We are on a ship’s tour today. I know, I know, it’s totally surprising, but we really didn’t have any idea what else to do, we couldn’t find a car rental (and once we are here, we see there is good reason why) and don’t cherish the idea of spending a whole day onboard without anything planned. Thus, the ship’s tour. Although, once again (we’re not sure how we have done this), we think we are going on a different tour than what we have booked. We have one print out, but it doesn’t match our itinerary. Not that it matters – they are both scenic tours, so what ever! We have 20 in our group, which is fairly manageable, and our tour guide, Genil, is adorable and fun. We’ve already been warned about the transportation (Oceania is big on giving explanations/warnings about everything – in this case, the buses are Japanese, not ideal for people over the height of 6’2”, Max. weight is 250 lbs, etc., etc.), but honestly, it’s a fine little bus with really good A/C.
Genil gives us the basic history of the island. It was fought over by the British and the French for control of the harbor because it was safe and deep and was a refueling station for ships going further south. Each country won the island 7 times with the British finally prevailing. As we make our way up into the hills above the harbor, Genil gives us little facts: it is illegal to wear camouflage here (we already knew that from Sandy) because the police (military militia sort of – it’s some odd configuration of security personnel) where camo, and there was a time when people would wear camo and “cause trouble” then blame it on the police, thus the law prohibiting anyone but the police from wearing it); St. Lucia only got electricity in 1964; it takes 5 hours to drive around the island and there are no street signs to tell you where you are because, I think, there aren’t any street numbers to the houses? Maybe? I know for sure she told us the locals just give directions by landmarks and descriptions and that if you didn’t know how to drive in reverse, you couldn’t drive in St. Lucia, because you were always having to reverse to let cars pass from the opposite direction (which definitely explains why there were no car rental places available when we looked).
Our first stop is St. Mark’s, an old Colonial-era house at the top of the Morne Fortune mountain, reached by a tiny narrow switch back road facing the Castries Harbor. The house is owned by a shipping family, the man, a Scotsman married a local woman, and had a family who live here today (they only open the lower level to tours). They were obviously important society people here on the island with collections of African and European art, and a curio table filled with British royalty memorabilia, including this Fergie and Prince Andrew commemorative dish – obviously from far happier times.
The tour takes in the dining room, with beautiful mahogany furniture, precious glass and ceramics from around the world and the iconic painting of fishermen on a beach by a local artist. The light filled living room runs the entire width of the house and is decorated with overstuffed chairs, lovely Persian carpets and family photos on the grand piano in the corner (giving you a little odd feeling of intruding or spying or something – walking through someone else’s personal space while they are upstairs). Out back on the veranda we are treated to rum punch and fried bananas and plantains, which we take and then wander around the porch, looking at at the gorgeous views over the harbor.
A few minutes of looking at the scenery and we are back on the bus (after shooing off some ladies from the other bus who obviously got confused) and heading toward La Toc Battery, the British fort built in 1888 to protect the harbor against the French. While La Tock had an excellent location with views across every possible attack direction, the French never came back to claim the island, so the fort was abandoned in 1905 and sat unprotected and unpreserved for years.
Then, in the early ‘80s, Alice Bagshaw, who moved to the island from Pennsylvania (I believe) with her husband, bought the battery because she felt it was languishing and needed to be preserved for history. She spent hours researching the battery, even went to Britain and had help from the military there to uncover information regarding the building of the batter, and tons of money to rehabilitate the site, cutting down the overgrown trees and even hiring a guy with a big Catapillar tractor to move the one remaining cannon from the shell room to the top of the fort where it should be placed as originally used (PS – the story goes that Alice looked all over for someone or something to move the cannon, and this guy who owned the Catapillar said he could move anything, so he came up with the Catapillar, moved the cannon almost to the right spot before the tractor broke and had to be trucked out of the fort, never to be run again! Thus, the cannon is facing the wrong way, and there is a cylinder block from the Catapillar next to the cannon as a memorial.)
Alice was also an avid scuba diver and explored all the areas around the harbor, finding over 900 glass bottles from various eras which are now displayed in the soldiers’ war shelter area. We tour the bottle display, which is really quite fascinating, looking at how the bottles were originally found covered in barnacles and coral, then looking at all the different styles once they were cleaned (of particular interest were the blue bottles that were simply called “poison” bottles, because they were only used to store poisons).
We move from the war shelter to the shell store rooms, where in one there is a photo array from the restoration, all yellowed with age, but clearly showing Alice in the middle of the restorations – from original shots of the reforestation that took place over the old fort, to the removal of the foliage to that darn tractor! Then there is the display of shells, which Sunny just has to play on, but its getting far too warm in there to stay and let him run rampant over the displays, so we make our way outside for just a little breeze, hit the restroom and then wait with Genil for the rest of the group. As we are hanging out Genil tells us that Alice just turned 80 on Saturday, but she’s had to slow down recently because she fell and needed a hip replacement. The doctors told her to take it easy, and she’s had to close her silk screening business (she’s obviously a go getter!). It’s such a small island (even with 180,000 population), that Genil saw Alice the other day at the grocery store shopping. Sweet!
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