St Lucia 26-29th January

Oz Day celebrations

Celebrated Australia Day in good style at Ocean Club in Rodney Bay Marina, home of The Arc Rally. General Manager of Marina is an Aussie and put on a great bbq and free beers for Aussies. We invited our Texan and Canadian mates to join us for a night of Aussie music, burgers and local beers by the pool.

Prudent, refrigeration mechanic extraordinaire, sniffed our gas leak and Bruce is now nearly in 7th heaven. It is nearly two days since the repair and this is the amount of time required to be sure it is completely fixed. The fridge and freezer are working a treat and it's the first time they've worked properly since Bruce & Mal arrived. Fingers crossed!

Anse La Raye street

With Bruce in the driving seat, Sue in navigation mode and Gina doing the tourist commentary, the three of us hired a car and took a tour down the west coast of the island. Mal had a day of rest back at the boat! We visited a bustling marketplace in the capital Castries; bought the required cheap DVDs, fresh turmeric and cassava pancake before heading south to quaint fishing village, Ansa La Raye. We were struck by the tiny wooden houses adjoining each other in narrow streets and dwarfed by the local Catholic Church facing the beach. The wood fired bakery was all of 10' wide but unfortunately he had sold all his bread by the time we got there!

We travelled through some long windy roads with many hairpin bends amongst rainforest ferns, palms, and banana plantations. There were some excellent viewing spots along the coast and it was fabulous watching other "cats" crashing through the waves as we had a few days before.

View of Petit Piton from our table

On the recommendation of the local beautician at the marina, we decided to head for a restaurant overlooking the Pitons, Ladera, which didn't disappoint. The restaurant was open air, three tiered and had the most  spectacular view framing the valley and bay between the two Pitons. The food was fantastic and Sly Stallone, aka Bruce, took every opportunity to "shoot" the visiting birds with the water pistol allocated to our table. On our return trip to Rodney Bay, we took a detour at Soufriere to the Botanic Gardens and waterfall - very restful.

Sunday saw us leave the marina and anchor off Pigeon Island. We had a relaxing day swimming and reading and preparing for our trip on Monday to Martinique. I've attached a photo of our greengrocer, Gregory. On Saturday we ordered pawpaw, tomatoes and avocado and Sunday he arrived with them all - now that's what I call service!