Location: Petit Piton, St. Lucia
This morning, we were all woken up by the amazing smell of Kyle’s mother’s banana bread cooking in the oven. After devouring breakfast, as the crew of Argo usually do every meal, we did a quick clean-up in preparation for our island tour. We did a couple of quick dinghy rides onto the beach to meet our guide, James, for the day’s events. We split off between two vans, turned up the local jams, and we were off! The first stop of the day was the only active volcano on the island, which is actually has a drive-in crater! Yes, that is right, we actually drove the vans into the crater of a volcano! We walked up higher for a better view of the crater and saw the small pools of boiling liquid as the pressure from below rose out. It hasn’t actually erupted since the late 1700s, and as long as there is bubbling and smoke coming from the crater, then everything is good to go; once it stops, then it is possible for another eruption. Next, we went to my personal favorite of the day, the botanical gardens. As soon as we stopped the vans, we were greeted by Alexander the Great, our tour guide for the day, who is also known as the walking internet, and he was. He flooded us with information about the different plants on the island and the overall history of St. Lucia. We saw so many beautiful flowers and plants, and he had different stories about each to help us remember them all. In the very back of the garden was a gorgeous waterfall that flowed over two miles from the crater of the volcano. It wasn’t boiling anymore, as it had cooled from traveling, but it was still quite warm and a natural Jacuzzi. Our last and final stop of the tour was to more hot springs and another waterfall. These were actual little pools with varying temperatures in each to sit and relax in while we were eating lunch. Most of us stayed for over an hour at our last stop before splitting up for the last few hours of free time in St. Lucia. A couple of people decided to come back to Argo and finish up a bit of schoolwork, but of course, before that could happen, they had to go to a bat cave. An actual cave with thousands of bats! They said it was quite the experience, and it should have been on everyone’s list of things to do!!! The rest of the crew of Argo headed into town to spend a couple of hours wandering around, seeing the culture, grabbing coffee, and, of course, last-minute snack items for tonight’s passage. Everyone was back on board by 1630 to get ready for our final night passage. It is crazy to think that this is the last time we will be sailing Argo and night under the beautiful stars. Our time together has been full of a ton of laughs and great moments as a team, and tonight’s squeeze question had us look back on these 70+ days to describe one of our Sea|Mester moments. A Sea|Mester moment is a time when you look around and realize how amazing this experience is and how lucky we all are to do what we are doing. Some main ones were swimming with whale sharks, seeing huge pods of dolphins, watching people grow and become stronger leaders, and passage life with all six sails up. This has been an amazing experience, and I know we are all looking forward to these few islands and all of the amazing experiences we will have on them!