St. Lucia 2-24

A gorgeous day - a few puffy clouds, clear skies

and a hair raising ride across the island to our Jungle canopy adventure.

As we whipped around hairpin turns I kept seeing all these houses on stilts.
But they were up on the mountainsides. No real danger of flooding that I could see.


Our driver explained that because of the way that the laws were written there
if you built a house and started with the upper portion and
later added the lower portion you only had to have one permit. If you started with the lower portion and wanted to add on top,
you would have to have another permit.
Permits are really expensive and hard to come by, so families go in together
and get one permit and multiple generations or extended families live together.
There were some really nice houses and some pretty ramshackle ones as well.

The jungle canopy ride is a fairly recent addition to the island and has several options.
One can do the zipline rides where you tear across the mountainside at breakneck speed.
Or take a leisurely tram ride over the tops of the trees and vegetation.

We opted for the latter and it was the most relaxing part of our entire trip.
The weather was absolutely perfect. Not too hot, not chilly, sunny but not glaring.

And the view was amazing!
I think I saw more shades of green
and varieties of leaves in a couple hours than I have seen in my entire life.

And there were colors too.
Yellows.
Whites. Oranges.
Pinks. Red. Fuschia.
This one reminds me of Indian paintbrush.


And this one was my favorite.
It absolutely glowed.

We saw this beautiful egg.
And some great knit rasta caps.
I LOVED this island and all the sights.

And here's the towel buddy of the day