Vacation 2011: Castries, St. Lucia

We spent our fourth full day in Castries, St. Lucia. St. Lucia is a Commonwealth realm, like Barbados. They're an independent nation, but Queen Elizabeth II is their queen. Honestly, Justin and I were quite disappointed with St. Lucia. I think we were expecting something similar to Barbados. St. Lucia seemed to have a lot more poverty than I've ever seen before. The residents weren't totally poverty-stricken, but I was depressed and sad after seeing the conditions that some of the people live in. I'm sure not everyone on the island lives like this, but it's what I saw and that image is stuck in my head.

We decided to walk from the port to the downtown area. Several taxis stopped and tried to give us a ride, but we preferred to walk. During this walk, we walked through a particularly poor area. The dog lying outside one of the structures tugged at my heart. The fact that humans lived in such poor conditions made me sad, too, but animals tied up and being forced to live like that is beyond sad to me.

We eventually made it to the town. There were lots of buildings with vendors and booths. The vendors would physically pull you inside their booth and seemed mad when we said we just wanted to browse. "You're not going to buy anything," which was said with total disgust and shock, was uttered to us several times.


Digicel works in St. Lucia, too!


We literally spent about twenty or so minutes walking around the downtown area before we headed back to the ship. Once again, we were asked by several taxi drivers if they could give us a ride.

These are some photos taken from the ship.












Everything was so lush and green.










A water taxi:





I will say that I got a very lovely tan while walking to and from the ship. I kind of expected to peel, but I did not. The redness subsided within a day or so and I had a nice tan on my shoulders and face. It's not much, but I'll take what I can get.