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.