First days in St Lucia

My first day in St. Lucia I went to work with Elaine. This is the view from her therapy room window. I've seen most of the therapy rooms she's worked in and this one is one of the nicest. Back in Michigan she had a therapy "room" that was just a corner of the school's boiler room. She's shared classrooms, used janitor's closets, you name it. Her room at CDGC is bright and airy and colorful. Oh yeah, and this is the view!

After work we took a walk around Castries.This is the interior of the Castries cathedral.

The kiosk where we stopped for a "bake" in the morning. What's a "bake?"

This is a "bake." They come roasted on a BBQ grill, fried (a "fry bake") and a yeast version called a "float."

You can get them plain, buttered, filled with cheese (a really good white cheddar), salt fish or tuna. They are yummy!

Street scene in Castries:

 

A favorite way to get around:

The church beside the church:

The farmers' market in Castries:

 

One of the sauce vendors at the farmers' market:

A second story bar/restaurant:

A commercial building in Castries. I love the way the green paint has peeled to reveal the blue underneath.

A tiny small part of the hill Elaine walks up every morning to get to work. She and other pedestrians share the tiny roadway with cars - and buses and trucks - going up and coming down.

Home again

Sunset at Shacks Beach

Back home again. Well, at least I am. Elaine is still in St Lucia and will be until Christmas.

Interesting flight home. Not bad, just a little weird. My flight on Liat Air from St Lucia first stopped for a passenger pick-up in Dominica then on to Antigua where I was supposed to change to the flight for San Juan. In Antigua everybody has to get off the plane, go through a "transit" station where they check your passport and boarding pass for the next leg and then back through security screening (even though nothing has changed since you boarded the plane an hour earlier).

When we went through the transit screening, they told us our flight to San Juan was not going to be direct, that we were making a little detour to - Dominica! apparently Liat had a problem with a plane and passengers who were supposed to get from Dominica to Antigua for the San Juan flight couldn't get there. So we went and picked them up.

Arriving two hours late in San Juan wasn't any big deal for me at least. I didn't have anybody waiting for me. I didn't have to be anywhere at any particular time. Some passengers did have to change connecting flight though.

What was a big deal was Elaine was tracking the flight on the Internet. The Liat website showed our flight leaving St Lucia, leaving Dominica, and then, it just disappeared. The website didn't show it landing anywhere. We did in fact land in Antigua, but then because of the detour, they had to create a whole new flight number on the fly (as it were). Our old flight simply ceased to exist. But that information didn't show up on the website anywhere.

My cellphone didn't work until I got back to PR. I don't have a smart phone or tablet or any of those other gadgets. It was some old skool travel for me: Plans changed, flights changed, and I had no way to communicate with anyone. Just keep truckin' til you get to where your goin.'

Even though I back in PR, I still have some stuff to in St Lucia to write about. That will be coming up as I get time. Stay tuned.

At the southern tip

As part of our Jounen Kwéyòl tour of the island, our hostess and guide Aretha took us to the very southern tip of the island past Vieux Fort. From here you can see the widest part of St. Lucia.(Unfortunatly my lens isn't wide enough to take it all in.) This is looking north. The Atlantic is on the right, the Caribbean on the left.

The community at the base of the hill is Vieux Fort. I know it's hard to see in this photo, but just past the settlement is a flat grey strip that runs horizontally at just about the center and almost the full width of the land. That is the runway of St. Lucia's larger airport, Vieux Fort. This the airport where the bigger jets land. And the runway really does run almost the full width of the land at that point.

From up on top of this peak it meeting of the Atlantic (top) and Caribbean (bottom) is very apparent.

St. Lucia's El Morro

Like El Morro commands the entrance to San Juan harbor in Puerto Rico, Fort Rodney overlooks the entrance to Rodney Bay in St. Lucia.

Fort Rodney, named for British Admiral Rodney, was built in 1778 on Pigeon Island, two peaks that rise between the Atlantic Ocean and Rodney Bay. Located just 25 miles south of the French post at Fort Royal in Martinique, Rodney Bay "is the post the Governor of Martinique had set his eye on and if possessed by the enemy would deprive us of the best anchorage in these islands and from which Martinique is always attackable" Admiral Rodney wrote to the Admiralty back in England.

Barracks, cook houses, and other support buildings were built below. The heart of the fort was the gun battery on the lower of the two peaks commanding the entrance to the bay.

Three 24-pound cannons and two eleven-and-a-half inch mortars guarded the bay entrance.

Further up the ridge between the two peaks the fort's heaviest gun, a 32-pounder, could be turned from north to south to cover the St. Lucia Channel and Gros Islet Bay.

In 1781 Fort Rodney successfully held off a French invasion of Gros Islet.

Jounen Kwéyòl

In St. Lucia the last Sunday in October is Jounen Kwéyòl, a international celebration of all things Creole and we got to join the party!

As to the origins of Jounen Kwéyòl:

"At a meeting of the international organization of Creole speaking countries, Bannzil Kwéyòl, in

Louisiana, U.S.A. in 1983, it was decided to observe an International Creole Day (Jounen

Kwéyòl) annually on October 28th. Countries involved in this decision included Cayenne,

Dominica, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique, Mauritius, Reunion, Seychelles and St. Lucia." 

The purpose is to preserve Creole customs, languages and traditions.

Here in St. Lucia, Jounen Kwéyòl is celebrated all over the island. Some districts have designated areas for the community to come together to celebrate. Our hostess and guide for the day, Aretha, took us to one of these community celebrations in Monchy.

 
We got there early specifically so we would not get into the huge crowds that showed up as the day went on because we had more parts of the island we wanted to visit.

Like all good festivals Jounen Kwéyòl celebrates music and dance, like these women dancing to Creole music:

food:

and of course drink

But it's not just these designated sites. Every little roadside place, which are normally closed on Sundays, have pots and grills of food to sell and music - Creole music mostly - blasting. I can't begin to tell you how many of these roadside parties we passed in our travel down the Atlantic (eastern) side of the island.

On our way back north in the late afternoon, we passed by the same where we stopped in the morning. There cars were parked a mile or more from the main festival site. There were so many cars and so many people the main road was nearly blocked.

It was a fabulous fun day. I would love to come back and spend a more time and stop at many more of the little roadside places. What a great celebration! Even if I didn't understand a lot of what was said in Kwéyòl. But then I'm used to that.

Celebrating early

On our horseback ride through a banana farm we kept hearing what sounded like gun shots. We asked our guide Spencer what people were hunting. He said they weren't gun shots, they were bamboo tubes.

Hunh?

He asked if we wanted to see them. Sure!

So we rode around to the local elementary school. The kids were fascinated by our horses but we were invited into the school grounds to see the "celebration."

This would NEVER happen in the States! A group of what looked to be nine- or ten-year-olds, with adults nearby but not hovering over them, were pouring tiny amounts of kerosene into bamboo tubes, lighting firesticks from bottles of kerosene with rags stuffed in them (essentially Molotov cocktails) and lighting the kerosene in the bamboo. The kerosene ignited with a loud cannon-like BOOM. This was what we heard from the other side of the valley.

These bamboo "cannons" are common at celebrations here in St. Lucia. People use them at times like we use fireworks - Christmas, New Year's or in this case Jounen Kwéyòl or Creole Day. (More about Jounen Kwéyòl coming soon.)

We were fascinated. One little boy watched us watch the boys light the "cannons." Elaine said to him, "we've never seen this before." The boy looked incredulous. "You've never seen this before?" he asked. "Nope." He shook his head sadly, apparently wondering at the woeful ignorance of the old white people.

We asked another youngster if anyone ever got hurt. He looked surprised at the question and said, "No."

Many of the schools celebrate Jounen Kwéyòl on Friday. The official island-wide celebration is on the last Sunday of October each year.

Scuba diving St Lucia, Dive 2

 

Our second dive was on the purpose-sunk wreck LesLeen M, named after the former owner's two daughters. This was supposed to be our first dive because it is the deeper of the two, but currents and a gazillion other divers from other boats in the water forced us to switch our dives. It's not really a big problem: the bow, where the buoy line is tied off, is about 30 feet. The propeller and rudder bottom at 65 feet. Depending on how you profile the dive about half is spent at 60 feet or so. The rest is exploring shallower parts of the wreck.

Our briefing instructions were, if you get separated, make your way to the bow to the buoy line. With a lot of divers in the water kicking up sediment in less-than great vis to start with and everybody (but me) wearing a black wet suit, I did get separated. I spent much of the dive exploring the bow section which was fine with me. Again, visibility was not anywhere near 100' so exploring up close, looking at smaller stuff, was great.

Eventually my group did appear at the buoy line. And immediately started up the line. I looked at my air gauge; I still had over a thousand pounds left. Turns out one of the guys was under 500 when he and his buddy started back to the bow. By the time he got to his safety stop at 15' he was breathing hs buddy's air.

So for all my dive buddies back in PR - I WAS NOT THE GAUGE on either dive. Sixty minute dive on the first dive - admittedly a shallow dive - and a came up with 1000 pounds. Forty-five minute second dive, about half of it near 60 feet, came up with 1000 pounds.

Not bad for an old guy.

Photos from both dives can be found on our Flickr page.

Diving with Steve's Scuba

The dive shops here appear to be primarily tour operators catering to tourists. This isn't really surprising. For example, Steve's Scuba is on of the top-rated operations and their little tiny shack houses the office operation and rental gear. There is no retail at all. You can't even buy a mask or snorkel. I haven't seen all of the scuba "shops" but my impression is they are all pretty much that way.

I did two dives with Steve's. We had a full boat - 12 - but only 7 of us got on at the dive shop dock. The rest we picked up at stops at resorts along the way. We had 6 experienced divers, a family of four on discover dives and two snorkelers. Our boat captain was kept very busy motoring back and forth dropping off and picking up the various groups. It's sort of a water taxi for divers.

Because of conditions we reversed the usual pattern and did the shallower dive first, saving the deeper dive on the purpose-sunk wreck LesLeen M. So our first dive was on a reef called Roseman's Trench, named for a 10-meter swim-thru. Our dive master, Ken, told be on a good day visibility here is 100' or more. There has been a lot of rain here in the last two weeks so visibility is much less than normal. Some sites are literally undiveable because of the closed down visibility. Hmmm - sounds like home.

Virtually all the diving here is on the west coast, the Caribbean side. Ken told me strong currents and big jellyfish populations make the Atlantic side pretty much undiveable.

Since there has been LOTS more rain since this dive, I probably won't try to dive again while I'm here on this trip. I'll try to come back in the winter - the dry season - and dive again.

Sunsets

On Tuesday I watched the sunset from here on the back of a horse at the end of a fabulous ride with our friend Marie. Tonight I watched the sunset as I headed into the water for a sunset/night snorkel session.

The ocean has been so flat for the last week or so. Shacks hasn't been this flat, especially for days in a row, even in summer for more than two years. The surfers are starving for waves. But snorkeling has been good and we've even gotten in a couple of good dives.

It addition to flat, it has been HOT! We've set several new records for daily high temps. And calm! As in no wind. None. Zip. Nada. Even people who lived here their whole lives can't remember a stretch this long, this hot, this calm, this flat. It has literally been weeks.

But it's still beautiful. And speaking of beautiful, here is a sunset last week from St. Lucia:

Buses in St Lucia

This is a bus stop here Castries. The buses do have a regular schedule which is to run their route over and over as quickly as possible for their entire shift. They probably start out staggered but lots of times there will be one every 3-4 cars or so. Since there are so many running at any one time and their routes all are on the same main road generally, they come every couple of minutes or so...at least during commuting times.

Sometimes bus drivers will actually leave their route if they're not too full and no one objects. Of course, that's for a little extra consideration ($), but all the same it's super nice. That's how I got home from a recent trip to Pigeon Island...and he even stopped and waited while I got grilled chicken to go!

I know the buses run at night, but guessing that's more like every 15-20 min., but that's purely a guess. There's no need (or place) to post a schedule.

Once you know what bus you want, all you do is go to the bus stop, stand there and flag it down when it's driving towards you. I have never waited more than 5 minutes for a bus and frequently I'll be getting on one as I watch 2-3 others pass by while I'm loading. And, when you want to get off, you just say "bus stop, driver" when your stop is coming up. You pay when you get off the bus (almost always) and that's that.

Not like the Parelli horse training video

Pat Parelli is a well-known horse trainer and horse trainer trainer. He does workshops and has a bunch of videos about his training. I have a couple of his beginner videos and watch  them to (hopefully) get better with our horses. This seems even more important in Elaine's absence.

One of the things Parelli talks about is going out and just sitting with your horse. No agenda, no treats, no feeding, just sit and see what the horse does. Let your horse approach you. Don't touch the horse until he touches you.

The other day I decided  to go sit with our horses. I've done this before, but not with three horses in the corral.

First Zip, our friend Marie's horse, kinda sauntered up and sniffed me from toe to head and back again. Then he just stood there by me. Chocolate wandered up. He's the alpha horse so he put his ears back and pushed Zip away. Then he proceeded to sniff me from foot to head and back. Then he put his nose right in front of my face, waiting for me to blow in his nose, a kind of greeting he and I have. Then he just stood there in front of me.

Pretty soon Zip wandered back over and he and Chocolate stood nose-to-nose with each other literally at the end of my nose. This is definitely not how it looked in the video!

I just sat still waiting to see what was going to happen next.

Chocolate gave a little nudge with his nose and Zip backed off, only to walk around the outside of the corral and stick his head in over my shoulder. So there I sat with Chocolate right in front of my face and Zip breathing in my ear.

KTJ meanwhile just stood at the far end of the corral through this whole thing with a kind of quizzical expression like, "what are y'all doing?"

We stayed that way for about 10 minutes before I finally got up and moved out. I repeat - this is not how it looked in the video!

A couple of good dives

Wow! Scuba diving two days in a row!

On Saturday, I tagged along on a discover dive with newlyweds Rusty and Jessica from Atlanta. This was my 199th dive and they had a really good time.

In spite of Rusty's claiming they don't need another expensive hobby, they are planning to get certified.

On Sunday Darryl and I took our friend Marie diving the outside at Shacks.

Marie has been a certified, very experienced diver for a long time but she hasn't been diving at all for about five years. So this was her "welcome back to the water" dive.

And it was my 200th dive! Thank you Darryl and Marie.

New post from St. Lucia

Here's a new post from Elaine in St. Lucia:

An amazing morning - went with a group of parents and their children with cerebral palsy and 6 kids got to ride horses for the first time at Hoofprints Stables here in St. Lucia (thank you, Winston!) SMILES so big they reached the sun and back and kids with spasticity were showing relaxed limbs and improved trunk support. And add to that the little guy I came with (who is 4 and non-verbal) started imitating me in the car. We will be doing speech therapy starting Tuesday after work...this kid is ready to talk! (that's MY smile to the sun and back!)

A little ocean threrapy

I finally got in the ocean, more than a week after I got back to la isla. I came back with strep throat (I think) and just felt like crap. Between that and having so much to get done, I just didn't get in the ocean. I've been on the beach with the dogs and took KTJ swimming, but not in the water for me until today.

All I can say is, "ahhhhhh!" I missed the salt water.

I don't normally do "selfie" photos. This is an exception - and as good a reason as I can think of to not do more.

Swimming with a horse in Puerto Rico

No photos of this one.

I took KTJ swimming in the ocean. Two things I can say about the experience: one, it seemed like a good idea at the time and two, it was a good walk, in that all beings returned home unharmed.

Walking her down the the beach was pretty uneventful. When we got to the water, she was a little reluctant but eventually worked her way in and swam a bit. But coming out - holy cats!!!

She started rearing, bucking, throwing kicks every which way.  And when that girl throws a kick and she's fully stretched out, she must be 20 feet long! At first I just hung on to the lead rope and danced with her to stay beside - not in front of or behind - her. After the third or fourth time, I started yelling at her to stop which she kind of did. Crazy! 

Then these two guys ask me if she went in the water. I said yes. The started shouting, "I want to see!" I said, "no! Look at the way she's acting." Then they started walking up behind her!!!! REALLY crazy! 

But as I said, it was a good walk: she got exercise, she got in the water and everyone came home safe and unharmed. 

I probably won't do that again soon.

Finding a new rythm for my life

Now that Elaine is not here, I have full responsibility for the three dogs and at least two of the horses. These are some major changes to the rhythms of my life. I need to find new rhythms to swing to.

As one beginning, I took KTJ swimming in the ocean by myself this morning. That was an adventure!!

She was a little hesitant at first but then she went in. We had a good time splashing. 

Coming out though! Oh boy. Rearing, bucking, throwing kicks every which way. At first I just hung on to the lead rope and danced with her to stay beside - not in front of or behind - her. After the third or fourth time, I started yelling at her to stop, which she kind of did. Crazy! 

Then these two guys walking on the beach asked me if she went in the water. I said yes. They started shouting, "I want to see!" I said, "no. Look at the way she's acting." Then they started walking up behind her!!!! REALLY crazy! 

But it was a good walk: she got exercise, she got in the water and everyone came home safe and unharmed. She got a full-on bath.

Everything's good. Now it's off to take the dogs for their run on the beach.

Swimming with a horse - in St Lucia!

Well, I couldn't wait any longer....had to ride a horse again. And it turned out I got to take him swimming too. He is a stallion named Bourgeois and he makes the same happy groaning noise like KTJ when he swims ! He belongs to the owner of the International Pony Club!

This is from Elaine's first horse/trail/beach ride in St Lucia.

Elaine's first post from St. Lucia

From time ti time we'll share posts from Elaine in St. Lucia. This is her first.

First 48 hours in St. Lucia has been lovely! Great apartment in Rodney Bay, walking distance to beach, shops, post office, bus stop. Went to my first St. Lucian party - JUMP UP in Gros Islet (held every Fri. night - street party with food, vendors, drink and dancing all night). We were there from 10:30 pm to 2 am and I danced my legs off. LOL! Have been snorkeling in Rodney Bay...great the first time, bad viz yesterday afternoon (a little like Crashboat on a bad day). 

Thank you to everyone for well wishes - miss all my friends and family.

The new adventure begins

 On it's landing approach into St. Lucia Elaine's plane fly past The Pitons, one of St. Lucia's iconic landmarks.

There is actually more from the trip north to catch up on, but the new adventure has started and that needs to take the floor.

I'm back in Puerto Rico holding down the fort. Elaine made it to St. Lucia. She's already settling in to her new apartment. One of her coworkers met her fight - very nice since the "big" airport is a Veiux Fort in the southern part of the island and the apartment, job and home are some two hours away on the northern part of the island.

And then there is that whole driving on the "wrong" side of the road thing. (Since St. Lucia is a former British colony, driving is on the left side.)

Two days in Kalamzoo

We certainly managed to cram a lot of wonderful into our two short days in Kalamazoo.

We had a fabulous dinner with our son and daughter-in-law.

We had an amazing evening at Bell's Eccentric Cafe with so many friends. (I am truly sorry - for my sake - that I didn't spend more time taking pictures of everyone.)

More time with our son and daughter-in-law:

A fabulous reunion with our daughter:

Martini's pizza (hands down the absolute best!):

Water Street Coffee Joint (several times actually):

And we finally got to meet Wrigley:

A train themed week

It was kind of a train themed-vacation. First we went on the CVSR ride.

From Ohio we took a side trip to Michigan to see more family and friends. The first night in Michigan We stayed with our friends Erin and Jason. Their four-year-old son is into trains in a big way! His favorite movie is The Polar Express. When he was three, his parents took him to a train show where he fell in love with a "G" (for giant, I think) gauge Polar Express train. Ah, a bit too old for him. But fortunately his grandfather is a good friend of Santa's and a marvelous woodworker to boot. As a special favor to Santa, Papa made a wooden Polar Express train which was duly delivered on Christmas Eve.

This is just one of several handcrafted wooden trains Papa has made for him. And he loves them! Here's another:

Even our visit to Kalamazoo had trains in it. Here's Amtrak's Wolverine leaving Kalamazoo. We we're waiting to cross the tracks to get to Bell's Eccentric Cafe.

I love trains. I love the sound of them, the feel of them even the gritty smell of them. And I have to say, I think it's ridiculous what this country has done to railroads. Rail is still - by far - the most efficient way to move large amounts of freight from point to point over land. For that matter, it's the most efficient way to move people as well, although passenger traffic has never been a moneymaker for the railroads.

I could tell immediately when we turned off U.S. 23 onto I-94 in Michigan. The right lane was a nearly solid wall of 18-wheelers. It looked kind of like a train with a whole bunch of little tiny (relatively speaking) engines, each with it's own "engineer." Two things always come to mind when I have to drive among these trucks: the menace to drivers in much smaller vehicles and how much better a train carrying all that cargo would be. Nostalgic maybe, but very practical as well. Ah, well. When I rule the world.

Happy birthday, mi amor!

Today is a hard day for many people. The tragedy of the events on this date - and the fact that the media has made franchise out of reminding us - simply overwhelm other considerations. It is doubly difficult for anyone who seeks to find any joy on this date.

Despite the tragedy, there are reasons to celebrate and to find joy. Today was my love's birthday long before it was a day of tragedy. So we are celebrating the fact that she is here with us, in our lives, and she came into this world on this date!

We don't forget, we don't diminish, but it was her day first!