Caribean Log – Powered by British Airways. A tour of St. Lucia Island with Captain Typhoon

6 July 2012 Caribbean Journal (2011), St. Lucia No comment

Finally, our first day in the Caribbean, in St. Lucia ! I had fallen asleep rather quickly, so I obviously woke up before sunrise… Pulling the curtains aside, I feel astonished to see that the sky is clear. Wow!!! I was hoping Maria would go away – but not so soon… Why sleep anymore? I have to get ready to catch the first sunrays…

Day 3. Star date: September 11, 2011

The sun makes a rather shy appearance… No problem, I am already by the swimming pool. There are no less than eight pools scattered across the resort – for kids, for grown-ups, with a bar, without a bar, catering for every taste… And at 5 a.m., they are all refreshingly deserted… I can only see some boys cleaning the leaves off the bottom of the pools…

I walked around the resort and enjoyed taking pictures with all the flowers you can see everywhere. I am happy to see once again an old acquaintance from Cancun, a yellow flower with a sweet name – “copa de oro” (anyway, this is how Mexicans call it, but maybe here, in the English-speaking – and less “Spanish-speaking” – island of St Lucia, locals have a different name for it).

Breakfast was plentiful, but honestly, I would have expected more types of fresh juice… Anyway, as there are many US guests, of course we got the famous pancakes and puddings… We each have our own preferences… Thanks God not all the cakes have that exploding cinnamon taste they used to have in the States…

What shall we do today? Yesterday, the girls talked with a man called Captain Typhoon, on the beach… Apparently, even the Trip Advisor who is so difficult to please likes him, so this might be an interesting option for visiting this island. We call him; he promptly answers our invite, and hastily arrives by boat… True, not at the exact hour he had announced, but anyway… This is the Caribbean, schedules are more flexible, and the stress of rigid timetables was deported across the border a long time ago. This gives me time for a small session in the pool (one of the eight pools), where I learn that the Romanian football player Hagi is well-known even in St Lucia… Anyway, this time Hagi sold no jewels to anyone, as I cut conversation with the merchant rather sharply.

Captain Typhoon eventually gets to us, so we don’t waste a minute more… We start smoothly, pass by a cliff that is apparently very popular with guano-producing birds, then start more vigorously… One of the problems on this island is humidity. As soon as we got off the plane, my clothes stuck to my body and stayed that way every day, until I managed to peel them off, before taking my shower. The secret of success around here: long showers taken frequently. Of course, accompanied by the air conditioning that turns my hotel room into a genuine oasis. But let us not diverge… The second magic moment that helped us avoid humidity was when Captain Typhoon accelerated using both engines of his boat. We all got dry instantaneously, and the girls clasped their heads with their hands… Not because they were afraid, but because they were simply trying to avoid losing the large brim hats they had just purchased!

Our first stop: Rodney Bay… It so happened that we found two pearls there. One was the famous “Black Pearl”, Jack Sparrow’s pearl from the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, which had been filmed on location in St Lucia… The first surprise: the ship was not as big and as impressive as it looked in the movie (the guys appointed for special effects were more than good with their jobs!), but it still had the pirate flag flying high… On the other hand, “The White Pearl”, next to the pirate ship, was a luxurious modern yacht, with no flag… “Russian Mafia”, says Captain Typhoon… They enjoy “island hopping” and sometimes come to Rodney Bay… I wonder who would be a better interlocutor: the pirates of the Caribbean or the Moscow mobsters.

We visit an ATM and pile up some cash (this is the first time ever when I go to an ATM by boat), and continue our trip… We admire a whole hillside full of deluxe condos, apparently available on a time sharing schedule, and really enjoy the healthy speed of our boat. We only feel the wind blowing in our hair, but not the 80% humidity, nor the 80 degrees heat… 80F, don’t worry, here they do not know Mr. Celsius !

I can tell you that St Lucia is a splendid island… Although its sand is not as white as the one in the Maldives, the natural setting in St. Lucia is better. It looks like an emerald island popping out (in a volcanic kind of way) from the sea… A sea of ever-changing colors, going from dark ink to strong green, with hills displaying their fresh and optimistic green in the background…

Here and there, the green of the tropical forest is cut off by colorful towns and villages, shining brightly under the unexpectedly generous sun of this rainy season… Our next stop: Marigot Bay… This is where the elite lives, so fancy villas rise proudly on hilltops, looking down on the yachts that rest in the “Marigot Bay Marina”… This is the place with the most unexpected neighbors – Mick Jagger, perhaps the most famous resident of St Lucia, lives two houses away from George Foreman, the boxer… I watch his house and wonder if it’s worth being punched in the face so many times for the villa on the top of that hill. Well, apparently it’s all worth it, for some people. Anyway, this bay has become famous because this is the place where they filmed “Doctor Doolittle” – not the recent series, but a musical from 1967 that turned Marigot Bay into a favored destination of this jet-set… Honestly speaking, this is actually quite a spectacular place – an overwhelming sample of Nature’s architecture.

Well, Captain Typhoon saved the best for last… Going around a cliff, we suddenly see the two iconic peaks of St Lucia, called “Les Pitons”, with “Petit Piton” seemingly engaged in a duel with “Gros Piton”, his brother of close to 1,000 meters, both peaks spectacularly popping straight out of the water….

In between the two pythons, on the only white-sand beach of this island (as the sand was imported from somewhere else), we stopped for about an hour to bathe and snorkel into this little natural park… Captain Typhoon frightened us a little, talking of octopi and turtles, but all we found were some small colorful fish and a rather long sword-fish… All in all, it was an excellent bathing session at the bottom of the ‘Pythons’…

We go back to the hotel in a hurry, threatened by some clouds… Some boys on White Beach had warned us about “tropical depression”… This was something less than a tropical storm, but anyway, you did not want to encounter such a thing while sailing on a frail boat, so we rushed back to our hotel… True, as soon as we reached White Beach, it started to rain, although the sun was still shining, but it only lasted for a little while… A cloud got stuck on the tip of Petit Piton, making it look like an erupting volcano. Things seemed to go from bad to worse, but in the end we only got a few raindrops, and the clouds did not chase us to the western coast of St. Lucia, deciding to pour their content over the island instead… They even provided us with a few rainbows – albeit a little bit pale… …

On the other hand, the sunset was definitely not pale. On the contrary, the sun and this mix of various clouds created a gorgeous combination. Red and violet lights, white clouds, blue sky, plus a few hues of blue and black… A new natural show made in the Caribbean… Let’s hope we’ll get the same bright sun and clear sky tomorrow… Especially now, that Maria is already past Puerto Rico, and it seems the “tropical depression” that was threatening us was just a scary thought.