Castries, San Lucia

Our tour of Antigua yesterday morning was very well presented by Shereen, a local tour guide. We were in a small bus of 20 people and were taken to see the sights including Nelson’s Dockyard. Lots of poverty on this small island where the minimum wage is equal to $350 US a month. Tourism is the main income. See pictures in yesterday’s blog. Yesterday afternoon we attended an excellent lecture on Caribbean wildlife by our resident naturalist. Looking forward to more talks by him. We also dressed up for dinner at the Chef’s table (see photo). As most of you probably know chefs table is where the chef serves whatever he wants. It was a five course meal with a middle “Granita” course to “cleanse the palate” followed by the main course. It is different every night and last night was Xiana (Cantonese) with a wonderful mixture of flavours. We are keeping active to try to counteract all the food options. But if we stick to the fancy restaurants the portions are small, which helps. Taking the stairs and walking lots when able. In the evening we did much better at the trivia game (our team has not won yet but we will). We discovered that the one couple are veterinary pathologists so interesting listening to their lives. We finished off the day by attending an ABBA tribute by the ship’s singers. Not as good as the “Dusty” one the night before but well done and we loved the music. Showing our age! Today, in St. Lucia we started the morning with a bus tour of the city and surrounding mountains. And we mean mountains! Winding, narrow roads snaked up to rural areas with many small farms, banana plantations, etc. Definitely tropical rainforest vegetation. MG, our guide, described it as a roller coaster ride, and it was. Lots of horn honking to warn you were coming around the corner or just to say Hi. None of the roads have street names and people are directed by the colour of the house. We stopped at Stone Point, a private residence occupied by a retired physician who hosts groups like ours. There we tried banana ketchup (yep), cakes made from items on the plantation and fruit punch made from fruit from the estate. We enjoyed the vistas at the stop. This afternoon we went to a chocolate factory to make our own chocolate! Right up the chocolate lover’s alley for sure. It proved not to be as easy as you think. We first ground the cocoa nibs into a paste (in a very hot pestle) then added cocoa butter, sugar and ground some more. We poured this mixture into a mold and allowed it to cool. After a half hour we each came away with our own chocolate bar. Very tasty. It is about 5 pm and we are soon leaving San Lucia for Barbados – tomorrow’s destination.