Once loaded up onto the bus to Sandals Regency we were off for what I could only describe as an, uh, “exciting” trip. \u00a0A bus on St. Lucia is more like a large mini-van with extra seats crammed into it. \u00a0Before I can explain how the trip to the resort was, I need to explain a couple of things about the island itself.<\/p>\n
St. Lucia is a volcanic island formed almost entirely by a single large volcano near its center but offset slightly toward the southern end of the island. \u00a0Due to either volcanic chance or perhaps erosion patterns the island’s mountains have an almost starfish like quality. \u00a0There is a large set of peaks with many very steep ridges and valleys radiating outward toward the sea. \u00a0Because of these ridges, the obvious approach to road construction was to simply try to go around. \u00a0For this reason almost all of the cities on the island are near the ocean and there is effectively one large road that goes all the way around the island. \u00a0Before the concept of a road that “goes around a mountain” gels up too solidly in your head, think back to the humble starfish. Imagine one with not five but closer to twenty legs. \u00a0Then instead of radiating out in equidistant straight lines make it more like a tangled twisty mess as would be drawn by a child with a mountain colored crayon.<\/p>\n
Now try to imagine the road that would be forced to go up and down this crazy freak of a starfish to avoid sending its traffic out into the ocean. \u00a0That, my friends, is the road that we had to take from the airport at the very bottom of the island to the resort at the very top. \u00a0As the crow flies, the island cities we were traveling between are no more than twenty miles apart, but the drive clocked in at almost exactly an hour of crazy turns and hills. Beyond geological concerns, the driver in a car sits on the right side of the car, drives on the left side of the road, and enjoys an almost complete lack of traffic laws beyond that.<\/p>\n
As far as I managed to learn from the times when I had my eyes open during the drive, there are generally no speed limits on the island unless you are near cities. \u00a0The general idea is, “get there as fast as you possibly can without flying off a mountain or crashing into anything.” \u00a0Also, since some folk like to try for land speed records and others seem to drive vehicles without engines that have greater than six horsepower, passing each other isn’t just something you occasionally do, it’s actually part of driving anywhere and happens all the time. \u00a0To make that slightly more exciting than it would otherwise be, remember that there is basically one road. \u00a0Now put an entire island worth of traffic onto it. \u00a0See what I mean yet?<\/p>\n
If that wasn’t enough, it rains for almost six months straight every year and is dry for the other six. \u00a0The effect that has on roads may not be immediately obvious, so let me explain how it goes well beyond wet slippery roads. \u00a0The entire island was constructed with drainage ditches to try to keep things like cars and people and bananas from washing away. \u00a0These ditches can be found almost everywhere and are usually around two to three feet deep and about one to one and a half feet across. \u00a0Roads are the most common thing that has them and for that pattern to work, there are a few things that have to go. \u00a0Shoulders are likely considered a waste of space and a curb on the side of the road would only mess up how the drainage ditches work, things like guard rails to keep your van on the road in case something bad happened are clearly a concept for the weak. \u00a0This gives our speed racer inspired traffic acrobats less room to maneuver and a very easy to fall into ditch to wreck a wheel or a whole car in or as one’s imagination is spinning tales, off of the road, down a cliff, off of a banana tree or twelve and then right into the ocean off the cliffs at the bottom.<\/p>\n
There are huge long stretches that have no lines on the road at all to assist the effort of staying on them. The general up and down and hyper-twisty nature of the roads regularly means you see traffic coming at 90 degree angles that you would assume is someone merging into the road, but is in fact just traffic moving in its own lane opposite yours. \u00a0People of all shapes and sizes walk on the sides of these streets both near cities and out in villages near the banana trees. \u00a0To the crazier types out there it could be considered sport driving in the same way a guy with a gun in the woods could be considered a sport. \u00a0I often wondered if we were going to be in the bus that took out the entire 4th grade class from a smaller village on the way. \u00a0After an hour of this, you are truly ready to be at your destination, and are also comically kind of used to it. \u00a0It was good to be at our resort finally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once loaded up onto the bus to Sandals Regency we were off for what I could only describe as an, uh, “exciting” trip. \u00a0A bus on St. Lucia is more like a large mini-van with extra seats crammed into it. \u00a0Before I can explain how the trip to the resort was, I need to explain a couple of things about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honeymoon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60,"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/60"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.trollserver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}