Weekend in St. Lucia,

Well we were allowed out of the bush for the first weekend after our hard week of learning and boy did it hit the spot.  I was really set on going to the Thonga Village for the weekend to experience some African culture, but unfortunately no one else was interested.  I still really enjoyed myself in St. Lucia though so was glad that I went.

Our accommodations were lovely.  We got to have real showers with guaranteed water.  Hot and lots of pressure which we now don’t take for granted like back home.  Our room also has no gecko poo all over it.  P.S. the gecko poo on my bed count is now at 17 for only the first week.  We also got a tv and a little kitchenette and I got set up for wifi so we could get in touch with everyone back home (hence the few quick updates to the blog).

A group of us met up for dinner on Friday which was great.  The food at Thanda is nice, but it was also great to get out and have some more variety and options.  We were all pretty tired from the week so we all headed to bed after supper.

Saturday my roommate Robyn and I had a pretty lazy morning watching tv, lounging and enjoying the breakfast we’d grabbed at the grocery store, although we were still awake at 6:00am.  We just hung out in our room most of the morning.  We headed out to walk up and down main street to check out some shops and local stores.  We enjoyed tea and cake as people call it although I had coffee and a muffin.

In the afternoon, most of our group all went on a hippo and croc boat tour for a few hours.  It was a nice little trip.  We got to see lots of different types of birds and lots of hippos.  Unfortunately crocs are not very common in that area anymore so we only saw one, although I’m convinced it wasn’t alive, that it was a fake one just staged on the shore as the guy pointed it out long before he was able to see it there.

The hippos were neat to watch.  Some were just hanging out watching us, a few young ones were busy play fighting and some would hide under water just as we came along.  Apparently a hippo can hold its breath for up to 6 minutes.  And they do not swim, they simply walk on the bottom of the water.  You have to be very careful in St. Lucia at night as that is when the hippos come out of the water to feed on land in the town and they are very territorial and feisty.  Emil said he was chased by one once.  I think when I’m there in a few weeks that I’ll keep to daylight walking tours.

A few of us went out for dinner to celebrate a British girl Caris’ birthday.  Again, it wasn’t much of a party as we were all tired and headed to bed early.

Sunday was a crappy weather day, pretty rainy all morning.  Robyn wanted to do some shopping so I followed her around in the rain.  We then headed to a cute, fancy looking coffee shop and sat outside on their patio under a roof.  They had some comfy deck chairs with cushions on them so we sent up camp there.  We asked if there was a power point to plug the lap top in and they ran over an extension cord for us and brought out some fuzzy, warm blankets for us.  It was so lovely, sitting listening to the rain, all cozied up, having a coffee and I was reading a book.  I order a scone later and the presentation of it was amazing.  The jam, cream and butter all came on its own tray in fancy dishes and crystal.  I loved the whole experience.

Then at about noon the weather broke and the sun came out so we decided to go for a walk to the beach.  It was about a 45 minute walk and we came out onto a huge sand dune.  It was pretty cool.  We didn’t have a whole lot of time to hang out so we started heading back.  We got back just in time to gather our stuff and hop in the van to head the 1.5 hours back to Thanda.  It was a great weekend and it made me look forward to spending 2 weeks there during my second project with African Impact.  It will seem weird to be in civilization for more than a weekend.