Fisher Caribbean Cruise - Day 4 (St. Lucia)

On Wednesday, we arrived at what, in my opinion, was the most beautiful island of the cruise: St. Lucia. Every island was gorgeous - so green and lush, but St. Lucia is truly incredible. Every inch of it is covered in the most beautiful tropical trees, plants, and flowers. It is green everywhere you look, sprinkled with the most vibrantly colored flowers. It's truly breathtaking.

Our excursion was scheduled for the afternoon so Jeff, Luke, and I thought we would spend the morning exploring the island on our own. Unfortuately, we didn't get very far. It seemed like they put fences up in just the right places so that it was necessary to take a taxi to get anywhere. And with Luke present, we weren't comfortable just taking off on a random road and hoping to find something eventually. Of course, we wouldn't have hesitated to do that if we were alone - another cruises-are-better-without-babies moment. When we got back to the ship, we noticed that we only needed to go a little farther on the road we were on before we would have been able to see the town. Oh well. We'll plan a little better before we leave the ship next time.

Luke in the Cars stroller lent to us by the ship (the airport lost our strollers).

The view from a little ferry dock

Much of the island is covered in natural rainforest. The beautiful treetop canopy is so dense. 

Back on the ship, Luke entertained himself with some of the great toys we borrowed from the ship's awesome Adventure Ocean kids' program. We could borrow toys as often as we wanted free of charge!

Greg and Renita went on a tour of the beautiful island in the morning.

So beautiful! I just wanted to go and explore this tropical wilderness (although I was a little nervous at the thought of all of the enormous bugs I'm sure are out there)!

I couldn't get enough of all of the striking tropical flowers!

While Greg and Renita were on their tour, Ben, Caitlin, and the girls went on a morning whale watching trip.

There weren't any whales to be seen so Becca decided it would be a good time to catch some Zzz's.

In the afternoon, Greg and Renita took all three kids again while Ben, Caitlin, Jeff, and I took a jeep tour of the island. The jeeps immediately reminded me of Jurassic Park so I knew it was going to be good.

This is our tour guide, Miguel a.k.a. "Smiley." He really made the tour for us. He was so funny and personable. He treated everyone on the jeep like we were his friends.

The roads were crazy! And so was the driving! I actually got a little nervous a few times as we whipped around hair-pin turns at break-neck speeds, came within centimeters of grazing passing vehicles and came so close to crashing into an oncoming truck coming around a blind corner. Between that, the striking beauty of the island, and Smiley's jokes, the tour was anything but dull.

The view of our ship from a high point on the island.

Serenade of the Seas

Beauty all around

In the middle of our tour, we stopped for a hike through the rainforest. The rainforest! I was so excited to be in an actual rainforest - just like in Ferngully and The Amazon Trail computer game I used to play when I was a kid!

I kept thinking a T-rex was going to come thundering out of these trees and eat us.

 We were right up close to Smiley for the entire hike so we got to hear and see everything. Other members of our group were not so lucky. Smiley called Ben his "assistant" because Ben was constantly telling him fun facts, correcting him when he was wrong, and making suggestions when Smiley got stuck trying to think of a word (e.g. "defense mechanism"). Ben also taught him the "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you" joke. Apparently they haven't heard that one in St. Lucia. Smiley loved it. He said, "I'm gonna have to use that one!"

This plant is so cool. Do you see how the one on the left is open and the one on the right is all closed up? It's a defense mechanism. Smiley put a lighter up to the one on the right and it immediately started to close up all of it's leaves one at a time until it was all closed up and protected. Amazing!

When this tree realized it couldn't grow it's roots through this rock, it grew around it.

Another defense mechanism. This plant doesn't want to be eaten so it has spikes all over it.

This is the beautiful Red Dragon plant (at least that's what Smiley called it). Apparently, it is known by about 5 different names in St. Lucia, which is probably why it didn't come up when I Googled "Red Dragon plant." I wish it had been raining so that we could have seen the beautiful fountain effect Smiley described.

This is Ficas Americanus. It grows around a tree, taking it's shape and then slowly killing and decomposing the tree inside until there is nothing left.

And this is what it looks like when the tree has decomposed.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly the tree where the fairies lived in Ferngully.

What is left of the decomposed tree

There was a thick canopy of branches and leaves above us as we hiked. I remember learning about the different layers of a rainforest in elementary school (emergent, canopy, understorey, forest floor), and it was amazing to actually see it in real life.

HUGE caterpillars! They looked like movie props! I can't believe these crazy looking guys exist in nature.

Vanilla vines

Bananas on the Jeep ride back from the hike, Smiley literally taught us everything there is to know about bananas. It was actually pretty interesting and I would share a few fun facts, but I've forgotten about 95% of it.

They chopped this thing off of the end of the bunch of bananas so that it wouldn't suck the nutrients out of the bananas. I don't remember much else about it.

Right in the middle of his banana talk, Smiley suddenly gestured of to the side of the road and in a totally nonchalant voice, said, "Guy with machete." There was a very angry looking guy with filthy ripped clothing and crazy hair carrying a massive machete and staring right at us. It was kind of terrifying. But apparently that is a very common sight in St. Lucia.

As we got closer to our beach stop, we all got to stand up in the jeep, making the intense sharp turns even more fun (in a terrifying way).

I didn't take any pictures at the beach because once again, Jeff and I played in the water the entire time. But while we were there, Jeff found me a really pretty little shell, which I brought home with me and after three failed attempts, I successfully gave Jeff a piggy back ride all the way from mid-back deep water up onto the beach. It was not easy. And apparently we had an audience. Smiley and some of the other tour guides and drivers were sitting up by the jeeps watching us and when I finally struggled up onto the beach without falling backwards, they all applauded. Smiley ran down to us and said, "That was awesome! My turn!" He may have been serious, but I wasn't about to try giving this 6'3" man I barely knew a piggy back ride when my back was already broken, no matter how confidently he insisted that if I could lift Jeff, I could lift him.

On the way back to the ship, I was excited to see a horse right off to the side of the road, until I noticed how skinny it was. All of the stray dogs in the area were a pretty sad sight as well.

Back on the ship that night, we had a fun family game night upstairs after dinner. Everyone was there - except for Bethany, who was having a blast at Adventure Oceans as usual.

My sexy man, made even more irresistible by his being such a great dad and uncle.

Such a great family

We got some cute towel animals in our rooms each night. Here is Becca with a cool bunny.

You can see why Bethany loved Adventure Oceans so much.

Jeff and I finished off the night with our nightly tradition of playing VC with Steven and Kyle in their room while we waited for Luke to fall asleep.