Cruising the Southern Caribbean - Day 5 - St Lucia Island Tour

This is the only day that I actually booked a tour on an Island.  I arranged this before the cruise directly with the company that was recommended on a cruise forum. 

For some reason I got my timings wrong and very lucky for me, got off the ship early and was greeted by our driver....lucky because I thought it didn't start for another hour (in which case I would have missed out)....I'm so glad I decided to get off early!

What a great day.  The tour company is called Cosol.

Not only was this an island tour it also included a brunch of local eats (which was one of the drawcards).   We headed up into the hills of St Lucia (which is a beautiful lush tropical forest covered island) where we were greeted by about 10 other vans on this tour.  We headed to an outdoor patio overlooking the Caribbean and munched our way through local bites.  Although lots of fried foods and stodgy, starchy munches...some of it was rather tasty.  It was just unfortunate that you had to fight your way through the masses to get a sample.

Here is a sampling of some of the foods.  There was also an array of fresh tropical fruits.

breadfruit balls                                                    candy sticks

 

The breadfruit balls are a surprise.  They are not sweet but savoury, filled with onion and cheese along with the breadfruit. the candy sticks were just that, sweet fried dough.

 

saltfish Accra

 

These were salty and crispy and not unlike a croquette (just in ball form).

 

 Johnny cakes

 

These are found from Newfoundland all the way through to the Caribbean and are little balls of cornmeal, mixed with water (or milk) and are deep fried.

 

Labadbad                                         split pea samosas

 

I was a big fan of the Lababad.  It's a coconut lavosh style flat crisp bread/cracker.  I kept going back for more of it.  The samosa were very tasty.  The only downfall for most of this deep fried food was that it was cold....and we all know that deep fried cold foods are soggy and oily and not that great...would be better if everything was hot and fresher.

Coconut candy

 

The coconut candy was sweet and almost toffee like..I could of eaten a bowl of this (but I didn't)

Pitons lager

 

Satisfied (aka full) with a Pitons in hand we headed on our way (there were only 5 of us in this van today) around the island.  The tour included a stop off on a roadside banana plantation, the volcano (which is still very active) and a dip in the therapeutic mud baths, a speed boat out to Sugar Beach between the two Pitons for some beach time, a waterfall, a couple of stops at fruit stalls and lots of beer and rum punch.  There is a 'blue van' (part of Cosol's) that follows the vans around the island for refreshments at the main stops.  Plenty of rum punch and beer (and non - alcoholic beverages) when you want them

This is me with the Pitons in the background.  Truly a beautiful, laid back island.

The Pitons

Before heading back to the ship we made a brief stop (ie didn't get out of the car) to pick up these local baked breads...they remind me of turkey legs and they are the size of them too.  We ate these piping hot with slabs of Cheddar cheese in the car on the way back.....okay the cheese is imported from the USA but the bread is made locally.

This was one island tour that I was very impressed with. You can book via email, no deposit required and pay in full after the tour has completed.