Caribbean Piccies -- St. Lucia

As promised, I'm posting a few piccies from our recent Caribbean cruise.

Even though it was very hot and humid every day, we still had a very fun time and enjoyed visiting all the different islands.

One of my favorite stops was the island of St. Lucia. As you can see from this photo taken on a hilltop, it is mountainous with some spectacular views! And yes, the water all over the Caribbean is that beautiful turquoise color!

We made a visit to a banana plantation on St. Lucia, and found it to be very interesting. These blue plastic bags are placed over the stalks of growing bananas to protect them from insects. Also another interesting thing to note is that each banana plant produces only one stalk of fruit. The whole operation is very labor intensive, and made me appreciate my sliced bananas at breakfast much more than I had in the past.

One of the most distinctive features on St. Lucia is a pair of mountain peaks called the Pitons. Here they are in the distance with a small fishing village in the foreground. Actually, the one in the center of the picture is Petit Piton and is quite a bit smaller than Gran Piton, which is behind it.

Like almost all of the islands in the West Indies, St. Lucia is volcanic in origin, and the Pitons are the remains of an old volcano. They are right at the edge of the ocean, and reminded me of Morro Rock here in California, which was also an ancient volcanic plug.

Our tour group drove down into this village and took a couple of speed boats to a lovely beach located between the Pitons. It was great and the water was almost as warm as a bath!

I'll stop for now, but promise to post more piccies of some of the other islands we visited in a few days.