Honeymoon, Day 2 (Tuesday)

We started off Tuesday earlier. We got on the road and headed to the south-east shore of the island. The map above is the most detailed map we were able to obtain, and the roads weren't marked. So I'm not too embarrassed to say that we got temporarily lost. But with some help from friendly locals, we got ourselves oriented in the right direction before long!




We went to the nature center/restaurant at La Saggesse Bay. The beach there was incredible! Calm water, soft sand, and few people. After hanging around the beach for a bit, we went for a short nature walk. We quickly came to a tidal marsh and saw blue herons and egrets. A little further and we passed a local farm -- growing, among other things, bananas. As we neared a larger road, we happened upon a nicely kept cricket field. (I failed to mention that we saw the national cricket stadium in St. George's on Monday.) Apparently cricket is a big sport in the Carribean.



After our walk, we headed back to the center for lunch. We had delicious passion fruit juice as we looked out over the bay. Although I'm not a big fish-eater, I really enjoyed the salmon salad. And 2nd liked her fish wrap with plantain chips. And we had a small anole lizard join us! He seemed to enjoy the view, too.



After lunch, we headed up the eastern (Atlantic) coast. The water was rougher on that side, but the views were still great. We headed towards the area of Grenville in search of a hot spring I had heard about through word of mouth. It took some searching and quite a few stops to ask for directions, but again, the locals were very helpful. When we were getting close, one guy even rode with us to help us make the last few difficult-to-find turns. We really wouldn't have found it without him! We had to drive on a very rough and uneven dirt road for some distance. (The one picture we have really doesn't do it justice. There were some difficult stretches of road.) Thank goodness we had a jeep instead of a car!



We headed back to our hotel to clean up. We took the shorter path, which happened to take us through the mountains and rain forest in the center of the island. We would go back on Thursday, so we didn't stop this day. In fact, it was getting close to our dinner reservation time. We went to a nice, fancy place closer to the airport -- the Beach House. I can't remember whether our reservation was for 6 or 6:30, but when we got there we were the only guests yet to arrive. We had this fancy restaurant all to ourselves! We watched the sunset over the beach from our table. I can't overstate how great it was! Eventually, sometime after 7, two other parties arrived. Maybe they just eat later down there, or it was just slow because it was a weekday and not in the main city. But I really expected it to be a busier place, given how great it was. Oh well, I'm not complaining!