Day 4: Saints Galore

Monday, March 29

Today we stopped at St. Lucia. You'd recognize the island if you saw it; the twin spires called the Pitons at the end of the island were used in some the CGI effects for Pirates of Caribbean.

I'm not sure if there are any pirates left on St. Lucia, but getting out of the cruise ship terminal requires running a gauntlet of hard-sell tour guides and taxi drivers. Even walking down the road they'll pull over and show you a brochure.

We didn't see a lot of people out walking, so maybe their sales pitch is effective. Or maybe everyone else on the ship has a lot better sense than Kathy and I. We decided to climb to the top of Morne Fortune to see the remains of Fort Charlotte. It was only about three miles away; unfortunately, those three miles were almost straight up.

We walked, and walked and walked. When we met someone on the road, we asked directions to Fort Charlotte. We met a taxi driver who had "He who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. Kathy asked him if he really believed that (and he said yes). However, he didn't know where Fort Charlotte was. No one had heard of Fort Charlotte. Kathy said that we should follow the tour buses and so we did.

Finally we came to some ruins of the fort: a small wall and what looked like a detention (like brick stockade cells) facility.

Right next door we found the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, with Sir Arthur Lewis (one of St. Lucia's two Nobel prize winners) buried in the back. The college itself is housed in the converted buildings from the modern day Fort Charlotte. (Kind of like OCC and the Santa Ana Army Airbase.)

We walked around the college a bit and read the class schedule. (No computer programming. What's up with that?) Then we asked a security guard where the remains of Fort Charlotte were. He had never heard of Fort Charlotte either. However, he pointed us to a monument at the back of the property where there was a obelisk to the 27th Inniskilling's regiment's retaking of the fort from the French in 1796.


A fellow wearing a Rasta hat and dreadlocks attached himself to us and began telling us about the history of the hill. Along with him were a young man, maybe 19 or 20 and his girlfriend, taking notes. Apparently, one of the majors at SALCC is the hospitality industry, and the two were students learning how to be tour guides.

At the entrance to the monument was a map showing all of the ruins and what they represented. Other than that, though, none of my guidebooks had detailed information and the tourist office didn't either.



We gave the guide ten dollars for a tip and some cold water. Then Kathy and I started walking down again. By this time, we were really, really, really hot and sweaty. Going down was easier by far, but it still provided an opportunity to groom a different set of aching muscles.

We met a staff member from the college walking down the road to meet her husband, and she told us to "watch out for the hoodlums". According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, "many youths like to portray themselves as radical Rastas or American-style ghetto thugs." While there were a lot of young men hanging out on the corners, we were never accosted. The only ones who constantly tried to get us into their vans were the tour operators.

Eventually, by 2:30, we found our way back to the ship, completely beat. The whole trip took about five hours. After a really quick lunch, we both went to the cabin for a nap, and barely woke up in time for dinner. After dinner we decided to do some reading. We're both reading the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva (which are really good). In the one I'm reading, Gabriel is trying to discover some missing paintings stolen by the Nazis. Before he can do that, though, he has to grade a stack of Java programming homework, and then sort a stack of bananas.

As you can guess, I was only able to read about a page and a half before dreamland took over.