Honeymoon, Days 1 & 2
We’re back from St. Lucia!
It took a Herculean effort on our parts, but we actually went an entire week without checking email or browsing the web (except one short 10-minute stint where we had to find addresses for some post cards). Google Reader informs me that I have too many unread items for it to bother counting them, most of which I expect will be unceremoniously “marked read”.
Anyway, we had a really good time in St. Lucia and have almost 900 pictures to show for it. Not all of them are worth showing, but not caring about taking crappy photos is the joy of owning a digital camera. I just finished putting up the pictures from the first two days; nothing too exciting in this batch since we were mostly just getting our bearings, but it’s a start.
Our plane left Toronto at about 6:00 am, so we left my parent’s house at 2:00 (thankfully my dad looked after the driving) and caught our plane without incident. We had a pretty quick transfer in Atlanta and somehow my luggage made it while Cressa’s went to destinations unknown… or hung out in Atlanta for an extra day… we don’t really know. Cressa had to survive the next day with what she’d packed in the carry-on luggage, but her suitcase arrived by supper on Thursday.
We flew into Hewanorra International Airport at the South end of the island (St. Lucia has a second airport that’s only about five minutes from where we were staying, but it’s not large enough to accommodate bigger planes) where we were taken by taxi to our resort, Almond Morgan Bay, at the North end of the island. St. Lucia is only about 27 miles long (and 14 miles wide) but it took almost two hours to drive over or around all of the mountains in the way. While we rode, we learned a lot from our talkative taxi driver. For instance, St. Lucia’s major industries are: Tourism, Fishing, Agriculture (mostly bananas) and Construction.
Once we made it to the resort, we checked in, sorted ourselves out and had dinner at “Bambou”, one of the four restaurants on-site. The resort itself wasn’t super fancy (though I’ve never been to a similar resort elsewhere that I could make a comparison to), but they did do an excellent job with the food. We got a little tired of the buffets (every breakfast and the occasional lunch/dinner), but whenever the chance arose to order from the menu the food was delicious. We also availed ourself of the bars; Cressa had a lot of daiquiris, while I stuck with gin and tonics.
The morning of our first full day was taken up with orientation and booking different tours, while the afternoon was spent on the beach. I took a sailing lesson on one of the little catamarans and Cressa worked on her tan.
We had another delicious dinner (at “Le Jardin” this time), visited the crabs on the beach, and then watched the Bourne Supremacy (with Spanish subtitles) on TV. Most of our evenings followed a similar pattern; since the sun sets at 6:30 every day there’s not a whole lot to do after supper (the pools close at 6:00, and swimming in the ocean after dark isn’t recommended) so we watched a lot of movies.