St. Lucia

January 18, 2013


I forgot to tell you that our entertainment Tuesday night was “The Drifters.”  Anyone born after 1965, go to Youtube and look for “Under the Boardwalk,” or “Save the Last Dance for Me.”  The last time we heard them we were Freshpeople at Frostburg State College.  They were the major entertainment during Home Coming Week.  Something happened to their band, and they did the whole concert that night accompanied by only a guitar.  They had the “Vision of the Seas” orchestra backing them up Tuesday night, and those old codgers did a great job.

Breakfast this morning brought forth an amusing anecdote.  No, Bonnie didn’t do it.  I had some standard breakfast fare from the buffet – scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, sausage – and then went back to get some oatmeal (enhanced with a big pat of butter and several tablespoons of brown sugar).  Next to the oatmeal was a container marked “Grits.”  A lady – could have been from West Lake – spooned up a big helping of grits and then put brown sugar and almonds on them.  I said, “That must be an interesting taste: grits and brown sugar.”  In a very haughty voice she assured me, she was not eating grits, it was cream of wheat and she’d had it every morning.  I casually pointed at the sign and she said, “These aren’t grits!  I do not like grits!”  Whatever gets you going, lady.

We took a tour today to the Soufreire volcano, a 5.5 hour bus ride there and back over roads that would have made a snake envious of its twists and turns.  Kyle, you remember Route 50 going to Morgantown, or was it to Cheat, that had the two hairpin turns?  The whole route was hairpin turns.  Back and forth, forth and back.  And barely wide enough for two vehicles.  Our drive is a talented chauffeur, indeed.

The volcano last erupted in the 1700s, not with lava and magma but with steam and sulfur.  Miners took hundreds of tons of sulfur out in years gone by.  Some folks still bathe in the steam baths, and an aroma of rotten eggs is in the air.  But a very nice spot to see.

The main reason I chose that tour was to see the Piton mountains, a very characteristic geological formation on St. Lucia.  Alas the sun was behind them, so my pictures are not as good as I had hoped.  We’ll have to come back!

Well, let’s get this posted.  Travels and Tribulations will return tomorrow from my favorite island in the West Indies – Barbados.

TTFN!