St Lucia

 Thursday, January 20
It is Thursday, and today was St Lucia.  We went to another beach today, and have almost reached our beach limit for the trip.  The sun takes a toll on poor Aspen, even though she is the most excited to be playing in the water.  She plays so hard, that by the time we get back to the ship, she is down for a 3 hour nap as soon as she showers.  Yesterday she even fell asleep on Hayden's head (while she was on his shoulders) on our walk back to the ship.

Shells and sand... my little hobby.

Aspen's sand castles with "WINDOWS"

We usually rent a car in ports, but the aggressive drivers, interesting road rules, and driving on the wrong side of the road kinda scared us off.  That left us with either paying for a tour, or a taxi.  Today we paid a guy $25 to take us to a beach North of where the ship docked.  He knew quite a bit of history and such, so it made it quite interesting.  The bad part about getting off a cruise ship in this port (St. Lucia) is that the taxi/tour guys are so overly aggressive, that it made just walking in to town unbearable because we got harassed for 20 minutes by different taxi service drivers before we finally just took one to get out of there.  Then it was $15 to use a couple chairs and an umbrella on Raymond Bay beach, and they wanted $1 to use the bathrooms (unless you eat lunch at their facility).  The locals walk around and try to sell you jewelry and paintings and such.  I ended up buying a couple necklaces, but then was mad at how much I paid after our taxi driver took us to the market in town, and I found the same things for 1/3 the price.  The market was cool.  Definitely a place to barter, because they are willing.  I was wishing we had had a chance to stop by the local cemetery and take some pictures.  It was beautiful and very different from what we have in Utah.  The plots are above ground and have intricate, large headstones and statues.  This island looked much like Barbados from yesterday, with the exception of the tall peak mountains that St. Lucia has.  Our driver today said it was quite affordable to live here ($300 a month/USD) for a 2 bedroom, which is quite the contrast to the driver yesterday in Barbados, who said starting BUY IN on that island is 10 million on the shore, and low income housing is about $200,000. I think our Barbados driver didn't have any love for the wealthy section of the population on his island (or just extremely envied them). 

I'm starting to think of home.  Shame on me, I know.  On vacation and missing home.  I have been running on a regular basis here, though.  I am not sure I'll miss going back to the cold, however, even some days when I'm baking (and overbaking) on the beach... it does sound appealing.

A mall on the island that never got finished.

Taking care of business back home

amazing backdrop for a beach.