Highlights:
Plantain chips bought at the banana plantation - wow so yummy
Enjoyed the Catamaran trip from Soufriere

Our cruise just touches the outer edge of the Caribbean Island of which there are many, giving us a taste of this unknown area. My geography is improving substantially as we headed up the South American coast but the rest of the Caribbean will have to wait for another time. We cruised from Tobago up to St Lucia for a day -another small island about 30km x 10km approximately. The ship docked in the small but reasonably pretty harbour of Castries. The small domestic airport is built port side so it is not uncommon to see aircraft tails whizzing past behind yacht masts as they land or takeoff. The airport approach is directly over the entrance to the harbour and I can see why the Captain said ships often have to wait for air traffic control clearance to enter port.

From the ship we had a great view over the small yacht harbour (and runway behind) and being a lovely warm sunny day gave it that lovely holiday feeling. We met our guide and headed off to the Cathedral which was huge I have to say - especially for a small town. Then it was up a hill to a high point overlooking the harbour and more photos to take. We then headed south through some very windy country and stopped at a banana plantation, then a rum distillery with tour and tasting as you do before lunch, on to a very poor fishing village stopping for photos. It's places like this that remind me how tough it is for people to get by on these small island economies without all the wonderful welfare systems that we often criticise in the western world. I feel like I want to help them all. But there is wealth here as always in these places but concentrated in certain areas where resorts or similar tourism type industry may exist. Some of the resorts are stunning and one harbour we visited on the Cat on our return trip had a huge super yacht anchored there.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant high on a hill with a view of the famous Pitons - a popular movie background it seems with Pirates of the Caribbean movies being the first of a long list of movies which I actually knew, that have filmed scenes in this area. They are rightfully proud of their volcanic Pitons as they have a well defined conical shape - and even name the local beer after them. The restaurant is a popular place for many tour companies heading through this area so there were a number of people coming and going and the view is definitely worth the stop. The small town at the bottom of the hill where we were to board our big Cat was worth a look around. We found locals selling veggies and even more types of banana/plantain, as well as many other items being sold on the streets. Again I felt how poor some of these towns are - as pretty as their location may be. There was a smell of those herbal cigarettes in places and nearly all the buildings were wooden and needed a paint but because of that also presented some good photo shots.

After our brief walk, we boarded our Queen of the Caribbean catamaran - a fairly new well built large tourist yacht that gets along just on 20 knots with big diesel motors and I'm not sure if the ever use the sails at all. There was about 80 on board and we sailed away back to Castries mid afternoon with the beat of loud music and cold beer to a stopover in a small bay where nearly everyone went snorkelling or swimming off the ship. The water was quite warm once you got used to it and it was a lovely setting for 80 of your boat mates all paddling around together plus a few local opportunistic traders selling wares from their kayaks floating in amongst you. Then we sailed for the last 45 mins, with a detour into the small but pretty harbour where the super yacht was moored, and then on to Castries harbour with four of us being dropped on the wharf right next to the cruise ship to save us a long walk. A lovely day all in all and time for a cold beer it was after a brief look at the shops at the cruise terminal.

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