Castries, St Lucia(圣卢西亚国)

Jan 12, 2024: Over the past few days, our cruise ship has been stopping at a different island each day. Today, we arrived at the island of Saint Lucia, docking in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia. We signed up for a seven-hour hiking excursion organized by the cruise ship to see the famous Pitons. The activity description mentioned that it was quite challenging and required good physical fitness. Since several moderately demanding activities we had signed up for in the past few days were canceled, we hoped this one wouldn’t be. However, we were a bit worried if we could handle it after yesterday’s exhausting hike.

When we gathered in the morning, we found that only eight people had signed up for this activity, and none of them were young. Unexpectedly, after boarding the minibus, we drove for two and a half hours to a nature trail on private land. The scenery along the way was quite nice, and our tour guide was very talkative, so we learned a lot. We hiked uphill along the trail to a viewing platform where we could see the two beautiful Pitons. The hike took just over forty minutes, and we didn’t even break a sweat. It’s said that this hiking tour used to involve climbing the Pitons, but the difficulty was too great and it took much longer than expected, causing the ship to delay its departure once before.

After we finished the trail, the minibus took us to a restaurant near the scenic area for a buffet lunch. From drinks to main courses, everything was traditional local cuisine. It was a delicious meal. When we returned to the dock, there were still two to three hours before the ship departed, so we walked to the nearby city center on our own, where there was a farmer’s market, shopping street, and church. Overall, Saint Lucia is the most underdeveloped island we’ve visited on this trip, but it has produced two Nobel Prize winners (in Economics and Literature).

In the evening, we dined at the ship’s main restaurant. The maître d' told us that a few weeks ago, he was robbed near this dock. If he had told us this a few days earlier, we probably wouldn’t have wandered around on our own this afternoon.

一月十二日：这几天我们的邮轮每天都会停靠一个不同的岛。今天来到了圣卢西亚岛，停靠在卡斯特里（Castries), 圣卢西亚国的首都。我们报名参加邮轮组织的长达7个小时的徒步活动，去看著名的岩钉山(Pitons) 。活动介绍称这个难度相当大，需要很好的体力。因为前几天我们曾报名的几个稍微需要些体力的活动都被取消，我们希望这个活动不要再被取消了。但同时因为昨天的爬山搞得我们俩人很累，有点担心今天是否能挺住。一早集合时发现只有八个人报名参加这个活动，且年纪都不轻。没想到上了小巴之后直接开车二个半小时去了在私人绿地上的自然步道，一路上风景倒是挺不错，导游小哥嘴说个不停，我们学到不少东西。沿着步道上坡来到观光平台，可以看到两座美丽的岩钉山。上下就花了四十几分钟，连汗都没出。据说以前这个徒步游是真的爬岩钉山的，结果难度太大，时间花了比预期的多得多，结果造成船延迟离开。我们走完步道后，小巴送我们去到景区边的一个餐厅吃自助午餐。从饮料到主食都是当地的传统美食。再回到船码头时离船开还有二，三个小时，我们便自己走去不远处的市中心，那里有农贸市场，商业街和教堂。 总的来说圣卢西亚岛是我们这次行程到过的所有岛中最落后的一个岛，但却出了二个诺贝尔奖获得者(经济奖和文学奖)。

晚上去船上的主餐厅吃饭，领班告诉我们说几星期前他就在这个船码头附近被抢过。估计如果他早几天告诉我们的话，我们下午就不会自己瞎逛了。