St. Lucia

Because David's mother's name is Lucia, the island of St. Lucia has always held a special appeal.  It is great that we can finally visit.

For the first time in a long time, we decided to spend a few days in the marina.  The advantages of this are access to unlimited water and power, and the ease in reaching destinations on land -- you simply hope off the boat and on to the dock.  The disadvantages are cost, sometimes noise, and often less breeze to cool you off.  But we had heard very positive things about the Marina in Rodney Bay, and the price was very favorable, so we decided to give it a try.

We were able to dock Callisto without any drama.  This particular marina has unusually wide channels and unusually wide slips, making the docking process easy.  We like the marina environs, and have eaten in a couple of the restaurants on site.  We have also walked in the area around the marina.  The main road comes by and is very busy, but there are reasonable places to walk in relative safety.

We booked a trip to hike a nature trail to the summit of a mountain called Gros Piton.  It has a sister mountain called Petit Piton.  This was a physically challenging hike for us.  We rode in a taxi for two hours to the trail head.  We climbed with a guide for two hours, ascending more than 2000 feet.  It was steep, and we were in the hot sun for a lot of the time.  A few minutes resting and photographing, then two hours back down.  Going down was actually harder than up.  Less out of breath, but knees and legs got very, very tired.  We were really quiet during the ride back to the marina.  Sheer exhaustion.