‘Ladies and gents, welcome to Saint Lucia’

January 8, 2020, Castries, Saint Lucia — ‘This paradise is so seductive that the British and French fought over it for 150 years.’ So says Viking. Its original inhabitants were Arawaks, from the northern regions of South America. France founded a colony here in 1650. But after 14 battles — each side ruled the island 7 times — the Brits won out in 1814, and today this sovereign island nation is part of the Commonwealth, though its predominant culture remains French.

I opted for my longest excursion of the trip, 6½ hours, since I was pretty sure I would love seeing as much of this seductive 21 x 14-mile paradise as I could squeeze into a one-day stop. To date, my Caribbean island visitations are limited, compared to friends’. Oddly, the first one I visited was Cuba, in 2010, and again in 2017. Plus Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Grenada. This trip, I’ve added Barbados, Tobago, Saint Lucia with two more to come, Antigua and St. Thomas.

Our excellent guide, Nadia, began many sentences with ‘Ladies and gents....’ She talked non-stop for nearly 7 hours. So much information, but I’m running out of steam and will make this a photo essay more than a history lesson. Though there’s one bit of history they are very proud of. St. Lucia has produced two Nobel prize winners: Arthur Lewis (1915-1991), in Economics, 1979; and poet and playwright Sir Derek Walcott (1930-2017), in Literature, 1992.

St. Lucians take education very seriously: Children attend from age 5 through 17, and if they are absent too often — or police find them playing hooky — their parents are arrested. Typical salaries range from $400 to $650 per month. High standards of education notwithstanding, the island’s unemployment rate is a staggering 21%. There is no unemployment insurance, no food stamps, no subsidized housing... people without means move in with family. The overall sales tax is a whopping 12.5%.

View from an overlook...

... where one could purchase local crocheted hats — complete with fake dreadlocks!

... and rum infused with all kinds of herbs and spices... which reminded me of a bottle of brandy for sale in Viet Nam — with a pickled cobra in the bottle!

Believe it or not, this is the view from the public restroom...

Our first visitation was at the Pink Plantation House, which is or will soon become an Airbnb. It originally belonged to a French sugar family and was tantalizingly inviting. We started the morning with a snack of rum punch and very tasty fried fish cakes.

View from the house. The cauldron was used for boiling cane juice into molasses.

Today an artist lives there and runs a restaurant in the house; she designs and her staff produces very nice silk screens, which she sells in the gift shop. In 1963, the Brits introduced bananas to replace the sugar cane industry. Today tourism accounts for 75% of the island’s economy.

St. Lucia was seriously damaged in 2010 by torrential rains that wiped out low-lying banana fields, then by a hurricane in 2013. It is ‘fogged’ monthly with insecticide to prevent insect-borne diseases.

The rocky Gros et Petit Pitons, below. Piton est le français pour peak. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, these 2400+-foot volcanic spires overlook Jalousie Bay. St. Lucia is more mountainous than most other Caribbean islands — and riding around it for nearly 7 hours in a small bus was a very up and down and around business!

If any of this looks familiar, you’ve seen it in movies, including the original Dr. Doolittle with Rex Harrison.

We were warned not to buy birdhouses made of coconut shells — they may contain termites — or shells of conch, which are endangered.

From one vantage point we could see on the horizon Martinique, an overseas département of France. I’m considering a French immersion course there to avoid at least some of the next New England winter. (Though it’s in the 50s at home right now.)

Next stop on the tour was the Diamond Botanical Gardens in the town of Soufrière, where we admired all sorts of tropical plants — many I recognized from having them indoors during my houseplant phase in the ’70s.

A ‘lobster claw’ flower...

Look closely at this red ginger flower... there’s a passenger.

The garden offers these pools for bathing in mineral-rich waters....

We had lunch at the garden in a converted 1700s sugar mill. It began with background music by this band — shakey-shake seeded wooden tube, banjo, harmonica and drum. Their last song was ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window?’ Very odd...

St. Lucian woman along the way...

We had a guided tour of Sulphur Springs Park, ‘home to the Caribbean’s only drive-through volcano.’ The gray depression in front is filled with boiling and bubbling mud, which has therapeutic properties — once it’s cooled down.

These folks had dipped into the mineral-laden water, then let the slime dry on their bodies. Some then drew designs on themselves. They ended up looking very aboriginal.