Hilarious Day and Beach Pics of Marigot Bay

Yesterday was quite an eventful day. Cyrus my host brother and his girlfriend took me and Melissa another Peace Corps volunteer to Marigot Bay. It was amazingly beautiful as you can see.
































After eating a few kwats (kind of like eating purple grapes with the jelly coating around them except they are as big as a tangerine) I strapped on my snorkel and stepped off into mother ocean.
My snorkel and mask worked perfect, I used the Mares Demon Mask $59 with a snorkel $40 that has some sort of dry snorkel technology





So I snorkeled out into the bay, it was great even without a corral reef. There were a few brain corrals, sea fans and sponges on the ocean floor. Things were going well in my new aquatic world until a little piece of jelly fish hit my shoulder. It stings like hornet, it is a funny thing cussing profanities when you have a snorkel in your mouth, it comes out something like this, "blub blub bluuuuubbbb blubba".

Well my profanities with the snorkel in mouth did not end there.

As I was snorkeling against a natural underwater rock wall admiring the sea fans, anenomies and brightly colored fish I noticed something moving directly below. I stopped and stared and recognized that 10ft directly below me was coral snake. I just chilled floating in the current watching him work his way on the bottom. From what I understand if your bit by one it is instant death.

After the snake passed by I thought would be time to head back in but not before I relieved myself. As I drifted enjoying my pee in the Caribbean ocean my back leg brushed into a black sea urchin (this one was about the size of a softball, jet black with spine that went out 8-12 inches), the pain from that was more of an immediate bluuuuubbbbaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! followed by many more blubba's.




Do you know what the recommended treatment for sea urchins stings is? Pee on it to sterilize it. Well as you can imagine I did not have a drop of urine left in me because I had just let it all out. I will mention that a peace corps girl stepped on one the day after, she had to take one of the guys back in the bushes with her so he could pee on her foot, can you imagine her sticking her foot out with her eyes closes as a guy urinates on her foot, she was so embarrassed she had tears in her eyes i heard.

So I continued my swim back to the beach with my remaining functional leg. It took some time. As I was getting close to shore I took my first step into the swallow water and just before my foot hit the bottom a full lion fish shot away DIRECTLY where my foot was going to descend. For those of you not familiar with lion fish, they are the fish that swim in the tanks by themselves because A. They pretty much swallow everything else whole B. They poisonous barbs on their back and fins. It was a very close call.

Well anyway the Bay was gorgeous, I chilled in the sun and relaxed the rest of the day.

Later that day we went to a local waterfall in the rain forest, it's fantastic. Further down they have a dam with a rope swing. The amazing thing about Saint Lucia is the amount of natural food, everywhere around you are delicious mango trees, avocado tree, bananas, orange, passion fruit. You cannot go hungry on this island if you tried. All this fruit is available to you directly above your head.








Later that night the Peace Corps volunteers piled into the back of a flatbed truck to the Dennery Village fish fry.

We made a pit stop at one of the chicken stands above Dennery where I put down a few tasty beverages. It particular one of the stronger libations is called spiced rum. It is in a clear jug filled with cinnamon wood, local roots, maybe some bat guano with a generous serving of clear rum. It tastes like Yeager with a little cherry cough syrup thrown in and it burns going down.

So my adventure starts again. Within a few minutes of arriving I feel a Saint Lucian lean heavily against me shaking my hand introducing himself by saying Iton! Iton! as he pumped my hand furiously. I was surprised to find that he was man with down syndrome. In Saint Lucia handicapped and disabled people are not treated very well and the government and PC (peacecorps) has been trying to turn that around with more special education and service announcements. Since he approached me I felt strongly that I should spend some time with him. He kept shaking my hand and pulling my arm telling me his name was "Iton". I kept repeating my name was Leo and I was happy to meet him. As he held on to my arm I headed towards the food tent. While he kept dragging my arm the other way towards the liquor tents telling me his name over and over again. "Iton!" "Iton!" "Iton!".

I suddenly noticed my trainer Erin. She is the main person responsible for training and probably a huge factor in deciding what Island I will be placed on so it seemed critical to make a good impression. When I noticed her I immediately introduced my friend. "Hello Erin meet my friend Iton." And that point Iton begun jumping up and down furiously quite irritated pointing at the Piton beer tent. At that point it all clicked as he began pulling me towards it. He had been saying "Piton! Piton!" for those of you playing the home game that is the local Saint Lucian beer. Let's just say I felt a little silly to say the least.

After that I split a lobster with my fellow Indiana Hoosier Aaron and started dancing to the local Reggae. I was skanking up a storm, for those of you not familiar with that dance its comes from Ska music which had a direct beat like Reggae. I was busting a move and managed to get the rest of the Peace Corps dancing. During our dance I suddenly noticed that everyone was starting at me 15 minutes into jamming out. I turn around and low and behold there were 30 local Dennery boys watching me dance. We pulled them into our dancing ring and had a blast.

Now this is where the diaper/no front teeth/sea witch lady comes in. As I was skanking this old, old lady comes out of nowhere, jumps up and start dancing with me. I figured what the heck, she is harmless so we started dancing while everybody was laughing. Well, then she started thrusting again me and sticking her tongue out through her toothless mouth like she wanted more than a dance. That's when the "Run Forrest Run!" defense swung into action. I spun her around 3 times in a row until she was dizzy and bolted. Later on she went after Aaron giving him a love nip on the neck that he had for three days.

It was a blast and I had a very good time. That's enough for now. Take care everybody and thanks for the comments at my blog, keep em coming.