St. Lucia

In some sense, our travels in Indonesia last year inspired me to undertake this present adventure. A healthy network of local ferries connects the vast Indonesian archipelago, and although we only took one (from Java to Bali), that experience made me wonder if we might explore the much closer archipelago in the Caribbean using ferries too.

Nope. Digging into it, I learned that you can rent boats to sail yourself around, but that seemed super-expensive and pretty time-consuming. You can take cruise ships, but Steve and I were interested in learning about life on an assortment of islands rather than lounging on cruise-ship decks and making lightning calls at ports packed with gringos. In the end, I was only able to book passage for us on two local aquatic lines. One was on a car ferry that sails overnight from San Juan in Puerto Rico to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. I also got us seats on the much shorter L’Express des Îles line that runs from St. Lucia to Dominica (via Martinique). Then one day last month I got a call informing me the Puerto Rican car ferry wouldn’t be running on May 28 after all; they needed to do some “maintenance” work on it.

That left only L’Express des Îles, on which we sailed Tuesday morning. My rating: “meh.” We had to get up at 3:45 a.m. to be driven to the ferry dock in Castries (on the opposite side of St. Lucia from where we were staying.) Buying the ticket online had been easy, and check-in at the port wasn’t bad.

But then the big catamaran didn’t pull out of the harbor when it was supposed to leave (at 7 a.m.) Instead we waited about 70 minutes as passengers continued to trickle on board. At one point Steve and I wondered if the captain hadn’t decided he wouldn’t cast off until they rustled up enough customers to fill his vessel.

The boat had just two levels: an air-conditioned lower deck where you really couldn’t see anything.

The one above it was hotter and filled with harder, more uncomfortable seats.

A small outdoor section in the rear contained no seats but better views, and Steve spent a fair amount standing at the rail there, but someone had to guard our seats and bags, so I did most of that.

At the end of my last blog post, I posed the question of how well one could experience St. Lucia in just a short stay. Now I can say: more time would have been better, but the two days we had were extraordinarily pleasant.

“Coco View Villa,” which I secured with HomeExchange.com guest points, turned out to be a rambling wooden, four-story structure that took in much of the southern sweep of the island, so comfortable and expansive neither of us wanted to do much more on Sunday than hang out in it.

And a living room opening onto the wonderful deck.

A pool deck on the first level overlooked the abundant gardens.

This cute, if somewhat excitable, guy kept an eye on everything, along with three smaller dogs.

The hanging chair swings were a marvelous place to take in the sweeping views.

We made a few small runs that first full day…

Picked up some groceries at the supermarket in Vieux Fort.

Bought a three-piece lunch from the Colonel.

The coconut shrimp that we took out from a local joint for dinner was delicious.

We revved up our touristic engines Monday, driving ourselves to the southwestern side of the island, where some of the biggest visitor attractions are situated.