Sunday, 24 January, 2016 – St Lucia

Sunday, 24 January, 2016 – St Lucia

We docked in the capital of Castries. We booked a seven hour tour that took us from Castries on the north-west of the island thru the rain forest to the east coast. St Lucia is a volcanic island and to quote our tour guide “Ricardo” we don't tunnel through the mountains we go over them.

The road was an ever-ending series of switchbacks with beautiful vistas over the ocean and the rainforest. We had several stops along the way at gift shops and scenic lookouts. We saw bananas, mangoes, bread fruit, tomatoes, limes and oranges. At the southern part of the island we stopped at Vieux Fort and then at Laborie where a local beach barbeque was in progress – it looked like fun but we were not invited! From there we visited the Balenbouche Estate http://www.balenbouche.com/ where we had a very interesting tour of the homestead.

From there we proceeded to the Morne Coubaril Estate where we had a typical Caribbean buffet for lunch. It is an estate granted by Louis X1V in 1713 and is still a working farm producing cocoa, coconuts and manioc (cassaba). We were given tastes of coconut, fresh coconut, coconut candy, coconut beans, coconut water and chocolate.

From there we proceeded to the Soufriere drive-in volcano. It constantly spews Sulphur Dioxide and was cordoned off after a local geology professor fell through 30 years ago. Luckily, he was well respected and his students pulled him out. Unfortunately he suffered 2^nd degree burns from his waist down.