Beautiful morning in Marigot Bay. We are greeted with “Santa Claus” who comes by daily on his SUP with local fresh produce and bread. Amazing how he can balance himself on that SUP, even when it gets windy in the bay. We buy a pineapple for $EC35 (that’s $17 Cdn!) so he throws in some bananas too. I will make two loaves of banana bread later as we already have lots of bananas and want to use them up before the freekin bats get them lol. I will freeze a loaf as it comes in handy to have little treats for sailing passages.
Later this morning we head out to go up to the village to Janice’s place who I’d arranged with the prior day to make us the St. Lucia national dish of “green fig and salted cod”. Janice is absolutely lovely and we enjoy her cooking, although have to admit that SL’s national dish is not nearly as flavourful or complex as Grenada’s “Oil Down”. It’s tasty though and we are appreciative that she cooked it up just for us for a mere $EC50 for both of us.
After lunch we pack up and head off towards Rodney Bay. Never been there, a fairly famous beach and it’s only an hour or so motor up the coast.
Surely is a big bay with a big beach. It’s Saturday so lots of locals about and lots of small Hobies roaring around the bay from the resorts. We’re intending to have a nice steak dinner in the lagoon area so eventually make our way in. The lagoon is huge and it actually takes us a while to find the dinghy dock near to where the main landing is.
The landing is very western, could be anywhere in the US really. Bunch of cute little bars and restaurants, all of them more or less Al Fresco. Pretty affluent crowd. We have a gelato at the gelato bar. VERY good. The girl behind the counter is all alone and it’s busy but she is a machine. Her talents are wasted here, she should be next door at the bar where the service is terrible.
We find out the steak house Christy wants is in the other part of the lagoon we were at before, where the mall is so we dinghy back over there. First we donate EC$20 to the local orphanage – the guy asking for money is genuine and his name is Earl. I was going to donate EC$5 but he says he loves Canadians and shows me all the Canuck donations today – $20, $20, $20. I am shamed into it.
Over in the other bay there is the ubiquitous dock guard – a poor guy with a sad story and bandages all over. Could be just a charade but he looks rough enough and we know that if we pay him, he’ll look after the dinghy. EC$20 again.
Walk up the path and there is Cancun. Two big malls. We stroll through one of them but things are closing soon, except for the big grocery store so we buy a few things. Walk back towards the dinghy where the fancy steak house actually is too. There’s some kind of music video being shot on the steps of the mall so we watch for a while.
The steak house isn’t open until 6 pm, tho it is close now. Christy looks up the prices. We decide NOT. Although a good steak would be nice, it is very hard to get good beef down here and we suspect the price wouldn’t warrant the value. Back to the Argentinian restaurant at the other dock we go.
The ribeyes are pretty average, mine is a shitty cut, Christy’s is cooked shittily.
We work our way back to Milu in the dark. On the beach and surrounding bars the music is ramping up and will go to the wee hours with that awful stuff played at volume 12 and a DJ screaming into his mic every 5 seconds.