Choc and onto Laborie

We have now moved on to our second locale, in the village of Laborie. We are here for five days, which is all that this place was available for. It was quite a challenge to match up the various availabiities of places along with the fact that Jet Blue only flies directly here from Boston once a week, on Fridays. But we eventually figured it all out. After our stay here we will move along to our last stop, in Soufriere, at the very south of the island,for our final week in St. Lucia. The island is fairly small , and we could have done day trips to most of the places we want to visit, which I think most visitors do. But we are happy to have done it this way, and have several different experiences and views of the country. Laborie is rather different from Choc, north of Castries, where we spent the previous nine days. Here we are in a village, with some but pretty few tourists. We are staying at a house, an airbnb. The house is directly on the beach, as we prefer. There are two rental apartments and the owner’s larger apartment. The rentals face the street, and are on the ground floor. Upstairs is the owner’s place, an infinity pool, and a large deck with lounge chairs, and a couple of ables. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, our refrigerator didn’t work. A guy came last night to repair it, but it still didn’t work this morning. So now they have moved us to the owner’s apartment, which faces the ocean, and is much nicer. Now, however, the ac isn’t working well. Only the bedroom has ac, and it won’t cool the living room as it did in our first apartment because the living room/kitche/dining room is huge! The same guy who came to fix the fridge yesterday is coming later today to try again and see if he can fix the fridge and/or the ac. It's hard to complain, though, given the beauty of the place. At the Beach Villas in Choc, where we stayed previously, it was beautiful. The only complaint was that it is difficult to walk anywhere. There is a supermarket just a ten minute walk away, but part of the walk there is no sidewalk, and it’s a fairly major road, so a little treacherous. I did it once with Loring, and we took a cab back with our groceries. The second grocery run Loring did alone, walking both ways. There There, our main interractions were with other couples, must of whom were roughly our age. Some were from the US, some from Canada, some from England. Although there are over 20 cottages, we saw relatively few of the other guests. We took cabs a couple of times to restaurants, which made the meals pretty expensive. I felt that all the staff was extremely friendly. That is often true in places like this. But I felt that it was a different kind of friendliness here, with the staff seemingly very at ease and on a par with us as guests, taking the time to talk to us, ask us questions and tell us about themselves. I don’t know if it is particularly that place, and something the owner cultivates, or is it something in the St. Lucia psyche. Pamela, the cook, was exceedinly friendly and also sang a lot, which we got treated to more than most because our cottage is right next to the kitchen. The owner, Colin Hunte, is quite the character himself. He gave us an orientation, as he does for every guest, a detailed history and description of the island and his own history. It must have taken at least a half hour, maybe closer to an hour, and was fascinating. He had introduced himself as the manager, but was clearly also the owner, and I asked him if there was a areason he introduced himself as one raather than the other. There was, he explained. In St Lucia the owner is usually referred to as the boss, and he didn’t like the connotation that he was superior to his employees. I wonder if his employees feel like there is a difference between boss and manager. Maybe there is. He told us about his othe property, closer to here, which is a plantation whose land has been in his family for generations. He had the idea to turn it into a cacao plantation, but needed his grandmother’s permission. She refused, because she wanted him to have a professional job, not be a farmer or in the tourist business. But he persisted and eventually prevailed. Now it is a working plantation which works with another local buisiness to make chocolate. They give tours of the plantation, which we will hopefully take one day soon. They also have several rooms, and some guests combine a visit to both the beach villas and the plantation. There is a small island close to the villas, and we took a kayak out there one day. From Colin we heard about an idea that he had originally had, to turn the island into a music venue.( not sure how that would have worked.) He shared the idea with his friend, the emininent poet and Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott, the country’s most famous citizen. Next he knew, Colin said, Walcott was announcing the concept on tv as his idea. But that was okay, said Colin, because it was the concept that mattered, not who had origianlly conceived of ot. ( But we had the sense that it did, to some extent, matter that he wasn’t given credit. ) Going on with the story, he described Walcott coming into town with a short man, who I somehow guessed right away was Paul Simon. Colin was suitably impressed, as I was with myself! But here’s the best part: he went on to say that Walcott was working with Simon on a Broadway play, and Loring and I said, in unison, Capeman. Capeman was a play written by Simon and Walcott, that we saw in Broadway in the 1990’s. Ver few people did, because the play was panned by the critics and closed, according to Wikepdia, after 68 performances, But we actually liked it, and especially the music. Again according to Wikipedia, the play has been revived a couple of times, in a much scaled down production, to about 90 minutes from the original three hours! And one of those productions was directed by Diane Paulus, current director of the ART Theatre in Cambridge, Ma, where we have seen many plays, including some that went on to Broadway. We met her briefly, recently, at a performance of their production of Evita, which I thought was brilliant. I told her I was ready to see it again, immediately. And I recently read that her dissertation was about the Living Theater. The avant garde theater company that greatly influenced my life when I was 18 and 19. I think I am going to contact her to ask if I can read her dissertation. Well, back to the present and our experiences here in Laborie. It’s a real village, with some tourists but not a single souvenir shop to be found. There are a few tiny restaurants, Miss Tillie’s where we’ve had dinner our two nght here, and Miss Rosa’s where I think we’ll go tonite. She hasn’t been open for dinner the last couple of days, just for breakfast and lunch. At Miss Tillie’s we had barbequed chicken and ribs the first night, along with a number of sides, and last night we both had fish, which was tuna. Tonight she is supposed to have octopus and lobster, and conch, which they call lambi here. And there are a couple of grocery stores, but they have minimal supplies. Lots of bananas in town, in the stores and from vendors on the street. The architecture here is appealing, with lots of wooden buildings, some with gingerbread details. Some are brightly painted and in good shape, others look abandoned but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people living in at least some of them. There is a bank but no ATMs and most places don’t take credit cards. So far we are okay with our cash but that may not last for the three more days we are here, so we may need to make a trip into the nearby bigger town, Vieux Fort. Many of the names here are French, and the Creole they speak is also French based. But people don’t speak French, but English, with a delightful Carribean accent. The country was alternately owned by England and France and changed hands numerous times. I guess the names were given during one or more of the French periods. I am reading, and Loring has already read, two books that take place right here, in Laborie and Vieux Fort, by a writer who grew up here. We always try to find literature to read that take place where we are visiting. But it is seldom that we find something quite as local as this. The one I just finished was beautifully written, and I expect the second one will be too. The author is Anderson Reynolds and the books are The Stall Keeper and Death by Fire.