Island Holiday Hopping

All Dad wanted for Christmas was a Teacher Summer blog post! He is so easy to shop for!

We decided to get out of dodge this Christmas and head to warm weather, beaches, and Rihanna. Dad is working on joining TCC* and needed some country points anyway. We flew to Miami for stone crabs, Barbados for warmth, and are island hopping between beach sits. 

I don’t know why your family goes to Miami but mine goes to eat stone crabs. Giant, jumbo, stone crabs. Dad and I got in early enough to cruise bikes down the boardwalk and take incredibly dangerous selfies. Next time you want to take your life in your own hands and seriously endanger the lives of strangers, take a selfie while bike riding on a busy boardwalk. 

**

Once AT got into town, we got down to business.*** We had a delicious meal at Joe’s Stone Crabs complete with fabulous bibs and legs for days.**** 

We flew the next day to Barbados and started working Dad closer to his 100th point! He will be at 90 by the end of this trip and a full-fledged TCC member by the end of 2019. 

Completely confusing the hotel check-in, we confirmed our rooms for several nights and then booked a transfer to the airport for the next morning. At o’dark:thirty we were back at the airport to fly to St Vincent via St Lucia.*****

St Lucia was a cold airport with nothing to report. St Vincent, however, was a lovely day trip with a taxi driver excited to show off his island. We started with lunch on a private island-turned-beach resort where the thing to do was try the local rums.******

Following lunch, we were dragged to a fort******* where the view was excellent and no new knowledge about forts was relayed.

We also went to the botanical garden, the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, and were enthralled by parrots saying hi to us. There is extensive video of the parrots talking to us- see me in America for that exclusive footage. Also, there were plants.********

We ended the day trip at Wallilabou Bay where the first two “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies were filmed. You can ooh and ahh at the bay and see a random sampling of sets and props left behind.

*********

The island hopping ended with the inevitable, a delayed plane ride home. It’s not the airline’s fault, Santa was taking up all the air-traffic controller’s time and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

For Christmas we sat on the beach and read quietly. I hope you, devoted reader, had a lovely day doing whatever loveliness means to you. It’s the wrong island’s greetings, but, Mele Kalikimaka!

-KT

*If you are a new reader, welcome, I hardly knew ye, and http://travelerscenturyclub.org/. If you are an old reader and still working this out, there is really nothing else I can do to describe the absurdity of this club with its arbitrary point system except to tell you that now I’m not only a member, I’m a chapter advisor. 

**Is it just me or is this photo a little: 

***The family business has always been and will always be taking a delicious meal very seriously. 

****Not my nickname in college. 

*****St Lucia was a repeat for me but new for Dad and AT and this is the season of giving. They’re welcome. We could have flown direct. 

******Fun fact: the favorite local rum is of such a high proof that you are not allowed to fly with it and the airport is filled with signs reminding you of that fact. 

*******I had pre-planned what I wanted to do on the island and I can assure you the fort did not make my list. 

********We passed on a botanical guide but I did force our family Master Gardener to rattle off plant names upon request. Always worth it. 

*********No ATs were harmed in the making of this blog. 

x

St. Lucia!

An absolute perk* to being a teacher is that, along with summers, we get random break weeks throughout the school year. I hear accountants don't get a "Spring Break" week every year and it is just another reason why I am confused that people choose to be accountants. This week was my school's Fall Break and I was determined to go somewhere, even when it seemed unlikely.

My first trip-planning snafu came from my passport. I was running out of pages so I had sent it off at the end of July to be renewed.** At the end of August I received an email that it was on its way and would be to me in three short days. Great! Three short days later, USPS tracking implied it was lost in the mail. One week later, this became even more evident. Two weeks later, it was a problem. When I called on the third week, the passport people*** agreed that this was exceptionally strange and helped me set up an appointment to go in person and have one printed later in the week. My passport, suddenly sensing it was truly wanted, showed up the next day.

Now that I had a passport, I could continue my trip plans to Turks and Caicos. But, oh. Hurricanes, y'all. Watching what Harvey did to Houston had me intensely watching Irma. When the projected path of Irma had it going right over Turks and Caicos, I changed my trip to a more southern Caribbean location, St. Lucia. Fortunately, the airlines**** were super accommodating and one woman I spoke to even learned where Turks and Caicos is located!

Once St. Lucia was booked, I neurotically watched Hurricane Maria. St. Lucia ended up having only a tropical storm warning for a day and no hurricane damage. On that note, many other islands were not as fortunate and they need all the help we can provide.******

But enough with how I almost didn't go anywhere. I got here!

Naturally, I went from the airport to the beach as quickly as possible. That did involve an hour and a half car ride over some mountains in the middle, but it was worth the wait!

I have definitely spent some days just sitting on the beach reading all the books.******* However, I did want to get out and see more of the island than the stretch of beach outside my hotel. To that end, I rented a car for a day and hit the streets!

...the incredibly-mountainous, not-entirely-paved, hairpin-turn streets!

St. Lucia was originally settled by the British and they carry on many British traditions to this day. One of them is that the queen is on their money! Fun! Another is that they drive on the left. PANIC!

This was my first time driving on the left and it was shockingly easier than I expected. I thought I would need to constantly chant, "Stay left, Kelly, stay left" as I drove but it was easy enough to adapt. The real thing that threw me off was the mirror-imaged car! Sitting on the right doesn't seem like it will be a big deal but did you know the blinker and windshield wiper are also switched?!?!? I managed to turn without turning on the windshield wipers maybe three times. Sometimes I even mentally prepared myself to signal with the other hand and then it came time to turn and habit won out. If it had actually rained, I am confident I would have been the old guy driving with their blinker on for miles and miles down a one-lane road with no turn-offs.

Though driving on the left was no big deal, the mountain roads did not mess around. Fortunately, the return was huge. After an hour and a half-ish of mountainy roads, I ended up here:

Not bad, right? This is the black sand beach of Anse Chastenet. It is located on the western coast just north of the Pitons- two volcanic mountains that define the shoreline.

After some beach time, I headed for the nearest waterfall.******** I had some waterfall options, but went for the one that lets you swim underneath it. It was way cool.

I have no pictures of me actually swimming under it, but I assure you I did. I also specifically took the above picture to feature the photo SUPERSTAR in yellow shorts who was posing for her family's photos. Little did I know that a few minutes later, she would see me posing for a photo and then crash it. She insisted we pose "Lucian Style" and described that as "Butts out. Tongues out." When in St. Lucia, apparently...

I capped off the day with one more beach visit. This time the stop was Sugar Beach, heavily plugged by the locals as "where Matt Damon renewed his vows." I like to live my life with the philosophy that if something is good enough for Matt Damon, it is good enough for me. This beach definitely was.

I snuck in one last Piton before beginning the return trip.

On the journey home I challenged myself to drive slightly faster than the old lady speed with which I drove out. The end result was I reached the speed limit at least twice on a flat stretch. The speed limit was 60 km/hour. It was terrifying.

I will definitely need to sit on a beach all day to recover. Whew, the stress.
-KT

*And when I say "perk," I mean "back off, we earned this" but with at least two expletives that I won't include here because it is the internet.

**"I was running out of pages" is possibly my favorite traveler humblebrag. I was actually heartbroken to trade in my passport for a new one. I had finally this summer achieved my life goal with 3 different immigration officers where they flipped through my passport looking for a place to stamp and then commented about how many places I had been. "Yes, I have been to a lot of places, Madame Immigration Officer. Please tell me more about how glamorous my life is."

***Who picked up after I was on hold for maybe 20 seconds, by the way. Get it, US Government!

****Shout out to American Airlines who are in no way endorsed by this blog but were lovely on the phone with, again, practically no wait time.*****

*****I do not enjoy calling people on the phone so any time an experience is even halfway bearable, I feel relieved.

******Pick your pleasure. I donated to Hispanic Federation but there are many excellent ways to support the incredible amount of work that needs to be done, specifically in Puerto Rico.  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/can-help-hurricane-victims-puerto-rico/

*******I have, of course, also walked along it. I do love long walks on the beach. And I'm a libra, thanks for asking.

********Likeyado.