Getting to St Lucia – Marigot Bay Marina

21 April 2007 Travelling to St Lucia, Caribbean

Well we arrived in one piece in a fairly good condition considering one half day followed by three night and one more half day flights half way around the world.

The first night was not too bad we had a nice meal before taking off, we dozed a few times. When we arrived in Tokyo we had a little confusion in the directions and ended up going through security for our next flight so we could not leave the airport. However, we were quite pleased as at the airport they have day rooms with showers and you can book them per the hour so we took one for a couple of hours and had a nice shower followed by a sleep.

One problem I had because of not being able to take a razor on hand luggage I could not shave, this was resolved when I purchased a small AA battery driven razor, so each morning I could have a tidy up.

The flight to LA was long, again we had short cat-naps, when we arrived we had to pick up our baggage and take it out through customs and security, that was not fun but no major problems just long waiting lines and crowds.

We put in our main baggage and set off in a taxi for Santa Monica, went straight to the waterfront we had a look around then went to the Santa Monica Pier and had lunch at a Mexican Restaurant  looking over the Pacific Ocean. I pointed out to Nancy that’s the way home a lot of sea.

We found that the places had an odour and we put it down to the Mexican food this was everywhere even in the air terminal and the plane that we flew out on. I found it a little unpleasant. When we went back to the airport we paid for the Delta Air company club room, called the Crown Room, similar to the Qantas Club.

or they were sent off to complete part of the form. When we went up we just said hello, the young lady asked if we new the boats name we would be staying on and we told her the name and she filled that out on the form for us gave us our papers and we were complete in less that a few minutes.

St Lucia is very beautiful but is very expensive in places away from the main centers; we tourists are targets for an easy dollar. Being on a boat makes us a little more of a target.

The taxi ride was about 45 minutes from the airport, the roads are not the best, and many of the people are poor. The cost of the taxi was US$65. You learn to ask the charge before getting in a taxi, but when arriving at an airport there is no time to haggle.

We arrived at the marina and were then passed on to another local who looked after our bags whilst we located the marina manager. We located him and the boat and loaded our stuff aboard.

The boat is great, it has a few spot of wear and tear which is to be expected, but we are very happy with our purchase. I had our surveyor recheck all the work and he found that he was not happy with a few small items and he got the Mooring to fix those. We have actually ended up with more items fixed that we did not expect. We now have to sort out the final payment and the paperwork.