Saint Lucia: Rodney Bay- Reduit Beach to Pigeon Island and back again

Now that I have my official ‘Animal Import Permit’ for Saint Lucia, life is good.

I can have long runs on the beach in the morning and at dusk, when it is cooler.  The human’s then leave me on anchor guard duty while they go ashore.

I make a ‘good show of it’ as they leave, but don’t tell them I usually sleep the heat of the day away.

But the human’s are forever restless.

They heard that the anchorage on the other side of the bay was better.

So, after visiting the Saturday morning fruit and vegetable market in the Marina, they lifted anchor and headed over to the other side by Pigeon Island.

They anchored up close to the East side of the Island.  Well it once was an island.  When they dredged out the inner harbours of Rodney Bay, they used the material to form a sand spit between it and the mainland.

The island is a National Park with a museum and the remains of fortifications on the hill tops.  The island also has an internet cafe, Jambe de Bois, that is meant to sell reasonably priced excellent food.

We were warned that there was a 16 EC$ charge (per person) to land on the island, even to visit the cafe.  But we were also told that this only applied between 9am to 5pm.  The human’s thought that would be OK, as they usually walk me in the mornings before 8am and in the evenings after 5:30pm.  They also thought they could visit the cafe in the evening too.

So after anchoring up they wasted the day away exploring the island by kayak.  They even went round to the west side of the island on the Caribbean Sea side.

They ran into some fishermen that tried to be helpful by warning them that the channel ahead was too rough for them to continue.

When they got back to the boat they found, despite my barking, another boat had anchored right beside us.

I do not think they intended to settle so close to us, but they seemed resistant to reanchoring further away.  Unfortunately they did not speak English, so we could not tell them to ‘kindly move a safer distance apart’.

But nothing gets in the way of my evening walk.  It was five thirty, the park rangers should have headed out, so time to take me ashore.  Also, Pigeon Island blocks the sunset on this side of the bay, so the humans wanted to top the hill to watch it set.

Unfortunately we had some more bad luck.  One of the Park Rangers was still there.  She told us that the Park was closed and it was illegal for us to enter it out of hours, except to go directly to the cafe.  We could have bluffed our way in, but she also said it was illegal to bring me (a dog) ashore in the National Park.

No dog walking, a high fee to come ashore, no sun set and a much longer dingy ride into the harbour.  We decided we liked our old anchorage off of Reduit Beach better, so back we went.

I finally got my evening walk and the humans got their sunset.

Still no green flash.  One day!