The Road to Dauphin

One day this week when Norm was teaching and Wanda was busy entertaining her company (two couples are visiting Dale & Wanda) Carl and I went off on one of our fieldtrips. We use these little trips to discover a new part of the Island and more often than not, to try out the beer at a new bar. Our destination this time was Dauphin…a small village and beach on the northeast corner of the Island.


Going on one of these adventures may seem simple to the uninitiated. Just follow the map and go, right? Not so easy. We haven’t been able to find a good map. There are no road signs, nor in many cases, are there signs announcing which town or village we’re driving through. So if we don’t stop to ask, (and we haven’t yet) we just head in the direction of the ocean or the mountain peak and hope for the best.


We went through several little villages on fairly decent roads before the pavement gave way to a dirt road. It’s where we decided to turn back last week when we were driving with Gisele and Allen. But Carl has a four wheel drive and his vehicle is able to make it in places where our car can’t. We drove along for a few kilometres, dodging rocks and potholes, until we reached the village of Dauphin. The houses were small and in some cases primitive. On the left the houses were built into the hillside above our heads and on the right the houses were below us. A woman washed her clothes in a bucket in front of a huge water tank in the center of town. Each house had a black water tank either in front of or behind the house. It turns out that they are unable to pump water up to the town so that a tanker truck regularly delivers water to fill up the water tanks. The area seemed quite impoverished but the people smiled and waved as we drove by. The dirt track became narrower as we drove and we saw many piles of horse manure. We concluded that the road is used more often by horses than cars. After about 5 kilometres of driving through a beautiful valley, we finally reached Dauphin Beach. The sand was almost black. There was a tall cliff on one side covered with cactus and aloe vera plants. The beach was littered with debris brought in by the waves. It’s not a beach used for swimming so it doesn’t get a regular beach clean up. But all in all, a beautiful spot.




On our way back through town, we were stopped by a woman walking down the road carrying her son. Her name is Nadia. Her two year old son is named Austin. She asked if she could get a ride into Castries. She had to go the pharmacy to pick up nose drops for Austin who was sick with a bad head cold. As we drove the 20 minutes or so into Castries, she named every town and village we drove through. She rolled the window down and yelled hello to at least 20 people along the way, including two guys riding in the back of a pickup truck on the roundabout. They were all her cousins she said. She has a heck of a lot of cousins. She answered her cell phone and told the caller “I’m in a car with some white people, showing them around”. She gave us her number and said she was available any time to be a tour guide or to do hair braiding.





We had an interesting time at the market last week. A good part of the market is outdoors with vendors selling their produce under big umbrellas. The umbrellas did little to protect them on Saturday when there was a huge downpour. Usually the rain lasts only 5 minutes or so but this storm went on for at least twenty minutes. All of the customers who were outside ran into the covered part of the market and hovered in the crowded stalls waiting out the rain. The selling stopped. People just chatted with each other and waited for the rain to pass. It’s the way of the Caribbean. Relax. Wait it out. It will pass. It was interesting to listen in on the discussions, although we don’t understand most of the patois that is spoken.


We won’t be buying any peppers at the market over the next few weeks. Our balcony garden is starting to bear fruit. We’ve got beautiful orange & red peppers, eggplant, parsley and basil. Our cucumber plants didn’t make it and while the tomato plants are producing, the tomatoes have a disease that is very common in St. Lucia. It’s apparently impossible to avoid if you grow tomatoes here. So we’ll be sticking to peppers, eggplant and fresh herbs.


Next entry I’ll tell you about a new vegetable we’ve been enjoying and I’ll share a new recipe for Coconut Squares that I got from one of the parents at the school. It’s absolutely yummy!