St. Lucia Day 3

What a day!  Our jeep tour kind of fell through because not enough people signed up.. so we decided to hire a private tour guide Amos for the day.  It ended up being cheaper, and we didn't have to share our time with anyone else.  We left the resort around 8:30a and made our way through the crazy roads of St. Lucia until we came across some banana, plantain & cocoa plants. Our guide cracked a cocoa pod open and insisted we suck on the moist seeds inside... oh my! So good... delicious cannot begin to describe it.  We moved on and ended up at an active volcano.. did a hike, and made our wash to their mud sulfur baths.. where we completely covered ourselves in volcanic mud before letting it dry on our skin.  Amazing.  We also visited a waterfall, and the local Botanical Gardens. We hired another tour guide Alexander to guide us through the premises.  He was very knowledgeable!  We came to realize that almost every household plant that we get from the store is grown right here in their rain-forest. Even mother-in-law's tongue!

One of the funny things that struck me about St. Lucian culture is that everyone walks everywhere, pees on the side of the roads, is in no big hurry, and just is as skinny as a tree trunk.  And the random animals walking the roads all alone! Cows.. goats.. dogs... chickens... we even saw several horses just walking around alone with nobody to care for them.  Insane!  We had a great lunch of local cuisine at Petit Peak Restaurant & Bar, and then made our way to do some snorkeling along the coast on the Caribbean side of the island.  After over an hour of watching fish and eels and other such lifeforms swim around us, we made our way back after doing some scenic picture taking.  Definitely worth the cost of hiring a private driver for the day!  So much fun.  Tomorrow promises to be more fun... we are taking a bus tour of the island.