We’re knocking off the St. Lucia adventures one at a time. Today we’re going to hike up the OTHER side of Sugar Beach to the Piton Waterfall – a small waterfall that is warmed by the nearby volcanic activity.
This time we park the dinghy at the end of the pier right at Sugar Beach Resort. The local guys that run/guard the pier say “No problem, just don’t lock it”. OK then. We check out the menu at the restaurant that allows public riff raff like us -US$30 for a burger but we figure we will have earned it. We’ve saved at least C$250 by doing these hikes on our own.
Up, up, up we go. Not as steep nor as high as the other side, but work nonetheless. Once you get to the top of the saddle, you go down, down, down about halfway on the other side to the little parking lot with the handmade sign announcing the waterfall. EC$15 for the two of us to enter.
It’s quaint, the water is warm, not hot but quite nice. There’s only about 7 of us there so lots of room. After a couple girls from Texas depart the good pool, we climb in there with the ex-native who now lives in Ottawa. Chat away. She highly recommends Laborie which is on the lower east side of St. Lucia. The guide book also suggests going there. Non-touristy, just nice apparently. We’ll check it out next April.
Suddenly about 20 people show up from a tour bus so we depart. Walk back in our wet suits so they will (mostly) dry by the time we get down to the restaurant. Once again, a pretty hard walk up to the saddle, then back down to the beach, but not nearly as bad as yesterday.
We’ve decided to treat ourselves to the exorbitant prices cuz we need a burger and have earned it. We are parked under the roofed restaurant, good as it starts pouring rain hard for 10 minutes. The wait staff are super nice, the food slow to arrive but very good. We don’t mind the delay, the people watching is pretty entertaining. It’s a constant flow of every kind of tour boat coming and going, taking on and disgorging fat tourists to go snorkeling or whatever.
Eventually, we pay US$100 for lunch!! but we don’t mind. Work our way to the pier, trusty dinghy still there, climb in and motor back to Milu.
It rains off and on but we wait for a sunny break and go snorkeling off the back of Milu. It’s supposed to be fantastic. It’s OK. Nothing remarkable. Take some GoPro video. Back on Milu, I take these drone shots.
It’s 4:00 pm by this time, kinda late to start any of the projects I was considering. I have some work to do so I do it. The Marine Park thieves, oops, Rangers come by and we joke around. The night is technically EC$54 but they take EC$50.
They also remind us the fireworks start at 9 pm. Hopefully we can stay up that late, I’m drinking a coffee …
Can’t sit any more so decide to try and fix the deck post lamp that sits on our console table in the cockpit, even tho it’s dark. Just trying to kill time to 9 pm. Buncha testing, buncha wiring, looks like I found the problem. Well one of them anyway, there might be others. We’ll see tomorrow.
Bang bang, the fireworks have started, we head on up. A very good show tho it only lasts about 10 minutes. Pretty spectacular setting, between the pitons, watching fireworks.
It’s over now, I sit inside nodding off as I try to finish this,