THURSDAY
SAINT LUCIA
THURSDAY
SAINT LUCIA
| The last stop on the excursion was the Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens & Mineral Baths. |
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| Lots of tropical plants. |
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| This tour guide was showing the kinds of fruits that are native to Saint Lucia. |
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| A flowing stream of mineral water. |
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| Bird-of-paradise flowers. Or should that be birds-of-paradise? |
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| Diamond Falls. There is more of an orange color to it than appears in this photo because it is taken toward the sun and that kind of bleaches it out a bit. The water flows from a sulphur spring above. |
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| Because of the properties of the mineral water, baths were established. |
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Here would be a good place to say a little bit about the gardens, from the
sign at the entrance, correcting some of the spelling, grammar and
punctuation. The Diamond Botanical Gardens, Mineral Baths and Waterfall is a portion of the 2,000 acres of land granted to three Devaux brothers by King Louis XIV of France in 1713, in recognition of their services to crown and country. It is claimed that a child Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, bathed in the original baths while spending holidays at her father's plantation in Soufrière called Mal Maison. In 1928, Mr. Andre du Boulay, owner of Soufrière Estate and Diamond Baths, excavated the site and restored two baths out of the original twelve that had been destroyed by the Brigands during the French Revolution. These baths are fed by the original spring water, similar to the waters of Aix les Baines in France. The original holding tank, built in 1784, is still in use. |
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| The bois bande tree is famous for being a Caribbean aphrodisiac. Small pieces are cut from the bark of a mature tree and boiled with other herbs as a remedy for impotence. The tour guide made a lot of erection jokes. |
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| Now the trip back to port. |
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| A little cemetery in Soufrière. |
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| I imagine a lot of people would want to live in a place like this. |
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| The road was quite bendy at times. |
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| And they have some serious potholes, some several feet across. The driver was constantly swerving to avoid them. |
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| Back in Castries. |
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| I don't know how old this building is or what it originally was, but it now has a barber or beauty shop inside. |
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| A little shopping mall we passed on the way. |
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| A sculpture in a roundabout. In Nashville, we have the pick-up sticks and nekkid people roundabouts. In Castries they have a four people rowing an invisible boat one. |
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 Back on board and looking forward from the balcony. |
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| I'm not really sure what these boats were doing. It looked like they were chasing each other. Maybe there was some training going on. |
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