Rodney Bay Marina, St Lucia

On Tuesday we decided to venture into the capital of St Lucia, Castries as we had a few things we needed to buy and the duty free shopping there is advertised in all the free tourist magazines. We took the 1A minibus again from outside the marina to the centre of Castries for only £1.20 for both of us, though the erratic driving style of the driver particularly in the narrow dual carriageway going into Castries convinced us both that we’d rather not hire a car while we are here and will do our touring by boat!

We spent about 2 hours in Castries and pretty much walked round the whole town, it was however a big disappointment. Although the cruise ships come into there the town does not seem to have benefited much from these visitors and is very scruffy and we were hassled by locals on every turn. Kevin was given a lecture on the Rastafarian religion and about how Jesus apparently used to smoke marijuana, which amusingly enough was also confirmed by a security guard at the marina that night when he had his second lecture of the day! We did visit one of the duty free shopping malls which was very poorly stocked with just the usual tourist tat – t-shirts etc.

We went back to the marina and enjoyed a great jacket potato and salad at the Café Ole which has become a regular treat before retiring back to the boat for a siesta. In the evening we decided to watch our James Bond Casino Royale DVD (having seen the sequel last week). Kevin has been experimenting with some cocktails (spirits are very cheap here – 1 litre of Chairman’s rum (good quality) = £8) and has being trying to recreate the Vesper cocktail from the film, having had one at the Big Chef’s Steakhouse last week.


Shiny Invincible back on the water dwarfed by our neighbour Azimut 85 motorboat