Castries, St. Lucia

We docked early at the harbor in Castries, St. Lucia. Our smaller size got us a nice berth.  Before we knew it we were surrounded by two behemoths from Royal Caribbean and Carnival and another Princess line ship which turned out to be another one of the original Renaissance ships as well.  We had nothing official planned so we got off and decided to walk around the whole harbor.  We later found out that the cruise ships unleashed 10,000 people on the island. Since St Lucia's unemployment rate is 20%, tourism is the main industry.  As you leave the cruise ship area, you are surrounded by throngs of taxi drivers offering you the best deal to see the island.  You also have to walk through a duty free mall at each end in order to just get out.  After our walk, we negotiated a short version of the taxi tour.  The idea was to see some of the island and get a feel for life there from the driver. We were lucky to get a young man who was very eloquent about his country and knew the politics, economics, etc.  He took us on the short version taxi tour which meant we saw other tourists at each stop, but with 10,000 in port, it would have been hard to miss them.  We saw some of the beaches and the Marigot Bay, a woodworking studio, tasted banana ketchup and other banana based items and discussed the economics of continuing to export bananas to Great Britain in competition with Dole, etc. when everything on the island is done by hand.

The process of docking four cruise ships in the Castries harbor.

Local boats in the harbor.

The view from various parts of the Governor General's hill. Our guide, Joel.

Marigot Bay.  One of the places where you could stay for a while. There are two or three resorts, one of which cannot be reached by road, only by ferry from the opposite side of the bay.