Wednesday, February 15 – transit from Grenada to St. Lucia

I have a 6pm flight tonight, so I decided to keep things kind of leisurely; mainly working on a journal entry. And it helped that I was able to get a late checkout from my Airbnb. Thank you!

My flight is on a British Airways 777. Wow! It’s the largest plane I’ve experienced so far on this trip! Weird that it would be used to travel from Grenada to St. Lucia, right? Well, as you probably guessed, it just has a stopover in St. Lucia and then travels on to London Gatwick. The plane wasn’t terribly full, and I’d say about 30 of us exited in St. Lucia. The flight took about 30 minutes and cost 158 USD.

I had a funny encounter as I entered St. Lucia. The Customs agent (not Immigration) asked about where I’d been so far on my trip, and where I was going next. Not just my next stop, but my entire future itinerary (I actually couldn’t remember all of them; when I finished going through my list she said that I should go to Antigua too. And that’s when I figured out that I actually was traveling there! I’m clueless!). She was nice about it though, and I couldn’t tell if she wanted to know for her job, or if she was just curious.

The international airport is located in the South of St. Lucia, and my Airbnb is located near the main town of Castries in the middle portion of the west coast. The taxi ride took about an hour and cost 85 USD. Ouch! Fortunately I won’t be going back there when I depart; I’ll be taking the ferry from Castries. (Speaking of which, my flight tonight will be my last one for nearly a month! I’ll be taking ferries going forward until I fly from Dominica to Antigua on March 12.) Regarding my taxi ride, it’s too bad my flight arrived in the evening, for a couple of reasons: a) it would have been nice to see more of the scenery on our one hour drive; and b) during the day there is a bus that runs from the airport to Castries at a cost of 3 USD. My cheap self definitely would have been on that!

Thursday, February 16 – St. Lucia

After a lazy morning I got motivated to venture out and get a lay of the land (in daylight). It’s about a 30 minute walk into Castries, where I plan on roaming around a bit and then pick up some groceries on the way back.

There is not a huge amount of things going on in Castries. I could foresee my time here being kind of a relaxing stay – swimming and hammock time. I do plan on taking a tour of the island at some point though.

Travel Note: I’ve noticed that one aspect of being a solo traveler on the islands is rather frustrating – that there is a dearth of organized group tours. Except for the Panama Canal cruise, all of the other tours I’ve taken so far have been private, with me as the only customer. That’s nice in one way, but it makes it rather expensive.