After nearly 24-hours of travel, I’m back. It was an incredible trip. A few small differences between St. Lucia and home:
- The spiced rum has actual spices in it.
- There are small cotton flags with handprints and stars on the telephone poles. They’re advertising for local political parties.
- The kids wear school uniforms, and all the girls have matching blue ribbon in their hair.
- It can be tough to keep the birds away from your food while you’re eating.
- The bananas on the trees have blue bags around them to protect them from insects and birds. Bananas are the major export and the trees here are threatened with a fungus that’s affecting banana production worldwide.
- The spiders are bigger. They especially seem that way when you open the drapes of your hotel room and find one on the wall.
- There are hand-painted ads for Coca-Cola on every block. On the fruit stands, the trucks, the sides of buildings.
- The grocery store aisles have predictably strange beverages, and beer is sold on the same shelves as liquor (also sold by the single bottle).
- Instead of squirrels, they have mongooses.
- The ketchup is made of bananas. It’s sweeter and richer than tomato ketchup.
- They’ll bottle coconut water for you at the fruit market.
- Young men call each other “daddy.” My girlfriend and I immediately adopt this habit with one another when we do anything laudatory, “Yeaaaah, Dadeee!” Cue high fives.
Mighty Girl 
Where did you stay? Any recommendations? My husband and I are in the process of planning a belated honeymoon trip there in February.
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Ah, very large spider! I applaud your courage to take the photo rather than whack it with a shoe. I am not so forgiving.
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OH, SPIDER.
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Looks amazing but eeek, that spider is TERRIBLE!!! I’d rather down a sixer of the Seamoss with Linseed!
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Mmm. I miss banana ketchup.
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I don’t even think a shoe would KILL that spider. Mother of god. I would’ve seen it and promptly shat myself. I also applaud you for the photo but holy bajeezus. Yikes.
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Re: spider –
BLAH-HA-HA-HA!
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Ack! A warning should precede that spider photo for us Arachnophobes. Shivers. More important… how was the diving experience?
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Looks like you had an awesome trip, Dadeee! LOL 🙂 xoxoxkt MiniHipster.com
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Sad to say those blue bags aren’t just to keep insects out – they are to keep pesticides and chemicals in. Very harmful to the plantation workers who harvest them. Our demand for perfectly unspotted bananas makes them some of the most pesticide-laden fruit in the world!
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The trip looks absolutely lovely, especially that little finch ready to hang out and eat breakfast with you! And oh my god, I would have been OUT THE DOOR the second I saw that spider. Bravo on taking a picture, but what the hell did you do after that?
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Yeeeeeeaaaaaaack that spider!!! I remember a crapton of little geckos & birds, but nothing like that spider. Jeebus, I don’t think I would have slept for the rest of the trip.
I’m dying to hear about your 24 hours of travel. When we attempted to fly home from St Lucia, we got diverted to Barbados for a night. Where, no joke, wild monkeys were on the rampage & we weren’t allowed outside our resort building without an escort with a shotgun.
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That spider is hellacious and terrifying. I’m impressed you could operate a camera in its presence…
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Looks like a fabulous trip! I love all the fruit on your plate in the photo toward the top. Did you get to taste anything new?
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OHMYGODTHATSPIDER!!!! That’s enough to make me never leave my house again. Please tell me you figured out a way to get it out of your room??
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That spider appears to only have seven legs.
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And now I must go to St. Lucia. Beautiful pictures! Frightening spider. If I would’ve seen that I would’ve accepted death and thrown myself out the window (coping: I’m good at it)
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I bought a small bottle of that banana ketchup when we were there in February. So tasty!
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Seriously, what on earth did you do to the spider after you took the picture? Shiver!
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Bird cute. Spider, not so much.
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Girl that spider was waiting to kill you in your sleep! What did you do???
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I keep coming back to this blog post to look at the spider. It makes me feel so much less scared of the spiders in my house. It’s a virtual intervention!
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