We managed an early rise after a generally mosquito-free night of sleep. Up at 5:30am, hoping to not miss any bit of sunlight while it's available. We made coffee and had a slow morning on the deck, retreating only a few times when pockets of warm, misty rain came sideways with the help of strong wind gusts. I ran out early to the supermarket to grab some green figs, "sole fish" and "veg" as Lu had asked, so she could prepare some local dishes for us. I managed to get green figs, but completely missed the mark on the other two. I had picked up fish steaks and vegetables, but I was supposed to pick up dry, cured salt fish, and a vegetable packet (which I still am not sure what it is exactly) for green fig salad. Lu rolled with it, though, and said she'd make what she could with the available ingredients.
We headed out to Cas En Bas again, this time for a full day. We were hoping to check out some more kite surfing, maybe even get a lesson in. We parked our car in some tree shade, leaving one of the windows down; we had accidentally left a window open the night before, and it had rained. The B.O. of the car's myriad previous drivers had been freed by the rain hitting the seats, and had been marinating for several hours. We hoped that open air and heat would drive the evil demons out.
We walked over to a glorified lean-to, which was the headquarters of Aquaholics, a small (1 person) kite-surfing outfit. We planted our things down on the windy beach, applied some sunscreen and began our grueling day of relaxation. While it was quite hot, the wind was strong enough that it would be sure to keep us from sweating too profusely, helping to quickly evaporate any moisture that squeezed out from our pores.
After a bout of laying, my legs were starting to get restless. I decided run up and down the curved beach for about 20 minutes, just to keep my legs from getting too angry at me for not using them. I ran for 20 minutes or so, did some more fake-ass yoga on the beach, and cooled down with a swim in the water. Legs satisfied, I could go back to doing nothing again.
We ran into Jonathan again. He was skipping more work to do some kite-surfing. The true mark of an addict. We also ran into the friendly, but overly persistent fellow who tried to talk us into eating at Marjorie's again. We politely declined, again. We also watched a few guided horse tours make their way down and around the beach. The horses weren't the meatiest animals you've ever seen, but they didn't look entirely unhealthy. Perhaps its hard for any animal to gain any mass in the constant heat of St. Lucia. It seems that lean is key on a hot, mountainous island.
As we were chatting, a new, sparkling white pick-up truck made its way down the beach towards us, coming to a stop next to Simon's lean-to/place-of-business. The truck had a familiar logo on it: Mount Du Cap, the estate where we had been kindly stopped at the security gate the day before. A large, darkly-tanned, crew-cutted man hopped out and began chatting with Simon and his friends. We made our way over to Aquaholics to chat up Simon and let him know that we were interested in taking some lessons. While there, we met Jamie, the guy in the Mount du Cap pick-up truck. He's a project manager of all of the private homes in the estate. We told him that we had been stopped at the security gate, and he told us that we should just drop his name and they'd let us drive through. I joked about lying to the guard about having dinner reservations at one of the restaurants that I presumed existed behind the security gate, but Jamie quickly informed me that Mount Du Cap wasn't a resort. It was a community of private homes, still in development. "I've been project manager on all of the buildings that have gone up, so far", he explained, adding that building was especially complicated since the architect demanded that everything "be round". As if building homes into cliffs wasn't hard enough, the architect's unflinching vision added to the challenge.
Jame went on to tell us that the homes start at about 3500 square feet, and that his company offers the package deal: Land and home. One can't simply buy the land and build whatever they like. When they buy the land, they buy the home as well. And judging from the pictures I've seen online of some of these homes, its quite alright to put your home/money in the hands of these professionals. The homes seemed absolutely perfect. And at a starting price of about $2.5MM, they had better be.
We watched Simon use his lunch break to do some kite-surfing. Not with a wakeboard, but with an actual surfboard. This seems a lot tougher than a wakeboard, since you don't have the convenience of foot slips (or whatever they're called). It made no matter to Simon, though. He made just about everything board-related look easy. After impressing everyone with his skills, Simon came back to shore, and just as quickly headed out on his jet-ski with Jamie. They were headed out to sea to let Jamie, still a relative beginner, kite-surf with the wind in an open area all the way back into the bay. Kite-surfing, being dependent on the moods of the wind, can be tough for getting where you need to go (much like sailing). So the easiest way to get a lot of practice time in is to get towed out to sea, and take a long ride with the wind. Then, when you manage to get the hang of things, you can learn things like turning, and navigating upwind so that you can extend your kite-surfing-induced adrenalin rush indefinitely.
After a while, the sun was starting to take its toll on us, and we figured we should retreat into covered areas before it got too much of a chance to lash us and leave marks of red all over our bodies.
Once back home, blending fruits and booze quickly became the focus of our day. We ate some dinner, drank some booze and retired for the day.
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