Day 1 (November 8, 2018): St. Lucia Bound!

Every fall, the intensity of work builds to the boiling point for both Pam and I.  Looking forward to a long weekend on a warm beach keeps us going.  It always comes down to a painful early morning departure, though.  A 3:30am rise got us on a packed WestJet flight to Toronto that left right on time at 6:30.  Yesterday’s airport closure, due a 747 cargo plane sliding off the runway, could have easily impeded us from getting away today.  But fortunately, that chaos was fully resolved and all flights were on time.

Our transfer in Toronto was a quick one hour.  Our flight to St. Lucia (also packed) left right on time at 9am.  However, as the pilot revved the engines to full thrust and started down the runway, he quickly aborted take-off.  Long story short, we returned to the terminal for a maintenance crew to look into the problem.  It quickly became apparent that a new plane was needed, so we didn't leave again until 1pm.  

The flight was fine and arrived at 7pm, instead of the planned 3pm.  We picked up our very small Chevy Spark rental and set out in the dark, driving on the left-hand side, for the northwest corner of the island, where our resort is located.  (The International airport is on the southeast coast.)  The winding, hilly, narrow roads made for a white-knuckle drive.  We somehow navigated our way through the capital, Castries, and pulled into the resort just after 9pm.  

What a long, long day.  The torrential rains are pounding the resort as I type.  The forecast is a wet one for our four-days here, but we remain hopeful!  This mountainous island has a lot of things to explore, and we'd prefer to do that in dry conditions.

For now, however, we need sleep badly.  Good night from St. Lucia, in the Windward Islands. 

Dawn over Halifax, upon take-off to Toronto.  That's the Halifax Harbour and the Bedford Basin in the center of the photo.

Gate screen for our Toronto > St. Lucia flight.  Everything was going so well - all was on-time...

The mass development of America's northeast coastline, just north of New York City.  About to head out over the Atlantic towards the Caribbean.

So where exactly is St. Lucia?  Quite close to South America.  You can see its location (marked by the airport code UVF) in proximity to Caracas, Venezuela.

Upon final descent into St. Lucia, you can see the lights of Castries, the capital city.  The airport is actually a 75-minute drive to the south of Castries.

Westjet finally got us there 4 hours late.  This Boeing 737-800 is a replacement jet to the one we were initially on.

Comments

  1. DeborahNovember 10, 2018 at 1:23 PM

    You are so right about the east coast. Once flew up at night, and it was a continuous string of lights, really surprised me.

    ReplyDelete

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