St. Lucia - day 6

[kmusser]

I forget what day it is, who cares, still frickin' gorgeous. Today we go to visit two of the local tourist attractions. Joining us is another couple staying at Stonefield. First up is the "drive-in volcano" - which I suppose it is, in the same way that Yellowstone is. Soufriere and much of the surrounding area sits inside the caldera of a volcano that blew it's top many thousands of years ago. The center is still volcanically active in the form of bubbling mud and sulfer hot springs. The geology is very similar to Yellowstone, our guide says they even occasionally get geysers. Pretty neat stuff, but we don't stay in the stench of sulfer for long.

Then we go on the botanical gardens and hot springs. Our guide here is the very entertaining Alexander the Great, he is what we call a Character. He tells us about the about the plants here, lots of fruit trees, most of which we already saw in the rainforest, and lots of flowers. We suspect half his stories are BS, but they're entertaining all the same. Within the gardens is a beautiful waterfall and hot springs (same water as we saw earlier, but it's cooled off enough so it won't boil you now) and mineral baths that were establish by Louis the XIV for his army. Alexander makes Zammis a fish out of palm leaves that Del would be very envious of. Have to hang out with the craft vendors outside for a bit as we wait for our ride back to the villa - looks like we just missed the rush as we see crowds of tourists being bussed in from other resorts.

Anyway, that only takes up about half the day, the other half is spent on siesta. In the evening we meet up with the folks we met on the cruise for dinner and half much more yummy food and drinks. We also take a quick tour of the other villas afterwords. The others have even nicer views than ours and they have private pools, but they have to contend with construction going on at the resort - I think we did ok. Late night chat with couples from Canada and England and then off to bed.