Laborie, for better or worse

We've been home for some months now, and I've had time to reflect on our stay on St. Lucia, in Laborie, and also at Coconut Bay Resort.

Coconut Bay Resort was luxurious, comfortable, a great place for a wedding and a great place to relax. It cost about $300 per night for the two of us, in October, which is not their high season. That included transport from the airport, our room, all meals and beverages. There were several pools, and indoor and outdoor areas for groups to gather.  There were lots of activities available to guests, some included in our rate and some extra.  They did a great job with the wedding and reception we attended.

When we moved to our little apartment, Mango Splash, in Laborie, we had a markedly different vacation experience. Our apartment was comfortable, and just steps away from the beach. Our hosts, Tony and Jan, were wonderful - friendly, and helpful, and had lots of recommendations to make our stay memorable. We paid less than $100 per night here, but we were on our own for meals and beverages, of course. No chocolate buffet, no tropical drinks being served to us in our lounge chair by the pool, like at the resort. Laborie is a small village with no ATM, no supermarket, no souvenir shops, no hordes of tourists and only a handful of restaurants.  It gave us a true taste of life on the island.

Goat tethered in our yard for a few hours one day, to keep the grass trimmed

About half-way through our time in Laborie, we were able to move to the Driftwood cottage, also owned by Tony and Jan, and located just across the lane from their house and Mango Splash apartment. The cottage is a charming place, and the covered porch makes it even more enjoyable. The beach was still only steps away.  Both the apartment and the cottage were air-conditioned.

Rick sitting on the front porch of our little cottage

After over a week in this little fishing village, I would say the people we encountered were friendly, and almost everyone asked if we were enjoying our visit.  They were proud of their village, and hoped we would appreciate it too.  We enjoyed the special events we were able to witness or participate in while we were there.  We felt safe walking into town both day and night. Our place had air-conditioning, but lots of the local homes didn't, and we saw old and young people alike outside after dark enjoying the cooler evenings.

On the flip side, there was lots of poverty around us.  This is a real fishing village, and many people live at a subsistence level, depending on the food they can catch or harvest from the sea, or take from the trees growing wild all around us.  There are many neat and tidy homes, both big and small, but also some very derelict shacks that are homes for local folks.  Our hosts tell us that almost everyone has fresh water piped to their homes, but sometimes the pipe ends outside of the house.

Conch shells decorate the yard of a neatly kept house in Laborie

Another house in Laborie

One of the first people Rick met on the beach was Alan, a Peace Corps volunteer from Canada, one of 4 volunteers teaching at the local school.  When I heard Peace Corps, it immediately brought to mind a poor, underdeveloped area with no local support for education.  That seems sad to me. There are fancy resorts all over the island, and it's true that they provide jobs for lots of local folks, but don't the resorts have to pay taxes?  We saw evidence of lots of hardworking, ambitious people in Laborie though, and talked to kids who planned to go to college. We also heard that it's hard to make the boys stay in school when they become old enough to fish for a living.

The weather in October was very hot and humid.  We might have done more sightseeing, but the heat really sapped our energy.  I think we'd go back at a different time of year next time, just to see the difference.  The ocean was nice and warm though, and we spent lots of time in the water.

Though we didn't see all of the island of St. Lucia, we found our little corner of it to be most enjoyable and charming.  Whether we make it back here again, or not, it will always be a highlight of our travels.

Mother hen and her chicks walking down the sidewalk of the main street in Laborie

The view from our beach in Laborie

Room service and boat trips in Laborie

One afternoon a local fisherman, Linca, tapped on our door asking if we'd be interested in a lobster dinner, delivered to our apartment the next night.  We settled on a price, and looked forward to the meal with interest.  If you're picturing a distinguished, older purveyor of lobster dinners, you'd be surprised.  Linca is a young guy, maybe in his mid-twenties, with a head of braids, or maybe dreadlocks, pulled back in a ponytail.  He's often seen at the sea urchin roast just down the road from us.

Linca arrived, right on time, on the appointed evening.  He had the meal all ready to serve, and emptied everything into our serving dishes or onto plates.  We set it up outside, on our little covered table, backed by the surf and surrounded by the sound of the chirping frogs.

Our covered eating area, backed by the beach

Lobster dinner, delivered by Linca.  Fresh caught spiny lobster, rice with lobster sauce and salad

It was delicious, and so fun to have it delivered to our place.

A few days later, we had an opportunity to hook up with a group from Coconut Bay to take a snorkeling trip on a catamaran.  The boat left from the dock in our town, just down the street from us. We'd gone on a sunset cruise with the same captain, Nerv, and his wife, Angel, the previous week, when we were staying at Coconut Bay.  They operate a beautiful catamaran, the Majesty, and serve delicious hors d'oeuvres, while cruising the waters around Laborie.

The catamaran "Majesty"

Both the sunset cruise and the snorkel trip took us within sight of the two most famous landmarks on St. Lucia, Petit Piton and Gros Piton.  They are climbable, but the climb looks pretty daunting.

The Pitons, Gros and Petit

On board the boat, our safety lecture by Shay included pointing out the emergency exit, which was, of course, the entire boat.

Shay was a good tour guide, but did admit that if he didn't know the answer to one of our questions, he could fall back on the time-honored tour guides' tradition, and just make something up.  As far as I know, he didn't have to use that trick!

We had a pleasant cruise over to Sugar Beach, where the snorkeling is very good, and had a great time in the water there.

Sugar Beach, with a protected area for snorkeling

Walking backward with flippers on, over the rocky bottom, was a challenge

We saw lots of colorful fish, as well as sea urchins and some coral.  One person saw an octopus.  No one saw any dangerous sea life, well, except the sea urchins, which we were cautioned not to step on, sit on or pick up. The water was warm and calm.

This beach is down the hill from the Sugar Beach resort, famous for hosting high profile guests.  But since it's a public beach, I guess riff-raff such as ourselves are still able to stop there.

We stopped at one other place, where we jumped off the boat to snorkel, which was much easier than backing in to the water with our flippers on.  The water was a little murky though, and the fish weren't as plentiful as at Sugar Beach.

The other guests on the boat got off in the town of Soufriere, to have lunch and see some other sights. We had the boat to ourselves all the way back to Laborie, and enjoyed visiting with the owners and the crew.  We're really beginning to feel like locals!

Fry-bread and bakeries in Laborie

Our hosts told us about three great places to find fresh bread, or a quick lunch, in town.  One of the businesses was Zeb's Creole Bread, which consisted of a wood-fired oven in the backyard of a home on one of the main streets.  There was no sign on the street indicating that there was a bakery in the back, but from the street we could see the fire burning in the oven.  We ventured down the path, and found the congenial baker, and wonderful creole bread, which tasted like good french bread.

The baker starts his day at 6 a.m. making the dough and letting it rise.  By noon he's got some finished rolls.  Even in the open shed, it's a hot job!

Inside the oven, the fire has been swept off to the side after heating up the baking surface.  The rolls are lined up to bake, and then broken apart as they're done.

Finished rolls displayed in bins.  We paid EC$1, or 40 cents U.S. for 3 rolls.  

While we were there, a local kid came by to buy bread for his mom.  

There was a regular bakery on the main shopping street too, that had all kinds of baked goods during business hours.  We'd been told that even after the bakery was officially closed for the day, we could go around to the side door at 7 p.m. to buy fresh bread. We paid EC$2, or about 80 cents U.S. for a nice, warm loaf of french bread.  Once again, kids from the neighborhood were stopping by to get bread to take home too.

We bought lunch at the blue house a few times.  We didn't realize this was the same place, seen from the soccer field.

The lunch place, approaching from the soccer field

Here's the way we first encountered the lunch place.  It was closed when I took this photo, but you get the idea that it was pretty rustic from this angle, and we still walked down the drive and bought our take-out lunch here!  I guess this was really the back door.  There was also a nice seating area and a bar on the side.

The lunch place, approaching from the street

The bread guy, frying up some delicious rolls

If we hadn't entered the place from the back, we wouldn't have seen the fry-bread process.  Once again, the old traditional stove was still in regular use here.

An old wood burning cooker.  The fry-bread is cooked on this, in a metal pan filled with oil.

Top view of the cooker.  

Our chicken and fry-bread lunch was EC$10, or $4 U.S.  It was delicious.

I could have eaten this every day!  

Timing is everything in Laborie, St. Lucia

Just by chance, our visit coincided with some fun events in Laborie.  The first Sunday of our visit, an island soccer final match was held, just down the block from us.  It looked like the whole town turned out for it.  There were a few trucks selling food and drink, in addition to makeshift barbecues and coolers set up around the field also selling refreshments.  The local team won, which meant the celebration party went on for hours after the game was over.  While we sat at Mama Tilly's having dinner, a parade of cars full of revelers drove through town, honking and hollering.

Final soccer match between two island teams

Spectators at the match, and even more at the food vendors

The next day, Monday, was the opening of White Sea Urchin season.  Because of the declining population of this particular sea urchin, harvesting of these sea creatures hasn't been allowed here since 2001, and would be allowed for one week only.

The beach was abuzz with activity from morning until night for the entire week.  The first day's take was immense, as the urchins could be found near the beach, in shallow water.  As the week progressed, the fishermen, both adults and kids, had to swim out further, and dive deeper, to find their prey.  Every day, someone would stop by to borrow snorkel gear from our hosts,Tony and Jan, so they could dive deeper for the urchins.

We watched small motor boats, claptrap rafts, kayaks and rowboats hauling the mound of the day's catch to the beach just down from our place.

A fisherman swimming by, pushing his raft of sea urchins

We were able to see the process used to harvest the eggs too.  The prickly shell would be broken open and rinsed out.  Then the tiny eggs would be spooned out.  The eggs were more like grains of sand, and made a criss-cross along the curve of the inside of the shell. The eggs could be eaten raw, but were mostly saved up until there were enough to fill a small sea urchin shell and roast over, under or next to wood burning fires on the beach.  The roasting process took an hour or two, and then the resulting delicacy could be eaten, or sold.  The price of EC$10-14 ($4-6 U.S.) was a deal.  It took the eggs of about 15 or 20 big sea urchins to fill a small shell.  Lots of work for the money!

Harvest of White Sea Urchin on the first day

Processing the sea urchin to harvest the eggs

The eggs are the gold-colored stuff he's scooping out.

Once the eggs were scooped out, the urchin would be tossed into a pit in the sand.  The rest of the creature wasn't worth anything.

A small urchin filled with eggs from about 15-20 larger ones and roasted for 1 or 2 hours

We tried it, tentatively, and liked it a lot!

We had an opportunity to taste the roasted sea eggs, and tentatively tried them.  Rick thought the flavor was similar to smoked oysters, and the texture wasn't unpleasant.  We finished our portion and deemed it really good!

The last special event we were able to witness here was the Jounen Kweyol celebration. It's a yearly celebration of the traditions of cooking, crafts and music on the island.  Different towns on the island take turns hosting the festival, and this year it was held in Laborie.  The restaurant folks we'd talked to throughout the week would be working double- or triple-time to prepare enough food for the crowd. As we interacted with the locals throughout the week, they would ask us if we'd be here for the Jounen Kweyol celebration.  It's a big deal!

Madras plaid is the traditional design of St. Lucia fabrics

We saw madras everywhere during Jounen Kweyol

An enterprising young man selling roasted corn during the celebration.  He's using a clay barbecue, just as islanders have for centuries.

A local woodworker demonstrating a foot-pedal operated lathe

The main street of Laborie was crowded with people enjoying Jounen Kweyol

We were close enough to town that we checked out the crowd in the morning, afternoon and evening, just to see what was going on.  People came from all over to be there for the celebration. And two of us came from Camano Island, Washington!  It was great fun.

Laborie, St. Lucia

We were picked up at the resort by Tony, our host at Mango Splash (our next destination).  He got through the security gate and into the resort with only minor difficulty.  He kindly stopped at the supermarket on our way to the apartment so we could get some cash and buy some groceries.  I think it surprised him how much food we thought we needed to buy!  Rick does most of our cooking when we rent vacation homes, so that was our plan here too.  Little did we know how much fun food would be available in our little village.

We drove through the part of town we'd already seen.  As in other towns, the road we'd been on previously, going down to the dock, wasn't the most scenic, thank goodness.  We turned onto the actual Main Street, and headed to our apartment, with Tony pointing out some of the good, local restaurants, bakeries and bars.  Since this had been a British colony, cars drive on the left-hand side of the road.  We decided not to rent a car, and when we saw the traffic, we were glad we didn't.

Downtown Laborie

Downtown Laborie

Our apartment is a small studio on the ground floor of our hosts' home, and right on the beach.  The kitchen is tiny, but has everything we need.  We dumped our luggage, put away the groceries, and took some lounge chairs down to the beach.

Looking south from our spot on the beach

Looking north from our spot on the beach

We understand that all of the beaches on St. Lucia are public.  That's a great advantage for locals and visitors alike, and we had a few other folks hanging out near us in front of our place.  We arrived on a Saturday, so there were lots of families and kids swimming, playing ball, and generally enjoying themselves outside.  The water is warm, and the sandy bottom makes for nice wading.  There doesn't seem to be an undertow, but there are currents as you get out further.  It's a pretty safe place to swim, for young and old.

I know the pictures make this place look like paradise, and it is, but it's also hot and humid, and there are lots of mosquitoes and sand fleas.  There is no truck fogging the neighborhoods for mosquitoes where the regular people live.  And I think we have just joined the ranks of the regular people!

Our hosts, Tony and Jan, transplants from England, are friendly and knowledgeable about the village and the island.  Everyone in the village seems to know them, and they have a steady stream of villagers visiting, or stopping by to borrow snorkel gear and other various and sundry stuff. They said we could expect the local people to be very friendly, and that Laborie is a safe place to walk at any time of the day or night.  Our place is just a block or two from the center of town, so we were in and out many times during our visit here.

Rick cooked a simple supper on our first night in the apartment, but on our second night in town we decided to visit Mama Tilly's place for dinner.  Tony called and made a reservation for us.  Tilly likes to make sure her meals are really special for visitors, so usually requests some advance notice.  Plus, she'll give some menu options, which allowed us to put in an order for lobster for our dinner at her place.

Mama Tilly's is the best restaurant in town.

There are only a few tables in the place, and on this Sunday night we were the only customers.  We had Tilly's undivided attention, and she wanted to make sure we were enjoying the meal.  

We each had half of a lobster, potato salad, fried plantains, rice, and a few other salads.

Dinner was great, and not expensive.  The food, along with a few beers and a Coke, came to EC$90, or about $36 U.S. 

Tilly told us about the big celebration happening on Sunday, October 25. The whole town would be busy this week preparing special food, drinks, crafts and entertainment to mark Jounen Kweyol.  To be ready for the celebration, she sold us straw hats and a cup made from a small coconut shell.  We're ready! 

  

St. Lucia, Eastern Caribbean

It was over a year ago that we got the invitation to a wedding on the island of St. Lucia.  Actually, it was a renewal of vows, 2 years after the actual wedding, of a young couple we absolutely adored, Michael and Chrystal.  How could we say no?  How could we miss what was sure to be a fun party? BUT, for heaven's sake, this was a place very far from us.  The flight time would be the equivalent of going to London!

Well, we managed to book it, and here we are on the beautiful island of St. Lucia, and not regretting one little bit the long flight to get here.

We've been here almost two weeks now, but I'll backtrack to describe the trip from the beginning.

We didn't want to take a "red eye" flight from Seattle, to connect with the one daily flight from either Atlanta or Miami.  Our experience is that it wipes us out for at least a day of our vacation..  So, we flew during the day, and I booked a hotel near the airport in Atlanta so we could get some sleep before catching our flight to the island the next day.  It didn't really work out that well.  We got in about midnight (EDT - 3 hours ahead for us), got to the hotel about 1, probably got about 2 hours of sleep before getting up at 4:30 to catch the 5:15 shuttle to the airport for our 9:50 a.m. flight to the island.  It was a waste of $100.  We might have gotten 2 hours of sleep on the overnight flight for nothing.

We arrived at the little airport on St. Lucia and caught the shuttle to the Coconut Bay resort.  And with our first step out of the shuttle, we had entered the magic of an "all inclusive" resort.  It was truly wonderful.  The resort was beautiful.  Our room was beautiful and cool.  We were never hungry or thirsty.

Our room at Coconut Bay.  Each day the housekeeper would do a cute arrangement of towels and flowers on the bed.

There were several swimming pools, as well as a nice little beach.  Entertainment every day.
Food available all day and night.  Bartenders and wait staff that remembered what we liked and made sure we had more of it. Activities and excursions for anyone wanting more adventure.

One of the "adults only" pools.  Quiet, and a bar nearby, of course! (Photo courtesy of Roni Cowell)

Rick, in front of our beach at Coconut Bay

Lounge chairs facing the beach.  They also had "sun following" beds, which I imagine swiveled to catch rays from any direction.  As if you could lay in the intense sun all day here!

The beautifully manicured grounds were fogged every evening at 6 to keep the mosquitoes down. The beach was dragged and raked every day to keep the intrusive grass and seaweed at bay.  There were cats constantly on patrol, keeping any pests under control.

A view of the grounds from our balcony

We laughed about the showers in our rooms alternating between scalding hot and freezing cold all through our shower.  Everyone seemed to have the same experience.  It was probably the only inconvenience we suffered at the resort!

Honestly, every staff member was friendly and sincere in hoping that we were having a good time.

The wedding group numbered slightly over 30 people, and it was fun being able to spend time with everyone over the course of our 5-day stay.  The bride and groom spent lots of time with all of us, in spite of the fact that this was their special event!  They wanted to be sure everyone was enjoying themselves, and we were!

Bride and groom with a local officiant performing the ceremony.

The wedding was held in a picturesque spot, the bride and groom backed by the ocean surf.  The weather was warm, but nice and clear for the wedding.  We had drinks, hors d'oeuvres and dinner. Cake and dancing.  It was a wonderful celebration, but a fun part was that after the wonderful party, we all got out of our fancy clothes, put our swim suits on, and spent the next few hours swimming, or just sitting around the pool, with a cool drink.

Some of the group rented cars and did some sightseeing on the island.  They raved about the botanical gardens, the snorkeling, the hikes and the amazing food they were finding.  We planned to do some of that once everyone else was gone.  We did take a sunset cruise with a majority of the wedding group, on a catamaran, on the last day before the wedding guests started heading home.

We were taken to the boat dock in the small fishing village of Laborie to catch the catamaran for the sunset cruise.  Rick and I would be moving to Laborie and staying on the island for another week or so.  I was anxious to see what the town was like. What I saw was worrisome.  Ramshackle houses and businesses lined the main street down to the dock.  Corrugated metal seemed to be one of the main building supplies used in constructing everything.  Rotting wood, overgrown weeds, skinny dogs wandering around.

Oh my.  What will we find there?  Stay tuned.