St. Lucia
May 10 - 12, 2002
Our first stop on St. Lucia was the city of Castries, one of the
busiest ports in the Caribbean. The Mandalay used this stop to restock
our supply of fresh water. We walked to Columbus Square park for the
free portion of the St. Lucia Jazz Festival. The Diamond Electric band
played while we were there, but it was extremely crowded (many of the
local school children were there in their uniforms) and hot. So we
found a small patch of grass just outside the fence surrounding the
park so we could sit down and enjoy the music. We were even joined
there by a couple classes of school children and their teachers. The
festival is obviously quite a special event for the people of St. Lucia.
After spending the morning and afternoon at Castries, the ship
relocated up the coast to Rodney Bay, where we were to stay for the
next 2 days. Some of the other passengers went out after dinner to the
Friday night "Jump Up" celebration on the streets of Gros
Islet, a small fishing village near Rodney Bay. However, Beth and I
were tired so we skipped the night life for the first time this trip.
On Saturday we walked around the restaurants near Rodney Bay and then
spent the remainder of the morning on the beach. In the afternoon,
Windjammer had purchased all the passengers tickets to the Jazz
festival on Pigeon Point. The Windjammer people said the festivities
never started on time, so they didn't even run shuttle launches to
Pigeon Point until after the announced starting time. But things must
have gotten started on time, because when we arrived the first
entertainers, Ronald "Bee" Hinkson and Denys Baptiste were
already into their set. The grassy hills in front of the stage were
already packed with people, and there was no chance of being able to
sit in view of the stage. But luckily, there was a large video screen
setup just to the side, so Beth and I found a nice place to watch the
screen and we could still hear the music just fine. In between the main
acts, we were located right in front of another smaller stage where a
large steel drum orchestra entertained us. We stayed at the festival
for the performances by Angelique Kidjo and Buddy Guy, but we got a
little restless and left before the performance by Lauren Hill. I was
able to hear much of her performance from the ship, and I was glad we
hadn't stayed. Although her voice sounded beautiful, her songs didn't
seem to match the mood of the festival. While everyone else was upbeat,
her songs were mostly of protests and political statements.
On Sunday morning we took a guided 4x4 Jeep tour of some of the smaller
towns and out of the way places on St. Lucia. It was Mother's Day, so
many of the women in the small villages were dressed immaculately and
most of the women in each village were wearing the same color dresses.
Orange was the color in one village, while purple and blue were colors
I remember from other villages. One of the images above shows the
interesting vehicle we were in on the tour. It was an enjoyable way to
see the island, standing up in the back and ducking to avoid tree
branches while travelling on the rough and narrow roads. The final stop
of the tour was a private beach, where we did some swimming and
dancing. One of the tour guides also climbed a palm tree to harvest
some coconuts, it was amazing to see how easy it looked to climb to the
top (of course it didn't look easy enough for me to try :-).
The Jeep tour lasted longer than we expected, so we ended up missing
the first act of the Sunday session of the Jazz Festival, the Los
Queson Band. We did enjoy Courtney Pine, India Arie, and Smokey
Robinson was the final act of the entire festival. He was definitely
the highlight of all the entertainers, his set was the one I enjoyed
the most. Afterwards, we stood on the dock waiting for the tender and
they shot off fireworks about a hundred yards from where we were. The
wind was blowing the fireworks in our direction, so Beth flinched
everytime as the fireworks were going off directly over our heads. I
have never been so close to exploding fireworks, it was quite an
experience (Beth even got hit in the leg by a hot particle from the
explosions).
