MY CARIBBEAN ADVENTURE

I will begin like this:

 

The same way I was enchanted, I was also disappointed.

 

There is this wide-spread belief that in the tropics you can find what Greece is missing: better weather, warmer sun (and therefore a better tan), cleaner beaches, greener waters, fresher pineapple, better cocktails, and, of course, whiter, or softer, or whatever sands.

 

My own (I repeat, my own) impression, however, was very different. I didn’t have such an amazing experience, neither in Seychelles, which I did not love at all, nor in Mauritius and the Caribbean - especially in the Caribbean.

 

And of course I didn’t find in any of those places something equivalent to what Greece has to offer.

 

Buying a vacation combo, or planning a trip to these parts of the world, without taking the weather into account, is one huge faux pas. Rains and monsoons could destroy your entire trip. And of course you will mourn the considerable amounts of money you will have spent.

 

The Caribbean, and Saint Lucia to be more exact, has many beauties: Beautiful sea, impressive reefs for scuba diving, polite inhabitants, palm trees, and green waters. At the same time, however, it also has mediocre food, unimpressive night-life, poverty, and criminality in the surrounding area. In fact, apart from the sea, it has not much else of significance to offer. And that's my personal opinion of course.

Christmas time was not ideal for a sea-and-sun vacation. It rained annoyingly every half hour, reaching a peak on my last day there, when it rained non-stop for 20 hours. And that’s when my tropical vacation turned into a nightmare – the worst of my life.

 

Next day’s disaster report was an island cut in half, blocked streets, tons of mud everywhere, in every street and village, palm-trees torn apart, collapsed bridges and, yes, it was Christmas Day, which meant that no one and nothing was working.

 

After making an un-successful attempt to leave the island the night before, we set off for the airport, hoping that this ordeal would soon be over. But we were wrong, because it was neither over, nor pleasant.

 

The only way to get to the airport was either by helicopter, or by boat. No need to say that we ended up in a boat, a fishing boat, setting off from Dennery, a fishing town somewhere on the east of the island.

And even though the route on the map seems short, it took us two hours by car from Marigot Bay to Dennery, and then one more hour by boat from Dennery to Vieux Fort, on the south of the island.

 

A 50, yes 50-minute boat ride in the rough Atlantic Ocean, inside a wooden boat, and the airport was nowhere to be seen. And when at last something appeared in the horizon and we reached it, we were presented with this:

The airport was closed, the runway a mess, all the flights cancelled, no fuel, one aircraft destroyed during landing, and of course not a chance of departure. From 7 in the morning, we managed, after much struggle, to depart at 6 in the afternoon (mind you that after 6:30 it would have been completely dark and the runway had no lights) and the adventure ended there. We had to fly to Barbados for re-fuelling. So much stress and discomfort.

 

I suppose I was unlucky because the worst rain of the year, and probably the greatest disaster to have stricken the island for a long time, happened during my time there. But really, the choice of such destinations should always be made based on the weather, and not the price. Most of these islands don’t have the right infrastructure, and things run very slowly. Being prepared for any misadventure is necessary (don’t get me started on that Christmas tsunami in Thailand).

It was a small paradise.

The experience was invaluable; a life experience, in fact - and like a life experience it should be remembered.

But in the end, I prefer Ithaca.