St. Vincent and St. Lucia

January 21, 2010





Caribbean misadventures #5: Cruising....






If it's Thursday, I must be in St Vincent... Kingstown to be exact. I find it difficult to separate one day from another. Did we tender in or were we docked at the pier? I think we were docked, so Char and Eileen and I walked into town. It was noisy, dingy, busy little port town, but not particularily architeturally interesting, like Rousseau. There are lots of arcade like stone 'walk throughs' interspersed with shabby modern buildings... There are lots of shops and restaraunts, accessed through dark alleys and between dingy buildings. Many are located on the second floor. We found a small coffee snack shop called The Bounty, run by an expat Canadian on the second floor of such a building. She kindly offered a lot of good information re the town, so we wandered to the market, found my chocolate turds and spices, and then i found an internet cafe, so we split up.



I headed back to The Bounty for lunch... patties and a salad, and then returned to the boat to lounge and wallow in the pool again.





It's sometimes is hard to keep track of where you are. Yesterday it was ST Lucia. and the day before was Dominica. Yesterday I decided to take my first 'off ship' tour, finally getting closer to the water on a catamaran trip to the Pitons. We anchored into a bay near Pigeon Island, and then transferred to the Catamaran. It was a lovely day trip down to the Pitons, two volcanic peaks to the south of Castries the main city. On our return, we disembarked to a small beach that had been 'reserved' for our ship, where the ship had set up a huge over the top barbecue.... but it was good


With all this food in your face all the time - as much as you want, and whatever you want, I am eating less and less. I can't believe how much some people can pack away in this hot weather. But the bbq was a nice end to the day, and I swam off the beach for a bit. I was going to try out the kayaks, but i chickened out. I returned to the ship to freshen up, and make a birthday card for Eileen, whose birthday it was tonight. Eileen is not really a well person, and has a 'manageable' cancer. She retired early, and is using up her savings travelling and doing the things she has always wante to do. I really admire her spirit and her sense of adventure. We had a nice dinner in the 'mediterranean' restaraunt and then I went to bed with a bad mystery.

I'm afraid my missives are a bit boring but nothing much happens when you are on a cruise. I can observe, and read, and sketch a bit but this one island a day is pretty annoying. I am looking forward to five days in barbados, even if I never leave the guest house. I am enviably sun tanned at this point, and hopefully won't peel because i will probably be darker by the time I leave

I am thinking i ought to start promoting myself to cruise lines - lessons in illustrated journals. Even regular cruisers get pretty bored and the afternoons can be long. If I could do this without having to pay for the cruise.... i could get used to it!