Wayne Baumgarten and Debbie Baumgarten

Saint Francois the Evening- Gaudeloupe Mid August

This is the view from our balcony as the sun goes down.

We visited St Lucia briefly. It was an interesting experience. We saw the tourist zone, which was fabulous and you can see in the photos. We also took a rental car and drove some of the roads and saw fairly sour looking islanders. It was more of the split personality of the caribbean- poverty and wealth side by side. Debbie and I drive a fiat panda, similar to a lot of the islanders. However its not that uncommon to see BMW X6’s and brand new range rovers hogging along the tiny roads. Anyhow in my Saint Lucia driving experience I found the roads were some of the hardest I have ever driven, and that’s saying something considering the roads here in Guadeloupe.It’s harder because in St Lucia they are driving English style, on the left. But even so the roads were fantastically twisty, narrow and with deep ditches or good sized drop offs without guard rails. So you definitely want to be paying attention.

Our trip to Barbados

We went to Barbados for a visit. To go there we took a ferry from Guadeloupe to St Lucia, stayed in St. Lucia for a couple of days and then flew to Barbados from there. All in all we were on the ferry for about 7 hours. The ferry has a downstairs enclosed area that is air conditioned and has movies playing. The upstairs has an open air seating area and an area out back where you can stand out on the deck. We stopped very briefly in Dominica and in Martinique – both very beautiful islands. And there was a spectacular rainbow at one point which I was able to catch part of on camera. By the time we arrived at St. Lucia it was getting dark. Here are a few photos of the trip there.