Saturday, April 10, 2010

Ladera, St. Lucia

I find myself sitting in the Sheraton lobby drinking a Sleeman’s Honey Brown waiting patiently for our next flight to Timmins, Ontario.  Our vacation is half over, yet we still have 8 days ahead of us that will be filled with curling and hospitality suites.   I’m looking forward to unpacking my luggage and having some non-wrinkled clothes.  I am still in awe at how well this vacation is going – I know that may jinx us, but I’m willing to take that chance. I am however, starting to miss my fur-kids – it always seems to be about this time, when I have a moment to sit back and reflect on the last 20 days.  We have been purchasing them little “treats” along the way so their homecoming will be as exciting for them as it is for us.

**Addendum:  I’m currently sitting in Timmins Ontario watching Mtl vs Tor on HNIC, during our last night of CPCA curling.  I started this post a week ago, I feel the need to complete the Ladera post prior to finalizing the rest of vacation.

Enough with the jibber jabber, I know you are all wondering how my big week-long all inclusive vacation to Ladera was.  The easiest and best way to  organize my thoughts is to rate all the major points on a scale from 1-10 (10 being FANTASTIC and 1 being CRAPTASTIC)

Travel -  Ladera is a 45 minute drive from the airport [twisty & turns, so if you are prone to nausea from car-sickness take a gravol] – if you choose a package with Ladera most will cover the taxi fare – if not expect to pay approximately 80 (USD).  Our taxi driver was fantastic and stopped along the way to allow us to take pictures of the Pitons from afar as well as other notable items.  (I’ll post a few pictures once we arrive back in Kugaaruk).   The taxi driver, Edmund who drove us back to the airport was equally as attentive and we had a great chat about deep-sea fishing and fish.  (8.5/10)

Check In – Hughie was so out to lunch in awe over Ladera and the beauty of our resort that I handled the check in – that and he did/does enough paperwork while he is working so he didn’t need the added “stress” of more paperwork.  They offered us cool facecloth spritzed with rose water & fruit punch (without the rum – the added rum part came later and it was DELICIOUS). 

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Resort -  As you will see from the photo’s the resort maintains an open feeling with all rooms having a open wall to the outdoors *as you see in the photo below #1.  We were complimentary updated to a two-bedroom villa.  (We had booked a one bedroom villa)

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Every room has there own plunge pool* as you see in the photo below .  The pool was so warm at nights that it seemed like a giant bathtub; we even had to to turn off our waterfall on occasion just so the water would cool down slightly.  I spent many hours in our pool; nothing is more refreshing that coming in from the beach and jumping into your own pool

Overall the staff went out of their way to help us, they were always asking if we needed anything, and that included keeping our fridge full of Piton beer and diet-cokes; and had no problems keeping the “lovely ladies” in my hands – I fell in love with coconut milk!

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The best thing, was when we woke up in the morning we awoke to this. (Picture - Gros Piton)IMG_7298

This is what we went to sleep to every night.(Picture - Petit Piton)IMG_8372

We didn’t take advantage of a lot of “off-resort” festivities or tours; we were quite happy staring at our Pitons and drink refreshing beverages; however, we did manage to take a “Sunset Tour” and “Dolphin & Whale watching tour”.  The sunset tour was fantastic, the beers were cold and the Skipper was quite knowledgeable about his Island.  Unfortunately the Dolphin tour didn’t leave me with the same kind of euphoria.  We did not see one Dolphin or whale, just flying fish. 

Some photo’s from the Sunset Tour:

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I could spend hours posting pictures of our resort, Ladera and St. Lucia..but I’m due at the hospitality suite soon.  I promise to update more frequently and tell all about the CPCA-Timmins when I get back to Kugaaruk.

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