St Lucia...
St. Lucia. We took the tour that has this description:
- Scenes of St. Lucia. Explore the island's colorful history on a half-day excurssion that stops at Caribelle Batik, tours a historic sugar mill, and visits a colonial merchant's house. Savor the view of the harbor below and enjoy snacks and a complimentary beverage. Some sections of the road are winding.
And the tour turned out to be fascinating. To my surprise, my favourite part was the sugar mill, both beautiful and fascinating, in a tropical steampunk style. It was also great because it's where they gave us snacks and rum punch. The snacks themselves were fascinating: first, a guide showed us examples of the local produce: cocoa pods, coconuts, starfruit, oranges, limes, different kinds of lemons (that didn't look like lemons), breadfruit, bananas, sugar cane, cashews, and almonds. They suck the sugar cane and use the fibrous remains of the cane to brush their teeth - if they don't have a toothbrush to hand. maaseru laughed at me for sucking the sugar cane dry and flat - but it was delicious, hardly sweet at all, with a delicate flavour. We ate in a large open verandah overlooking part of the gardens, and little birds - some of them sparrows, some of them sparrowlike but black, with bits of blue on their breast - came and boldly begged for bits of coconut.
And the plantation was surrounded by rainforest, and beautiful exotic flowers.
1. Local colour - a flower at the merchant's house.
2. The view from the merchant's verandah, showing our ship, the Ruby Princess, at harbour in the background.
3. A different angle of St. Lucia from the merchant's upstairs verandah.
4. In the merchant's house, there were many examples of local art. The merchant is a local who made good, starting out selling vegetables by the roadside and ending up with an international shipping company in the mid 20th century. His wife was an art collector, and they had decoraged their house with both international and local art. By world standards, it was fairly humble, but it was a delightful illustration of local skills and artistic culture. I loved this table-support: carved mahogany by a renowned local artist, sort of tropical art deco.
5. The batik centre and shop. Some of the garments were mundane, some breathtakingly beautiful. Lots of blues and whites, probably my favourite colour combination. Though I also like blue and gold, blue and silver, blue and green - and they had those, too. I bought a wrap.
6. Our guide, Kingsley, got off the bus to give us a talk on how bananas are grown and harvested. They are wrapped in blue plastic to help them ripen quickly. There's a lot of work involved in growing bananas, and each banana tree yields only one harvest. I have a whole new respect for bananas. And of course I thought of Ianto, in the Cardiff supermarket, sighing as his companions from the 1950s were delighted by the bananas.
7. The sugar cane factory, built in the 18th century.
8. The birds who visited us while we snacked on rum punch and bits of coconut and grapefruit.
9. A man with a bicycle on the street of St. Lucia. He was looking around because a beautiful new car had almost hit our bus - the driver wasn't looking.
