Glassblower Extraordinaire: St. Lucia and the Crazy Caterpillars

I'm tired of people hating on some of the beautiful islands we go to. Before this contract many people told me that the Caribbean would be boring. Why oh why did I ever listen to them? In most part the area surround our ships are incredibly touristy with vendors selling crap you don't need. A lot of these islands are incredibly poor and their income is purely in tourism. So there are also hoards of locals trying to taxi you or take you on tour. And many of the downtown areas are a little grungy, pretty run down and very real. There are so many countries that are wonderful places to visit with welcoming people but happen to hardly have a dollar to their name. St. Lucia is definitely one of them. And if you want to truly enjoy the island you have to make an effort to do some research and get out there.

St. Lucia’s number one tourist spot is it’s volcano and sulfur springs, which I have yet to visit because it’s always full of the old people from my ship ha! But it is also very well known for it’s 2 pitons. There is in fact even a piton beer and the piton is on the country flag! I really wanted to see them up close. I had read online that there was a trail called the TetPaul trail that gave a gorgeous view of the famous pitons. We generally look on several websites for some sort of consistent reviews before we venture out. I had read it as a 45 min hike (thinking it was one way). Let me tell you that we soon found out it was not a “hike” at all but a mere 30 min stroll roundtrip. It was still fun. You can see the photos from the TetPaul trail were still great.

A real pineapple plant! Beautiful vegetation all around.

Here is our group with our 9 year old guide lol.

Make sure to click on this beauty to enlarge!

Excellent spot for my underwear photo op. Guide was not impressed.

Sad that we had not gotten the workout we had desired and traveled in a cab for an hour and fifteen minutes, we went back to the cabbie who was waiting for us to finish. He offered to take us somewhere else if we wanted because we still had a lot of time in our day. He recommended the Diamond Botanical Gardens, mineral baths and waterfall. SOLD. It was a mere $7 entrance fee and at this point we needed something else to make our ride out here worth it. (Though in viewing the island by car we went up and down into 3 different valleys it was quite lovely.)

Some pretty cool members of the Heliconia family (like birds of paradise). I am so oddly attracted to these architectural kinda plants.

And upon exiting the gardens we noticed for the first time these crazy looking caterpillars! The cabbie told us the caterpillars have these bright fiery colors to warn predators that they are poisonous if eaten. I loved them so much I made a caterpillar mug.

Now another wise tid bit of knowledge that the cabbie gave us is that the pitons are actually climbable. Say whaaaa?! He gave us his card and offered to come pick us up as soon as the ship landed at 8am because this was a bit further than the TetPaul trail and we would need the time. I almost thought we weren’t going to be able to schedule this adventure before I left the ship because of boat drill days and bad weather but we finally did. And we rallied the brave and climbed into his cab painfully early that morning! $35 cab ride a person and $35 guided hike it was not a cheap day but it was super satisfactory.

To start this hike off right, there was a litter of puppies waiting for us at the trailhead. Momma dog and Papa dog are avid daily climbers of the trail. That’s how they get extra food from the hikers. They all belong to the small community of houses at the base of the trail. The pups were precious. You could have left me there.

A drenching in sweat climb to the top and back down took 4 hours. It was quite difficult because we were starting at sea level and heading straight up to 2,600 ft. It was a lot of stairs naturally built into the hillside from tree roots. We collapsed at the top with our snacks. The view was lovely but not as important as conquering the hike. At the bottom we celebrated with piton beers.