St. Lucia Day Three

Day Three was see the old neighborhood day. I did, it was depressing.

Let's start at the beginning...

I was supposed to meet my mom down at the center of town at 10:30 but due to uncontrollable circumstances I was waiting for the bus outside my hotel at that time. The bus ride was kind of interesting with your usual collection of colorful folk taking public transportation. This bus did not have a television with the latest calypso like the first ride but was interesting nonetheless because I discovered it was actually a transformer. In terms of transformations it was more the Megatron than the Optimus prime of this but what can you expect for a small island. For those of you who do not understand the reference Megatron transforms from a robot to a gun or a cannon and then needs to be shot by someone. Well Optimus Prime is Optimus Prime.






In order to accommodate a large number of people in a small bus there were folding seats. If you do not know they exist it's likely that you will look at new people entering an already packed bus just wondering where they could fit. Perhaps they could secretly spider-man and plan on chilling on the underside of the roof. As the person reaches over you notices that annoying bar next to you is actually a super secret chair that not even Q could have devised.

The cell phone that was passed on to me was kinda busted so when I attempted to call my mom all I got was static. Actually all that phone did was make "static" noises rather than anything real or audible. Feeling a little bit worried that we had missed our window I decided to take a different less obvious route into the market. My guess was right and I saw my mom a few meters away(savvy metric reference).

Before long we were in the heart of the city on a bee-line to my grandfather's doctor. Only problem is that when we reached there he was nowhere in sight. He is apparently a very impatient man who felt the need to go about his business rather than wait on his daughter and grandson he hadn't seen in 19 years.

After an errand or 300 later that my mom had to get done it was time to eat. I feasted on local foods from a local vendor in the market. Lbo had a baked mac and cheese with chicken and I had some bake and salt fish and bake and herring as well as some fish cakes, all at the low low price of $11 EC about $4.

We were then off to see my old neighborhoods. I really don't want to go into it to much because I think I need a little bit more time for reflection. The short story is that the houses I grew up in look like hell holes. Whatever warped images left from my infancy are lies at this point.........

Our next stop was a close friend of my grandmother's who wanted to treat me to local food. She got the cook from the governor's house to whip up some ground provisions (roots and shit like potato), lobster deliciousness and mahimahi. Everything was so good and so beautiful over there. The view from the top of the hill was so impressive that it almost helped me forget about the state of my old hood. Mango trees growing taller than the second story balcony and the street lights hitting the avocado on exactly the right spot.

I smiled.

Then I closed my eyes on the car ride back to the hotel. There are few things scarier than driving at night in St. Lucia. The tiny country-side roads with the blind turns and big cars and people on the street. Did I mention the blinding headlights???

(Dang not enough time!!! I gotta go to the rain forest...)

So I did the rain forest thing today and I will write about that in the morning