What a load of tripe

18 December 2007

Castries, Saint Lucia

Another day and I woke up in another port. St Lucia this time although I didn’t have my usual view of it out the breakfast window this morning. I think I spent the night catching up on the sleep that I missed out on yesterday and didn’t wake up in time. This may turn into a deadly cycle of much sleep, little sleep, night after night but I really hope it doesn’t and I manage to settle into some sort of medium amount of sleep soon.

Another reason why I missed out on breakfast was the knowledge that we had an emergency evacuation drill. This one was just for crew although it involved all of us. It really just meant that we had to don lifejackets when the announcement came and assemble at our designated life raft stations. Pretty easy for me and once we were all there and checked off it was all over. At the risk of harping on again about the size of the ship, it isn’t difficult to get to my life raft and at least I have some idea now of who I may be squeezed into a tight orange space with. Looking around I am easily the largest one in the raft so I know who won’t be the first one eaten if we’re lost at sea.

After the drill was over it was straight out into Castries, St Lucia. Not the most exciting of towns I must admit and it’s now easy to see why the ship leaves at 3pm rather than the customary 5pm or later.

Having braved the usual gauntlet of duty free stores in the port building there was not another major store to be seen and was simply another town of locals seemingly oblivious on the whole to the tourists in their midst. There was a craft market a short walk from the ship that sold “island crafts” but I now know from experience that there must be a single source for most of these crafts as they seem to be remarkably similar on all of the islands. The same wooden giraffes are available here that were available in a similar market in Jamaica.

Across the road from that market was another one and at first appraisal it seemed to offer the same tourist souvenirs and pre-packaged bags of various spices as the first market but delving a bit further back, past the first array of little stalls, there was the fruit and vegetable market that had all of the normal island produce being picked over by local shoppers. From there my nose led me even further back, to a narrow laneway that was lined with small hole-in-the-wall kitchens selling island fast food. All of the pork, chicken, beef and mutton stews you could want along with rice and beans, rotis (a type of bread roll filled with meat) and pasta dishes. The smells were amazing and having missed breakfast I quickly found a little place and ended up ordering tripe soup and an orange juice. The soup was fantastic, especially with a little local hot sauce mixed in and I happily sat and ate and watched the passing people. I must have stood out a little sitting there because a number of people asked me where I was from. It seems to be a good thing that I can say I’m from New Zealand in these islands because the subject of cricket is an easy ice breaker and not one that they could usually discuss with the average American.

It’s unfortunate that Castries lacks the colonial charm that most other ports do and that is mostly because of the architecture. While the other places have the old buildings to give that sense of period, Castries has suffered a number of fires over the last century and most of the old wooden buildings have gone, to be replaced by more modern, and unfortunately soulless by comparison, buildings. Walking around downtown was the most like walking through a typical small city/large town that I’ve experienced so far and it was probably this that prompted me to be tempted by a taxi driver offering a tour of the island. He dropped his price from $60 to $15 and I figured that since breakfast had only cost me $6 (another advantage of eating with the locals) I could afford to do the tour.

Augustine started by manoeuvring his way out of the permanent gridlock of downtown traffic and up a nearby hillside to a lookout offering a view of the town and harbour. He also started the tour  by telling someone on his mobile phone how much he loved them and that they were the light of his life and then spent the rest of the drive shouting ‘hey baby’ to anything we drove past in a skirt.

The rest of the drive was pretty much up hill and down dale from one side of the island to another and a constant view of ramshackle houses clinging to the side of the road and lush greenery and banana plantations. We did stop at one lookout that had a view of a spectacular small bay but otherwise the drive itself was not all that exciting and I was glad I didn’t spend more than $15 on it. I guess that at most I can say that I have now seen a bit more of St Lucia than I might have had I just stayed in town and walked around. At the moment I will have to put the highlight of the day down as the tripe soup and the atmosphere I soaked up along with the flavour.

The next two days are sea days and will be long, busy and boring. Then it’s back to Fort Lauderdale, a place I have a good knowledge of, at least in regards to where I want to go for breakfast and where I can get the groceries I need. For that reason I don’t think you’ll hear much out of me for a few days until we start the next cruise, a 14 day one, again in the Caribbean.