St. Lucia Wrap Up (Boy am I terrible at blogging)

I left off with a photographic tour of the Sandals grounds. Very beautiful, but doesn't scratch the surface of St. Lucia. Here are a few quick pictures from our speedboat tour.

Rich people's houses on the side of a mountain overlooking the ocean. Must be nice.

Private beaches.

These mountains are the Pitons. They're considered the most memorable feature of the St. Lucian landscape. They are even reflected in the "double peaks" of the St. Lucian flag. On the left is Petit Piton. On the right is Gros Piton, the taller of the two mountains (it looks shorter in this picture because it's farther away). Petit Piton is a very difficult mountain to climb, and I didn't want to die...so we decided to climb Gros Piton (the day after this boat cruise).

The edge of the tree line marks the beginning of the volcanic valley. We went into the crater for a volcanic ash bath. It makes skin feel silky.

There's still heat coming out of this thing, too. I burned myself in the water where we did the ash bath.

This shoe-shaped rock formation was in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I don't know which one because I'm not very good at pop culture...and I wasn't terribly impressed with the movies.

The day after the speedboat tour, Nathan and I climbed that mountain I mentioned, Gros Piton.

This was on the way up Gros Piton. You can just see the island of St. Vincent off in the distance to the south.

Here you can see the island of Martinique to the north (far off above the horizon). It's amazing how close together all the different Caribbean nations are. It's a good thing they aren't fighting with each other because it seems like you could throw a rock from one island to the next.

Petit Piton looks a whole lot steeper from this view. I was so glad we didn't try to climb it.

This one is for Mom. She's grown this purple plant called Wandering Jew as a house plant for as long as I remember. Here, it grows all over the side of the mountain in huge patches.

Hot and sweaty and gross and exhausted, we made it to the summit! 2438 feet high.

Still sweaty and gross and exhausted, we got a great photo op with the Pitons in the background :)

This, obviously, wasn't on one of our outings, but we celebrated my birthday while we were there. I don't know why the creepers in the back felt the need to smile for our picture, but whatever.



And as a last picture of St. Lucia, here's a beautiful panoramic from the top of Gros Piton looking out to the south.

That's it for St. Lucia! More random updates to come.