Daria + Andy Photography Blog

Twenty years ago on November 10th Andy and I were married at a gorgeous hillside winery called Cain Cellars in St. Helena, California. It was the most perfect day…so perfect you could see all the way to the ocean. It was the start of an incredible life journey together with Andy. We have had so many amazing adventures together from his bike racing days in Europe to finding a home in Vermont and becoming a family. It’s so hard to believe that we now have a 13 year old daughter and an 11 year old son. Time goes by too quickly!!

As our big anniversary approached, I kept asking Andy if we should make some plans together for our celebration.  As you probably know, we are insanely busy during the fall with wedding season, so the plans just didn’t happen.  One day I returned home and Andy announced that he had made some travel plans.  I would have to guess where we were going using a set of 20 clues that he would send every other day. He can be fun like that!! In any case, I assumed that we would be driving to this location, so there was a several day period that I thought we were going to Ottawa, Canada, because:  it’s outside the states, it’s in a British Commonwealth Country, and it’s the capital city of the country.  Although I’m sure that Ottawa is perfectly lovely, it seemed an odd choice for November. Well, eventually, he told me we’d never been to this country and I was a bit relieved. I was beyond thrilled to figure out that our destination was St. Lucia!! It is a beautiful country and although we were only there for 3 nights, it is a place that I’d love to return to someday!!

Before I show you the photos from our trip, I thought you’d get a kick out of seeing how we looked at our wedding 20 years ago….

Jeff Meyers photographed our wedding, who did a wonderful job documenting our day. He must have planted some tiny seed that stayed dormant for a while, because it’s funny that we became wedding photographers!  Anyway, Jeff, if you are reading this sorry about the poor quality, I scanned this photo on my lame scanner.  Ok, you can stop laughing at the puffy shoulders on my dress now.  It was hand-made for me in Belgium and I LOVED it. So there!

On to St. Lucia…. Andy wrote this on the beach at our resort….

We stayed at the Sandals Grande St. Lucian, outside of Castries.  We loved it!!  The first night we stayed at the Sandals Halcyon Beach, but it was in the city and we liked the Grande SO much better, so we switched!!  The photo on the center left is the view from our room.  We could see the Pacific Ocean above the trees as well.

My lovie on our resort beach.

Me.

One view from our resort beach.

I was smitten with this table and chair. I’m not sure why exactly.

Photos of flowers taken by Andy and me from around our resort.

A banana boat?

Some locals brought their horses down by our beach in hopes of getting tourists to take horseback rides.  I loved the way they looked with the city of Castries behind them.

The horse guy, Akeem, was kind enough to let us take his photo. We brought him lunch in return.

The sunsets were spectacular from our resort.  The point on the right is called Pigeon Island.  We hiked that the last morning.

A fountain at our fancy hotel.

The ocean was a bit rough while we were visiting, so we weren’t too inspired to SCUBA dive.  We decided to see a bit of the island instead and signed up to climb Gros Piton, the 2nd highest peak in St. Lucia. I’m so happy we did for so many reasons.  One of the reasons being that we really enjoyed driving through the little villages on the way there.  It was a great cultural experience! We passed by many banana plantations on the way…

Andy snapped a bunch of photos through the open van window and this was one of my favorites…

I didn’t realize that last year’s Hurricane Tomas was devastating to St. Lucia.  This was a site of a big landslide.  There was a home here before and sadly, some of the family was killed. In all, there were 14 deaths on the island and many spots on the main island road are still single-lane due to landslides.

I snapped this one from our van as we waited for our guide to buy us some warm fresh bread with cheese in Canaries. Oh my, that bread was amazing!!

At the base of Gros Piton there is a little community called Fond Gens Libre.  It means Valley of the Free People. It was here that we met our guide: Bonny.

Our guide, Bonny, is the Rastafarian with the green shirt and colorful hat.  Most of the folks pictured were our new friends from the tour group.  The rest were locals. This was at the half point of the hike.  It got incredibly steep from here on out.

Bonny hiked with Converse high tops, which surprised me as the roots and rocks were so slippery. Another guide I saw wore flip flops.  The guides hike the mountain a couple times a day and they are complete pros!  You can see some of the rustic hand rails to navigate up the steep slopes behind Bonny.

On the upper left is a mango tree which Bonny told us is at least 300 years old.  He also explained that escaped slaves would hide in the cave below. Gros Piton is a volcanic mountain that shoots 2619 feet out of the sea and we passed through 3 different ecosystems on our hike. At about the half way point we spied cactus.  It’s an awe-inspiring hike and Oprah Winfrey said it’s “five places to see in your lifetime.”  Apparently, she only made it to the half way point.

Unfortunately, hikers have vandalized the mango tree over the years.  I spied this “A” for Andy while I was taking his photo.

This spot had a beautiful view of Petit Piton, the little sister mountain to the Gros Piton.

Thanks to one of our tour friends we got this nice photo of us at the summit.  Too bad it was a bit cloudy at the top.

After finishing our epic hike our tour brought us to a little spot called La Haut Plantation Resort.  They fed us an authentic St. Lucian lunch with chicken and fish and fried plantains, etc. Then we got to swim with the most stunning view imaginable!

This is our new friend Kerrie-Ann from London.  She was the sweetest!!

On our final night we dined at an Italian restaurant at our resort. The waiter surprised us with this treat for dessert.

The next morning we took a hike to the top of Pigeon Island, which was only a few minutes walk from our resort. My legs weren’t too happy about the hike, but it was totally worth it!  This island is a national landmark of St. Lucia and the park is packed full of historic ruins from 18th-century French and English battles.

St. Lucia has the most beautiful landscapes! On a clear day you can see Martinique from the top of the fort, which is about 22 miles away. You can see me in one of the ruins below.  I think it was a British military kitchen.

A view of Castries from the top of the fort.

A view of our resort.

Such interesting plant life…do you see the ocotillo cactus?  We found prickly pear on the island too.

I thought this ferns above our heads looked like fingerprints.

On our way to back to the airport Andy photographed this group of people traveling in the back of a truck.  We noticed during our visit that this is a popular way to travel.

And a big huge heartfelt thanks to “Honey & Papa” for flying all the way out from Colorado to hang with our kids so we could go on this dreamy trip!! xoxo