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14 February 2013

The Saint Lucia Enigma

We took a taxi tour of the northern part of Saint Lucia yesterday (I posted the photos here) in an effort to get to know the island a little better.  You could say that Saint Lucia is one of the more Americanized islands; tourism is very developed, there is a lot of airlift from the States, there are several very high end resorts, Oprah says the Pitons should be on everyone's bucket list...you get the idea.  The marina here in Rodney Bay is of course staffed mainly by local folks, but we have never really felt that it was possible to get to know people in the same way we have in, say, Grenada or Trinidad.  We have spent more time on those islands, of course, but (for example) we spent less than a week in Cumberland Bay on the west coast of Saint Vincent last year and we felt much closer to the "real" island than we ever have here, and this is our third visit.  The taxi tour didn't yield much - the driver was nice and wanted to be helpful, but he (like many) has kind of a set tour that he offers, and though he knows his local fruits and vegetables (which include almost nothing that we don't find elsewhere), he didn't know enough about other Caribbean islands to help us understand what might be the same or different in Saint Lucia.  We heard one thing that is at least a partial "difference".  It seems that many residents (and this is the case elsewhere) still own family lands; some have been sold off to developers over the years, but much of the interior is still in local hands.  What we noticed, however, is much more building of new (concrete) houses - and very few stalled projects.  AND, our driver tells us (and we saw a number of billboard advertisements on the subject) that banks will loan residents money, using the land as collateral, to build these houses.  These are likely very long term loans (we don't know that, but are guessing that it's so), and of course if the family is at some point unable to pay, they stand to lose both the house and the land.  Until recently, many houses that were built on the land were built with materials from the land itself, not from the much more expensive (albeit more durable) materials for which they have to borrow.
The other oddity in Saint Lucia relates to the cruiser community itself.  This photo was taken from Rodney Heights, looking across the Lagoon that is at the back of the marina, and then on to Rodney Bay, with Pigeon Island in the background.  You can't see the marina in this photo; that's where we are at the moment, and there are a lot of boats here too.  But - with all these cruising boats here, you would think that there would be a social life and community of cruisers that would look at least a little bit like that of Grenada, or even Trinidad.  There is a morning net here - it tends to be very short, and extremely light on the kinds of regular or ad hoc social activities that we are accustomed to in the other two islands.  There are plenty of restaurants, both at the marina and off the Lagoon (in dinghy distance), but none of those establishment seem to engage with cruisers or the cruising community in the way of, say, Da Big Fish in Prickly Bay or Clarke's Court or Whisper Cove marinas in Grenada...I mean, really not at all.  I've been scratching my head over it, and I really don't get it.  It's true that no one typically stays here as long as many people (including Raconteur last season) do in Grenada - but I don't think that's the whole explanation.
Anyway, end of sociological, political and economic musings for the day.  We are planning to proceed northward to Guadeloupe in a couple of days; the Captain has a head cold, so we shall see.  We are scheduled to fly from there to Europe on the 5th of March, so we will get there one way or another in the next 17 days.

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