Welcome to St. Lucia!

Today is the 27th of April - the day when it was decided, a few weeks ago, that Nicole and I would go to St. Lucia! After much deliberation (and procrastination on my part), we settled on this lovely island - thus far, it's proven to be the right choice. One would think that the Caribbean is the Caribbean, but lemme tell ya - it's different everywhere. Just when I was getting used to Dominica, we come to an entirely different sunny little rock in a little sea. Here's a little teaser: right now I'm sitting on my balcony at Bay Gardens Inn at Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, and there's a jazzy blues guitar strumming just below me (I'm 10 feet from the live entertainment). I'll get to all of that later, though -it's been a long day already. It started early this morning, as we drove from Portsmouth to Roseau, through winding mountain roads, and arrived at the Roseau Port.

I like to have things planned down to the last detail, but when there's someone else (in thise case, Nicole), who's just as willing to be meticulous and picky, I kind of tend to let mysel relax -thus, even though the ticket and hotel reservations were all taken care of weeks ago, I wasn't exactly sure of when the ferry was actually leaving. Thus, we arrived at the port much earlier than was necessary, and got to hang around the yellow-railed roof of the ferry terminal, chatting with another Ross student. The view from Roseau is entirely different - one can't see the Cabrits, but you can see Scott's head (which shows up in pictures from an earlier post). Here's a view from the top, taking in the mountains in the back, and the sea. I don't know if it's in this picture, but there was an odd-flippered thing that surfaced every once in a while in the sapphire sea - we thought it might be a turtle, but it was just someone diving for something. Not as interesting.

Here's the actual ferry - I snapped a quick pick just after it arrived, and then headed downstairs to where we boarded. Notice the tiny Dominican flag. I think I have a larger one in my room somewhere - I bought it off of a local panhandler earlier in the semester.

I don't think I'm incorrect in saying that God doesn't really like the sea. It's unpleasant and unforgiving, and if you look back in Scripture, you'll see what I mean - Jonah got tossed overboard, Jesus had to calm the waves, and besides - Jesus called His Disciples away from beign fishermen (clearly, He didn't want them out there). What I mean to say is that, despite an early-morning dose of Bonine with the homemade pancakes, Nicole and I both managed to get a little green around the gills on that ferry. Looks big, doesn't? Looks stable enough to withstand the motion of the ocean, don't you think? The thing rocked like a baby in a cradle - once we hit the open sea, the smooth ride was over. Not to mention that the in-flight movie was Ace Venture: When Nature Calls. In French. Seriously.....?

That being said, I wasn't too keen to get up and stretch my legs when we landed on Martinique. What's that? Why didn't I take the opportunity to at least get out and see it - especially since I've never been there, you may ask? Well, I went to the upper deck of the ferry and snapped this shot - doesn't look too different from anywhere else, does it? Trust me - that's Martinique.

So after another two hours, and another movie (The Pink Panther this time, but without subtitles), we finally landed in St. Lucia. It took us a while to get through immigration (which you can always bet it will - not matter how small a country is, they'll put their foot down at the points of entry to keep out the riff-raff), but we finallygot our passports stamped and arrived at the Bay Gardens Inn. We'll be here for 2 days, and then we're going to stay at the St. Lucian, by Rex. We've got an all-inclusive package, so hopefully it'll be a lot of fun. Here's what the courtyar looks like - nicer than I expected, actually. So now I'm here on my balcony, feeling like a beached whale, bloated on a whopper and large sprite (killing the beach-body diet, I know), listening to the band rehearse downstairs. That's right - they're not really playing. In the time I've been writing, this, I've realized that the singer doesn't know any of the words. Nevertheless, I'm really enjoying myself!