Rodney Bay, St. Lucia
14.04.319N
60.57.157W

We met up with Roger & Elaine at Skuttlebutts, the restaurant/bar/grill located at the marina. We had met Gus, the manager, yesterday and today we sought out his guidance with regard to purchasing tickets to St. Lucia’s Jazz Festival. He directed us to Chris Joseph, a local taxi/tour guide driver. After a bit of discussion with Chris, it was decided that it would be cheaper and less stressful for us if we hired him to purchase our tickets for us, pick us up, deliver us to the opening day ceremonies in the next town and then return for us later in the evening than it would be for us to rent a car and negotiate these skinny roads on our own. With this task accomplished we were off for a morning hike to St. Lucia’s fort (every island has a fort).

We dinghied out of the channel and along the white sand beach towards Sandals, located on a spit between Pigeon Island and the mainland of St. Lucia. We tied up to the Park’s dock on Pigeon Island, paid our fees and started the climb to top of Ft. Rodney. I am not kidding you when I tell you that part of the hike was completely vertical. There was literally a ladder at the upper most portion of the mountain leading to the fort on top. We decided that it was better to use the majority of our energy climbing to the top and then take our time coming back down.

As with most forts we‘ve explored along our way, it had a great view. We caught our breath, snapped a few pictures, then started back down. There were a couple of lookout spots along the way where we stopped to gaze at the beauty of the islands and water before us. A lady passed by desperately calling ahead to her husband that she needed to stop for a cigarette break; for some reason, that cracked me up.

We descended about half way down the mountain and crossed over to another hill where there was a level spot that had once been some type of barracks; we snapped a few pictures back in the direction that we had come, before descending the rest of the way.

At the bottom of the mountain, one of the buildings still partially standing was the officer quarters. The Park Service has left half of the building in its natural state (a ruin) and the other half has been made into a museum that has a pretty good audio/visual presentation of the Battle of the Saints.

The rest of our walk was out to the end of Pigeon Island where the U.S.Navy had a tracking station during WWII.

After using up all of our energy for one day, we spent the rest of the day, relaxing and reading.