Who Knows? Joe Knows!

That was the name of our tour. Joe Knows St. Lucia. We had once again two amazing hosts! JR was our tour guide and Danny Boy was the boat captain!This tour was a land and sea tour. We were able to do a lot of awesome things in just one excursion! 

We took a relaxing boat ride on a beautiful sunny day to different communities in St. Lucia. First we visited Marigot Bay. This is where JR says all the "rich bastards" live. For example, Mick Jagger and George Foreman have houses here!
This is a picture of Mick Jagger's home. It is on a hill that is like 500 feet above the bay. The houses are ridiculously expensive.








For all you Bachelor fans...The season of that idiot Jake. We saw where the final rose ceremony was filmed. It was beautiful! Even the tour guides agreed that he was dumb for choosing Vienna. I didn't realize that the natives kept up with dumb U.S reality shows :)

While in this Bay, we were able to snorkle. Since I was in the water, and wasn't smart enough to buy a waterproof disposable camera, I don't have any pictures of us snorkeling. We saw some amazing coral reefs and a lot of little Nemo fish! Yeah, I don't know what the technical name for the fish is, but if I didn't have a picture would we really know what I am talking about? Everyone knows Nemo!


After snorkling we were taking by shuttle through the town of Soufriere. This was the old capital of St. Lucia until there was a huge fire in the 1940's and the changed the capital to Castries. Interesting fact.... they still have a  guillotine in their square. It isn't used, and I didn't have my camera out fast enough to take a picture either! However, they do still have capital punishment....death by hanging! There are prisoners on Death Row that have lawyers who are trying to get rid of capital punishment. It will be tied up in courts for years, so most likely they will just die in prison.


                                                      This is a picture of the Piton mountains. These mountains are 3,000 feet high! There is a tour where you can hike this, a couple we met did this and loved it. 

Next we were taking into a VOLCANO! We were given a mud bath from the actual volcano. The water in the mineral bath was about 106-110 F. HOT HOT HOT! We were told to keep the mud on our faces until we got to the waterfall to wash it off. We were told that the mud would help with bug bites, sun burns and just make your face feel amazing! They were right! My face was so smooth after washing it off.

By this time, we were starving. We deserved lunch! We were taken back to a cute little restaurant that served an amazing authentic St. Lucian lunch. Their sand has a lot of clay in it, so it's only natural that they use that clay to make pots to cook their food in!

The food was actually pretty good! They served chicken, lamb, an amazing vinaigrette salad dressing, mashed potatoes, wild rice, and their local vegetable that is like a potato.

After our lunch we headed back to the resort with some amazing pictures, 

great memories and even better tan...

I couldn't have asked for a more perfect time. I get to spend time with the man I love and in the most beautiful place I have ever been!  

No Pressure, No Problem. Baby.

What did the Hurricane say to the Coconut?

You betta hold on to your nuts, it's going to be one hell of a blowjob!

This is what our day was like. Our tour guide kept us laughing and entertained the whole time. We had an amazing tour guide named Annie, she was a big St. Lucian woman who ended every sentence with the word "Baby" in a Caribbean accent. It was an hour drive to the rain forest from our resort, she she filled us in with lots of information along the way.
We picked up a family along the way of the tour who was from another resort. She told them that the zip-lining was cancelled today and we were going Kayaking instead. Obviously that was the farthest thing from the truth, but she kept it going the whole ride up there.

The picture above, is a beautiful view that we had our "Kodak Moment" thanks to Annie.
Once we arrived at the rainforest, we had to get fitted for the most uncomfortable
and unflattering gear I have ever worn.
I guess safety is more important than fashion and after climing up those hills to get to the ziplines, I am very thankful for the uncomfortable gear!

There was a total of 12 ziplines and 10 different platforms that were spread out across the rainforest. Needless to say, I got a workout in while having an amazing time.



The picture you see is myself stopping about 5 feet short of the platform and I had to use my little existing upper body strength to get to the platform. What a workout!

Thanks to my amazing photographic skills (in my dreams) I was able to catch a couple action shots of Todd. I had Todd do the video while he was zip-lining. 

We had an amazing time on the zipline..I didn't even scream once!

After zip-lining we went back on the bus where Annie the tour guide was determined to show us a good time.She had the bus driver pull over like 5 times, this time she showed us a baby Pineapple! 

St. Lucia exports coco beans to the U.S to make Chocolate at the Hershey's plant in Pennsylvania. She cracked one open and there is a small coco seed. It wasn't ripe yet so we weren't able to eat it,if we would have it would have been very bitter. 95% of the coco beans on the island is sold to Hershey. The other 5% is left for the islanders. We even had the chance to purchase it at a local store in the city. We can't wait to try it!

We learned about the bananas on the island. Bananas are a huge export for the St. Lucia, after Hurricane Thomas hit it wiped out  most of the banana crops on the island.

Last but not least we learned about the local spice rum. You don't drink this like a normal drink, this is designed to take a shot of it. It is made with a bunch of spices that stay in the bottle. It is 160 proof. It will knock your socks off! Annie was kind enough to let us try some. After we took the shot, she filled us in with a valuable piece of information. This local rum also has the same type of chemical reaction that is used in a little blue pills that men sometimes use.... The bus driver has 12 kids, it must work... I am just going to leave it at that.

It's Christmas with a St. Lucia twist!

Days two and Three we decided to stay at the resort and check out what the resort had to offer! It was christmas after all! It was amazing to hear about the local customs and traditions. I bet you didn't know that it is tradition that you paint your walls with a fresh coat of paint... They also get new draperies for their home. At the resort, they had Christmas music playing but it was great because it had that reggae twist. I enjoyed it! Todd who hates Christmas music, tolerated it because it had a good beat to it!
After laying by the pool we took a "romantic" stroll on the beach where we met local native Greg. He stays on the beach right outside our hotel and sells "authentic" coral bracelets and bracelets made from lava rock. He called me princess so of course I just had to buy something from him! I am almost 100% sure he only calls me that and not every other girl on the island.
After our sale transaction he offered to sell us some other recreational activities. We politely declined.
We continued our walk and walked down a little further. We decided to rip off all of our clothing and jump in! We had swimsuits on of course. There was a red flag so we weren't able to do any water sports but we had fun jumping into the waves. I was able to take a couple of pictures thanks to the wonderful self timer on my camera. I like how Todd and I look the same in the picture but the wave has passed in the 2 second difference. Sorry the picture is so small but I am in a two piece and I am not a Victoria's Secret Swimsuit model by any means.

When we returned back to the resort, Santa came! He was greeting everyone at the pool! I had to get a picture with him.

It started to sprinkle so we decided to head back to the resort and get ready for dinner. All places at the resorts require you to dress up. I had to change from my sweatpants and Illinois tee to an actual dress. I even wore heels that I kept on through the duration of dinner. We ate at an Italian restaurant called "Marios" where they serve you with white gloves on to make it seem more exclusive and elite. I thought it lacked both of these qualities. I chose to try the Christmas Ham or what I would have refereed to Bacon. It tasted like cold bacon. Not impressed. Todd tried the steak, it's kind of hard to go wrong with steak, lucky him.

On Day 3 is when the sun finally came out and stayed out for the rest of the trip! We layed by the beach and played pool volleyball. Basically the perfect lazy day. Also I whooped Todd in shuffle board. I am not sure if we played the correct way but we kind of made things up when we went along.

Todd and I both chose one excursion to go on for the next two days. I chose Zipling in the rain forest, and Todd chose "Joe Knows" tour... Both= AMAZING!

Our Honeymoon~ St. Lucia

Anyone recognize this image of the cliff? It's in a very famous movie staring a pirate named Captain Jack Sparrow... ok ok I gave away too much. It's Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl! Johnny Depp was filming right there! This island has had a lot of famous people and famous movies shot here. Alright, enough with the name dropping for now.... Just wait till you see some of the houses!

If anyone ever needs a vacation, boy oh boy is St. Lucia the place to go. This vacation/honeymoon marked many first times for me. This is the first time I actually needed a passport, I have only been out of the country 1 other time and that was to Mexico with Todd and my parents when we were 17.
It was also the first time I ever tried anything seafood besides the best fried calamari from my favorite place in the world....Olive Garden. More about food later..
Leaving our familes on Christmas was also a first for both Todd and I. This was not my favorite part of the trip, but since I am a teacher, I didn't want to take off time after the wedding, so this was the only logical time to go for myself and Todd. Our families are pretty awesome and were very understanding about the trip.

Besides this gave my mom a chance to "watch" our darling cocker spaniel Lou. That was pretty hard too, we love our dog like a child, but my mom gave me daily updates on Lou, he was a very good puppy, she said. Duh, I raised him.  Just kidding....



We arrived on Christmas Eve to the St. Lucia airport. We stepped off the plane and stepped into humidity. 84 degrees and sunny. However that changed rather quickly. We were shuttled to our hotel that was over 2 HOURS AWAY. St. Lucia has 2 airports one is directly right next to our hotel, did we go to that one? What do you think?

The airport right next to our hotel has a runway landing trip the size of a football field. Our big ol' airplane was a little too big for that.  That's okay, it gave us a chance to see the beautiful island of St. Lucia.  Maybe I was just a little sheltered, but as we were driving to the hotel, I have never seen such a poverty stricken area in person. The surrounding area outside of Castries, well even Castries itself is a very poor area. Todd said it best when he said that he has seen "chicken shacks nicer than some of the houses were these people lived."

This made me kind of guilty. Here we are, Americans coming to the island so we can bask in the beauty of their island, while these people are trying to rebuild their country after Hurricane Thomas did some major damage.  These roads are very hilly, and very narrow. Parts of the roads were destroyed by the landslide and  driving on those roads were pretty scary.


After our 2 hour shuttle ride, we arrived to our hotel. We were greeted with glasses of champagne and hotel towels that smelled of lemons. Still pouring down rain but we were there and excited to start our vacation.

We got acquainted with our room and our resort and decided to have our first of many "free" drinks. The beautiful thing about Sandals is no tipping, no bills for drinks or food. None. Zero. St. Lucia has 3 Sandals locations that everyone can go to at no charge and they are shuttled to the different places for free! Our resort was the Sandals Halcyon Beach (which I still have trouble pronouncing) it was the smallest of the 3 resorts, but we loved it, this place is the kind of the place is where the bartenders remember your names after the first couple of drinks! We met some amazing couples who were (suprise, suprise) teachers celebrating their late honeymoon like us.

The top picture is Paradise Pool, it's the main pool of the resort where we rocked Pool Volleyball. No really, we were awesome. Not much competition in the females here. I guess they weren't athletes.
The next picture is outside our door. Room 125! We were right next to the pool which was really nice to walk outside the door and see the pool, and the beautiful ocean!
There were cabanas all over the resort to relax!
Last but not least had to have a picture in the room of course!

This was our first day there and we decided to go to the Pier for Dinner.
When it comes to food I am very stubborn. I know what I like and if it looks or smells funny 9.9 times out of 10 I won't try it. However, this time it was different. I was "brave" enough to try jumbo shrimp (loved it) Mahi Mahi (also delicious) snapper (tasty) duck (still not a fan). I guess this goes to show I should step out my comfort box and try food a little more often!