
Such a good girl!
There is a hotel cat that wanders through the restaurant. Her name is Good Girl. Good Girl is such a finicky eater, she never bothers the guest for food from their plate.
Wine-ing about St. Lucia.
It’s nice to start a meal with a glass of red wine to match my red top.
More wine-ing.
Now I’m drinking white wine. Can you guess why?
Bartender! Beer me!
St. Lucia brews its own beer, called Piton. We must honor local customs.
Yummy.
We do actually eat food sometimes. Here I am eating ice cream and homemade donuts. 😎
One evening, we take a break from the Cockpit Pub and eat at Jacques Waterfront Dining, which is on the hotel’s property and, not surprisingly, on the waterfront.
A slightly different experience.
The food at Jacques costs about five times as much as it does at the Cockpit Pub, but this is a much more refined experience.
The waterfront part of Jacques Waterfront Restaurant.
Romantic.
Holy Flying Plantains, Batman!
This is the Catch of the Day. Jacques’ wife (Mrs. Jacques?) stops by the table to ask if everything is wonderful. It is.
Gilligan never had it so good.
Coconut crème brûlée, served with coconut cream and a dash of coconut rum. Sweet.
Selfie time!
The food is rich, and we are a bit drunk, so let’s take a selfie. Fortunately, it’s only about 30 steps to walk back to our hotel room, so I think we’ll be okay.
One final dining experience.
Of course, we do have snacks in our hotel room. And, if you are Jewish, you have your choice of Manischewitz thin unsalted matzos to munch on!
Niko’s Sea and Sun Tours
Last time we visited St. Lucia, we had a sunset dinner cruise with Niko’s Sea and Sun Tours, so we decide to do it again.
We contact Niko via a travel agent (more on that later) and arrange a tour. It rains a bit that day, but, what the heck, let’s do it!
We drive to the marina and meet Niko and his first mate, then head out to the open seas.
It seems like we are always drinking…
They offer us water, soft drinks, beer, wine, champagne, and rum. You can see what we decide.
No, not two glasses each.
The sea is a bit bumpy so, if one of us is taking photographs, the other must hold the drinks.
That’s better.
When we find a calm part of the sea, we can have a better photograph taken of us.
Niko, multitasking.
As long as we are underway, we might as well drag a lure behind us. Perhaps our next meal is in the water, just waiting for us.
The first mate.
Sadly, I do not remember this fellow’s name, but he and Niko took care of us the whole time.
All hands on deck!
If I don’t walk up to the bow to have a look around, then it’s not a real trip.
A sunset during our sunset cruise.
Because of the rain today, it is a bit cooler than we appreciate. However, because of the rain today, we have an excellent sunset.
Even more sunset.
For people on St. Lucia, this is normal.
Enjoying the trip.
Find what you love, then do it for a living.
Dinner time!
Let’s not forget the dinner part of the sunset dinner cruise. We drop anchor, and the crew finishes cooking the meal.
Technically, this is sea food…
This is delicious, but more than we can eat. I hope Niko and his crew like left-overs for breakfast.
Dinner for two.
See? Life is good. Or rather, sea life is good.
Dinner by moonlight.
Despite the clouds, the moon makes an appearance for us.
The evening draws to a close. Niko asks us where we are staying, because he can just drop us off at our hotel.
Okay, remember the travel agent I mentioned above. In our dealing with her, she was somewhat terse and uncommunicative. She never mentioned that Niko could pick us up and drop us off at our hotel. Like, why be a travel agent if you don’t like helping people travel? Anyway…
We’ve had a bit to drink and we were planning on taking a taxi back to the hotel, then getting our car the next day. But, instead, Niko takes us back. We hope it does not inconvenience him too much.
Niko’s boat.
This is a photograph of Niko’s boat docked for the night, taken from the dock directly in front of our hotel room. In the entire bay, it’s the second closest boat to us. Niko was not inconvenienced at all, and, in fact, it would have saved him time … if he had a good travel agent to work with.
Another photograph of Niko’s boat.
Here’s another view of the boat, just so you can have a better view of it. It is larger than it appears in these last two photographs.
Not Niko’s girlfriend.
As I’m sure you know, Julien Alfred, a native of St. Lucia who can run just a little bit faster than you can run, posed with Niko. He shared that photograph with us, so we are sharing it with you.
To Niko and crew, with love.
For Niko’s guest book.
Out on the sea for adventure.
Click on the photograph above to see a short video of us sailing in the Caribbean.
Red Bikini
Reduit Beach is the beach that is on the ocean side of Rodney Bay, and it is an easy walk for us to go there.
The beach near Rodney Bay.
The whole beach.
This is a view of the beach from the southern-most part of it.
Two for the price of one.
This is actually two photographs, pushed together.
Okay, in St. Lucia, cannabis (aka, ganja) is not illegal. While shopping at a small boutique, Lick’d, we see a jar containing pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes (aka, joints). One jar is label “local” and the other is label “foreign”. Intrigued, we ask what the difference is between the two. The shopkeeper explains very seriously, “Well, one is grown locally, and the other is grown somewhere else.”
Doing my best Bob Marley impression.
In fact, while sitting here on the beached, we are approached by an obviously stoned fellow who is selling weed umbrella-to-umbrella.
Peace out, man.
So, after a while, I leave the safety of my umbrella to go to the ladies room. On my way back, this same stoned fellow approaches me asking if I wished to purchase his product. I politely decline. He then tells me that my titties need sucking, and moves in to do just that. Fortunately, he is stoned and harmless, and I gently redirect his face elsewhere and walk past him, returning to my umbrella.
About ten minutes later, on his return trip from walking up and down the beach, he again approaches me, asking if I want to buy. He has COMPLETELY forgotten what just happened. Ah, the joys of lacking a short-term memory.
Okay, the red bikini story.
Before our trip, I showed my girlfriend, Miriam, the bikini I bought for this trip. Miriam was a bit shocked and told me that I would get arrested for wearing such a small and transparent piece of clothing in public.
Well, Miriam, this one is for you.
The view from the back.
As usual, no one notices or cares.
The view from the front.
All my girly bits are covered. And, I suspect, even if they weren’t, well, this is a pretty chill beach.
It’s kind of day-glow.
My husband thinks it’s overkill and I should be wearing less…but he always thinks that.
Wet and wonderful.
It’s a bit more transparent when wet. Well, a girl can’t help that, can she?
Just me being me at the beach.
This one is for you, Miriam, with love.
We hope you have enjoyed our adventures. Next time we will explore more of this beach and do a fun walk through of our hotel, Harmony Marina Suites. See you then!