Saint Lucia, Thanksgiving 2007

Our last stop was Saint Lucia, an independent nation in the British Commonwealth. But at times in it's history St. Lucia was ruled by both the French and the British. As a result, the official language is English but all the locals also speak a type of Creole dialect that is more and more common in the West Indies. The weather was again fabulous.

Saint Lucia looked like a really nice island, the main city of Castries was built right on the hillside. It was quite impressive. The island actually has two large volcanoes that dominate the entire landscape called the Pitons. Both are over 2,000 feet above sea level, pretty impressive for such a small island and a reason that it was one of the first islands in the West Indies 'discovered' by Columbus. Population 140,000 or so.

But today's outing was our most anticipated of the trip:


That's right, ZIP LINES through the rain forest. We took a thirty minute van ride from the pier up into the mountains where we caught an aerial tram up through the rain forest canopy to where the zip lines started.

The ride up the tram took a little over 30 minutes, not exactly your high speed quad, but it was really scenic. The world's largest species of fern is pictured here, hard to get the scale right.


For those of you that might be worried, the people that ran the zip lines were very safety conscious. Yes, Paty is sporting a stylish hair net.

Cool tree that is part of the hike from the tram to the zip lines. All told we 'zipped' across 11 total chasms.

On the tram ride up, we went through the mid canopy. While on the ride down we rode through and above the upper canopy, which provided some great vistas of Saint Lucia.


I did like the vibe and the feel of Saint Lucia, but the zip tour took most of our day. We did have time to stop and get a quick bite to eat at a restaurant directly next to the pier where we were tendering. It was actually quite a good restaurant. Paty bought some banana ketchup (surprisingly good actually) and I was able to sample the local brew, Piton:
The Piton was pretty good, but unfortunately another lager.

Today was also Thanksgiving day, Happy Turkey Day all. For those of you keeping track at home, our last Thanksgivings have been quite varied:
2007 Caribbean Cruise
2006 Galway, Ireland. Surprisingly good pub dinner for charity that night.
2005 Paris, France. Typical snobby waiter, great champagne.
2004 Berlin. I can't remember anything about dinner here. Rest assured it involved beer and Gluhwein. We were probably still depressed at this point that we had to leave Prague for Berlin.

We branched out for dinner this night and went to Shabu Shabu, some type of Mongolian hot pots. Where I can see that the style of cooking, and I use the term loosely, could have some potential it was horrible. I'll save you the details, but just know that we had smoke coming out of our hot pot.

Tuha Note:
Don't go to Shabu Shabu on ship. As for the excursions, the zip lines were great. The only downfall is you really don't have any time to see much of what seemed to be a really nice stop. Have a snack or late lunch/early dinner at the restaurant right off where you tender. You can't miss it. Try the banana ketchup and the jerk fish. Our English friends did the five star lunch tour. To the resort where Bill Gates, Oprah and Beckham go to. They loved it. But it is quite expensive.