Honeymoon Adventures, Day 1 Con’t. The Car ride.

First, if you haven’t read the previous stories then please do so here.  You’ve gotta be caught up on everything.

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Alright.  Lets continue.  This car ride was one of the craziest rides I have ever been on.  Think about your scariest time in a taxi cab.  Where it seems like the cab driver is attempting to set a personal record for taking you 40 miles in rush hour traffic…in 15 minutes.  That kind of ride.  That is what we experienced.  Only, here was the difference.  There was no rush hour traffic.  It isn’t quite as bad when you’re weaving around cars when you’re only going 12 mph…and so is everyone else.  Imagine doing this at 45 mph.

So lets start from the beginning.  We depart the airport and the first thing he says is…”Everyone buckled up?”  I take this as a safety measure and am appreciative of it.  As we get closer to the actual road, he tells us that they drive on the other side of the road here, so not to be too nervous about that.  Sure enough, we start down on the left side of the road.  Not a big deal, but it is a little odd when you see cars coming at you and you realize you are on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

I see I street sign with the number 30 on it.  I assume that it is a speed limit.  I do a quick calculation and determine that it is probably mph.  However, I quickly began to doubt myself because it didn’t seem like the driver thought is was a speed limit sign.  Now, from where I was sitting I was unable to see the speedometer.  However, I have been in enough cars to know that we were going faster that 30mph.  If I were to guess, I would put us at 40 or 45.   So here we are cruising along this VERY bumpy road.  More about the roads in a minute.

We are rapidly coming up on a car and I am quickly beginning to ask myself if he is just going to make a run for it and pass this guy in one fale swoop.  Instead, he puts on the brakes.  I had guessed that it was because there was an oncoming vehicle.  I think I was wrong.  A car suddenly passes us and I’m not kidding…this was the closest I have ever seen to an accident without a crash actually happening.  And the other driver didn’t even seem to care.  They just went along on their way like it was no big deal.  Scared the hell out of all of us.  I swear…it’s all a tourist thing.  haha.  They are all working together to scare everyone off.

Alright, that kind of gives you an idea of the driving.  This is all the time, btw.  In a barely two lane road, drivers are somehow making it 3 cars wide.  Around corners.  It’s insane.  Anyway, the roads.  I would say about half of the road(s) that we travelled on had a divider line.  And most of those were in the actual city part.  In the back roads, it’s just a paved area.  And not a very well paved area.  Huge pot holes.  Like…blow a tire pot holes.  And where there isn’t pot holes, it is just uneven pavement.  So the road is VERY bumpy.  And to top it off, this van rode like it didn’t even have struts or shocks.  Or any sort of dampening device.

So as we are riding along in the taxi roller coaster, I am trying to take in some of the sights of the island.  Banana plantations…EVERYWHERE.  I’ve never seen so many banana trees.  Then again…I’ve never actually seen 1 banana tree.  Anyway, bananas.  Lots of ’em.  The majority of the cars there are RHD (right hand drive), and seeing this brings out the car tuner in me and starts to wonder if there is an untapped market down here.  I quickly throw that idea away.  While the cars ar RHD, that doesn’t make them nice.  This is like the junkyard for old cars.

You know that recycling plant that you have to go to when you want to get rid of your old monitor?  Well…St. Lucia is like that…but for cars.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some nice ones.  But there are a lot of not nice ones.  There was one in particular that stood out, and I don’t know why.  It was a white truck and there was one guy (a mechanic) looking into the engine.  He had a beer in one hand and a reserve in his back pocket.  Next to him was either the customer or a helper mechanic.  He too was sporting the beer +1 reserve.

We finally arrive at our resort, Sandals Grande St. Lucian.  We get up to the front.  After an hour of sitting in a nice AC cooled van, you forget how hot it is outside.  We quickly remembered.  They unload out luggage and set it aside.  We follow a hotel greeter and sit on a couch in the lobby.  The lobby is outdoors, btw.  As she brings us a towel and a glass of champagne, I start to finally relax.

Until next time.