St. Lucia (Part A)

Bananas, sand-dollars and open air villas so large they could make a columbian drug lord blush. Oh! and a wedding. Tough to describe just how incredible our week down in St Lucia was, it's my hope that the pictures do it justice.

We spent the first night on the island in a jungle resort named Ti Kaye, mainly waiting for the rest of our 'uber-villa' people to arrive at the Windjammer Landing resort, and to have a romantic night alone. Brilliant cottage plopped down in the middle of the jungle and away from it all. The resort is accessible only by a private road featuring inclines over 55 degrees, making the taxi ride there 'spirited' to say the least.



Sensing copious amounts of awesome we made tracks the next day to Windjammer landing. No real way to describe the villa we booked...ok..maybe 4 bathrooms and a guest bathroom would be a good way to start. No? Plunge pool, three decks, 3800 sq ft of concentrated balls to the wall delight.

However, an incredible place to stay is pretty worthless without most of your closest friends and family there to help you celebrate your good fortune. In some sort of cosmic event we were joined by a truly righteous crowd and incredibly lucky to have been so. Time, expense, schedules and all the other factors which can sometimes even make it hard to arrange a dinner party were crushed by the flood of goodwill and sacrifice made so that they could join us.



I could hardly believe my eyes when we were boarded by pirate Moes, with even little Oscar taking a liking to the life of a seaman. (Cara Ninja'd her way out of my camera's view when the eye patches came out)

Not to be outdone, Andre and Kristen broke out the eyepatches and managed to find the bar as well. I believe some sort of absolutely shocking pirate limerick is being sung by Kristen. Something about monkey ears and balloon lips. My grandfather checks out the facilities and back on land Brendon and Charlene chill out with a couple of the local brews 'Piton'.

The aunt and uncle contingent was strong with Anette's Aunt's Brenda, Carol and Uncle's Darcy, Mike and Ken there to support and party with us. 'Preacher' Kinley, Auntie Karen and 'Ring Barrier' Cooper check out the sunset. Below, my mom talks with her hands in such a vigorous manner my dad flexs all of his face and chest muscles to bear the brunt of a stray blow. Margrethe, as usual, looks beautiful and manages to even match the tableset. Brian succombs to his daughters cruel joke. He is not a rabbit as you might assume in the first glance.

Adventure wise, we did pretty well with a tour through the interior of the island and a zipline through the jungle. A fishing line stringing up a barbie to our grandfather clock at christmas time meant that this trip was courtesy the best man (dad).

The picture of my mom on the zipline sums her up pretty well. Absolutely terrified, but doing it anyways and ending up with a huge smile at the end of it. (Below) Pay close attention to the care with which our rastaman guide places the helmet delicately atop his dreadlocks. Uncle Colin clues in on the fact that if you push off as hard as you can from the treetop platform you can reach 60-70km/h on the way down. This is, of course, much to the chagrin of the guides responsible for stopping the gringo 'coming in fast and heavy'.

Part B contains wedding goodness (will be posted during the weeked), and after that we have even more with tales from our 200 ft sailing vessel honeymoon barefoot cruise. Finally, some activity on the blog!