Today started out at a nice, relaxing pace.  Kathie, Victoria, and I headed down for breakfast around 9:00 while Kelley stayed in bed.  Breakfast at the Dragonfly is a really nice way to start the day - a beautiful, open-air dining area that overlooks the Caribbean with a fantastic spread of food!  After a bit more planning of the remainder of the week's itinerary, we hit the road, heading south towards Soufriere and the Pitons.  Unfortunately, this was where our planning fell apart, mostly because my normally-fairly-good sense of directions completely fell apart! 

The original plan was to head south, down the west side of St. Lucia from Castries to Soufriere - a drive that SHOULD have been about 90 minutes.  Well, somewhere around Marigot Bay, I misread a sign and turned off the main road.  We got a little suspicious within a few minutes as we started seeing directional signs that failed to list Soufriere on it.  That should have been a good indicator, but I was convinced we were going in the correct direction.  It got even more foolish a few minutes later when we stopped to ask some road surveyors which way to go and they said to turn around and go back.  But did I listen?  Nooooo!?!  I was fairly sure that we were heading south/southwest and would come back to the Caribbean coastline in a few minutes.  Those few minutes turned into an hour with still no signs saying Soufriere and Kathie politely suggesting that we should turn around. 

I started getting a little concerned/suspicious when I saw a couple of buildings that looked STRANGELY similar to those I had seen on the drive up from the airport three days earlier.  I continued to swear we were on the correct road a little longer, but then had a hard time continuing to do this when we suddenly saw the ocean on our LEFT (a physical impossibility if we were heading south on the west side of the island!) and then come across a sign welcoming us to Dennery, a town on the EAST side of the island.  In retrospect, we should have turned around at this point, anyways, and headed back across the island, but when I glanced at the map, it looked like it would be equi-distance to continue south on the east side of the island and this way we could see the entire island.  It was quite beautiful on the southeast side of the island and going through the Pitons, but it took FOREVER!  This became a problem as we were planning on stopping for lunch around 1:00 after having gone to some of the sites.  Well, 1:00 arrived and we were still nowhere near the area around the Piton mountains or the Soufriere!  We finally arrived around 2:30 - absolutely famished! 

Our luck then started to change.  We found the restaurant we were searching for, The Mango Tree, part of the Stonefield Estate Villa Resort.  This place was what I imagine a tropical paradise to be!  We were high above the Caribbean in the shadow of the Piton Mountains, surrounded by bougainvillea in high bloom, with a delightful breeze coming in off the sea.  Heavenly.  Our lunch was delicious with some wonderful, friendly service that simpy made us feel welcome.  Victoria spent some time sitting at the bar chatting with some of the ladies, one of whom took a real like to her, even sharing pictures of her own little girl.  Unfortunately, we couldn't linger here as long as we wanted to since we still had to get to see some of the sites before the sun went down.

We drove down into Soufriere and made our way east of town to explore the Diamond Botanical Gardens and see the waterfall and mineral baths.  Although a bit smaller than we thought (not sure how I had built up my expectation), it was quite beautiful with lots of exotic flowers and plants.  The jewel was definitely the Mineral Baths and Waterfall.  Back in the 18th century, Louis XVI ordered that these waters be developed into a therapeutic center for the troops.  Today, you can still still bathe in the pools there (for a fee).  We decided not to bathe, and instead headed on up the trail to see the waterfalls.  They were quite beautiful.  The waters apparently bubble up from the nearby sulfur springs before tumbling over the 30-40 foot waterfalls where they actually change colors from yellow to black to green to gray several times a day.  We wandered through the gardens on our way back to the car.  You got a real good taste of some of the exotic and beautiful flora that grows in St. Lucia's rainforests.

We had originally planned on having dinner in the Soufriere area at Dasheene, but when we started really looking at the clock, the map and how far we had to go, we decided to drive back north to the resort so we could enjoy the drive along the Caribbean and avoid driving in unknown territory in the dark and getting home around midnight!  It was well worth it!  The views as we headed north were just breath-taking.  We arrived back at the hotel around 6:00 and decided to just stay in and have dinner delivered to us for a quiet evening.

Tomorrow: A quiet day on the beach