Sat 24 Feb 2007
During the last week of November, Meg & I had an amazing opportunity to travel to the island nation of Saint Lucia. For those of you that are completely clueless about world geography like me (or clueless about geography in general like Meg!), St. Lucia is located just off the coast of South Amercia (near Brazil). April & Michael (you’ll meet them in the next post) asked us to travel with them to St. Lucia to photograph their destination wedding experience! And what an amazing experience it was!
We arrived in St. Lucia on Monday afternoon, and after a 2.5 hour white-knuckle cab ride to Rodney Bay (on the north end of the island), we finally arrived at our hotel called the Coco Palm: Coco Palm Resort. Although Saint Lucia is an incredibly small island (something like 25 miles long, and only 4 miles wide), the cab ride still took well over 2 hours due to the mountains, and the fact that a very small percentage of the roads are paved.
Below are some of the images from our day trip around Saint Lucia!
This is a shot of the world-famous Marigot Bay in Saint Lucia. Marigot Bay was made famous by the movie Dr. Doolittle, which was filmed in Saint Lucia.

This image shows the Piton Mountains in the background…the country produces a local beer named “Piton Beer”!

The next few images were taken in a tiny fishing village called Anse Le Raye. The people depend on the ocean for food, and the local economy is driven by the conch trade.










Being the gullible tourists that we are, we also decided to visit all of the landmarks on the island. One such opportunity was the Botanical Garden in Soufriere (along the western coast of Saint Lucia). The next three images were taken in the Botanical Garden!



Another surreal experience was meeting the “Boa Man”! A common profession in Saint Lucia is for the local people to wander into the rainforests that cover the island, and collect boa constrictors from the wild. They carry them back to the major roads traveled by tourists, and stand along the side of the highway working for tips. This guy was nice enough to allow us to photograph him! Meg wanted absolutely no part of this one, and waited in the car!!! I am deathly afraid of snakes, but I decided to brave it. After all, you can’t photograph snakes by the side of the road everyday!

April & Michael were staying at the Grand Saint Lucian Resort, part of the Sandals family, in Saint Lucia. This image was taken from a small rock jetty just down the beach from the resort. You can just make out the resort (the flag poles) in the background.

Stay tuned for the images from April & Michael’s wedding!
~ Charles
February 24th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
FINALLY!!! more posts to keep me entertained at work!
These are amazing…We should have honeymooned there…
February 24th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Absolutely beautiful! Great photo of the boa, Charles! I would be in the car, too!!!
February 25th, 2007 at 12:54 am
And I’m sure you’ve probably noticed - but I’m probably going to backdate a few more photo enteries so they don’t all stack up with multiples in the same day. Annoying, I know - but a bad habit of mine - I just like looking at the archives and seeing a more ‘even’ (and accurate!) distribution. …weird, I know.
SO - be sure to scroll down a few enteries - you might notice some new eye candy!
February 28th, 2007 at 10:09 am
These are gorgeous—You really captured the beauty and spirit of the island. I went to St. Lucia years ago when I was in undergrad on a mission trip (our group did health education outreach to locals) and the island and the people have a special place in my heart. Seeing your photography brought back all the wonderful memories. We stayed in Vieux Fort at St. Jude’s Hospital, a far cry from all the luxury resorts at the north end of the island! One of my favorite parts of the trip was all the locals we met on the side of the road as we traveled throughout the island: The ones with snakes, or the ones who weave baskets for you, and the ones selling you fruit. Our trips always took twice as long because we’d stop at every roadside “vendor.� I love that you captured that feature of the island with the picture of the Boa Man(and I’m glad that Charles was brave enough to get out of the car to take the photograph!) And of course, April and MJ’s wedding pictures are equally beautiful!
February 28th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Amazing pictures! Charles, the Boa Man is an unbelievable shot. Looking back it had to be worth the sacrifice, right?
February 28th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Hey Ryan!
It was totally worth it! But I really am totally freaked out by snakes. I spooked one in the yard while I was mowing last summer, and I almost wet myself running for the porch. My sandals actually came flying off. I went in and put on my hiking boots to finish mowing the yard!
~ Charles
February 28th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Hey Karen!
We had to stop at all of the roadside vendors too!!! Another favorite was the coconut people.
Ya’ll, it was so cool! We stopped at the side of the road right at the opening to this huge plantation. There were three women sitting there with machetes & a huge pile of green coconuts. They hacked open the coconut, stuck a straw in it, and handed it over.
Warm coconut milk is not my favorite beverage ever, but it was such a cool experience.
~ Charles
March 1st, 2007 at 10:43 am
Ok, i think Charles wins funniest comment for this post (so far). I almost wet myself picturing the Charles vs. Snake mowing incident. Hey Meg where was the camera for that? I can’t really talk I like snakes on TV but let’s just say I wouldn’t make a very good “Boa Man”.
March 13th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
These pictures bring back so many great memories of my honeymoon! Did you try the Piton Beer? Or Dirty Bananas? We loved it!
March 15th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Hey Jessica!
Did we try Dirty Bannanas? Does a one-legged duck swim in circles!
OMG!!! I had about 12 too many DB’s! And the Piton Beer was excellent. It was so funny driving around the country because there was an advertisement for Heineken every 10 feet, but everyone drinks Piton!
~ Charles
March 15th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Actually, Jessica, the Dirty Banana was my very first St Lucia drink - per your recommendation! A great way to start our trip - thanks for the tip!!