This port was one of the coolest and travel intensive that we did... starting with a 'water taxi' ride across the bay from the ship to the center of the town we docked in.. we were supposed to do the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ship sailing to a deserted island but our tour was canceled due to 'lack of participation'.. *sigh... that's what happens when the avg. age of your fellow cruisers is EIGHTY!... So we decided to wing it.. entering the center of town we were met by dozens of "take you on a tour nice lady?" people that offered taxi rides around the island... no thanks... no thanks.. no thanks.. the further we went into the island the cheaper the tours became... eventually we came across Vincent who offered us a 2 hour tour for 30 dollars each.. we managed to get him down to 15 each and off we went to get his taxi... upon arriving at his van we were introduced to "Mr. Ricky" our driver for the day... Mr. Ricky didn't speak any English as Vincent explained "I am the business man, Mr. Ricky is our driver".. seems Mr. Ricky doesn't speak english but he's got a taste for American cigarettes.. so I shared my smokes with him as he and Vincent took us on a LOVELY tour of their home...
We started up this HUGE mountain via many.. many.. switchbacks... very scary... as higher and higher we climbed... eventually the cruise ship in the harbor looked like it was an inch long!! About 3/4's of the way up this mountain Mr. Ricky quickly pulled over to the left and stopped in front of a little shanty type 'house'... as he jumped from the vehicle Vincent explained that this was not part of the tour but was Mr. Ricky's house and he needed to drop off a chicken for dinner.. as he walked to his little house with a mulit-million dollar view I glanced at the bag in his hand - that was no bucket of KFC in there!
Well our tour ended up more like three hours... with trips to a banana plantation.. overlooks at Marigot Bay (very gorgeous!).. a really cool and talented wood carving shop (look for pics of it to be posted above) with some of the most beautiful wood carvings that were only usurped by the beautiful flowers growing around the shop... a fort... and the governor's mansion.. our tour concluded not in the center of town where they had picked us up but right back at the pier in front of our ship... now that was SERVICE (not to mention saving us the cost of the water taxi ride back to the ship!) So needless to say Vincent (who turned out to be a GREAT tour guide - including our discussion of the national weed Ganji! ;) although he swore he only partakes once a day AFTER the work day is done! yeah.. ok... ) and Mr. Ricky got themselves a sizeable tip for the wonderful day they created for us... wonderful memories!!
Later....
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