A trip to the city

Friday morning looking off my balcony. This was the day we were taking our trip down the mountain to the capital, Castries, St. Lucia. We hit rush hour traffic in the narrow windy roads so getting to the city took about 45minutes.

Our first stop was at the Peace Corps regional office of St. Lucia. Here is where we had our administration training sessions on the office balcony with this amazing view.

This is a snapshot of the foods we were taught about and got to sample during our Nutrition session. Here you can see an eaten green mango, a sour orange, bananas and plantains, lemons and in the back there is ginger. Another thing we sampled was cocoa tea from the cocoa stick, smelt cinnamon bark, ate guava cheese (which is actually a candy-not cheese), and the raw vegetables included dasheen, breadfruit and yams.

Here is a market street downtown. We broke off into small groups to discover the city. Our task was a scavenger hunt of about eight questions to answer. Things included how much a straw laundry basket is at the market? how many flavors of ice cream does Elena's have? why is Derek Walcott Square named after this gentleman? It was very educational and helped us to meet the local people and talk to them and ask them questions about their city. They seemed to enjoy helping us out. We had plenty of extra time to walk around as well. We spoiled ourselves at the cafe where we got iced coffee drinks-we figured we should get them while we can still afford them!

The Roman Catholic Church sits in the heart of the city and has an open invitation for locals and tourists. This was part of our hunt to find the denomination and year of foundation... 1899.