CaribbeanSt Lucia

Pigeon Island National Park is a great place to spend the afternoon

By June 5, 2018 No Comments
Pigeon Island

Last time I left you we had just moved the boat to Pigeon Island at the north end of Rodney Bay in St Lucia. We got here a lunch time and thought we would go to shore for an hour or so and then head south. By were we wrong!!!! We ended up spending over three hours ashore hiking this small national park (entrance is 8 USD).

Pigeon Island barracks

Pigeon Island barracks

Even though it is called an island it is actually now a peninsula because a causeway was built in 1969 connecting it to the mainland. This makes it easy for everyone to check out this awesome location that started off as a small British fort built in 1778. It was built in order to help protect Rodney Bay and to keep watch on the French 25 miles to the north in Martinique.

Fort Rodney on Pigeon Island

on top of Fort Rodney where you can see the cistern and some cannons.

Among the ruins we saw were two barracks and the officer’s kitchen down on the flat land and the fort at the top of the slightly smaller hill. As I said the fort is small and was only built to carry 5 guns. There was also a musket redoubt, but we had trouble figuring out the advantage of this depression in the ground. The best part of the hike was summiting the tall hill and seeing the view in all directions especially down onto the causeway and Rodney Bay in the background.

Once we got back down we checked out the shore to the west of the dinghy dock and found Josset’s House, built in the years after WW2 and used to entertain visitors to the island, and the Carib Cave, but it was no longer there and not worth the effort.

Pigeon Island 3

This is the spot to cool down after hiking around Pigeon Island.

The best way to end our hiking was collapsing at Jambe de Bois for a few frozen drinks while looking over the water.

With all the above and two fantastic little beaches, how could we not end up spending all afternoon exploring? In fact, we chose to stay anchored and spent the night off this amazing little national park.

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