Gros Piton, Petit (not!) Piton

At 6am we're off and sailing. Well motor-sailing at first. On our way to St. Lucia. Another island , another country. A new flag up the mast.
The wind picks up and we're sailing sharp against it, along the island, St. Vincent, the last of the Grenadines. It's a five hour sail across a channel to St.Lucia.
Out of the haze tall, pointy mountains materialize. The two tallest and pointiest are rising right out of the sea, sentries to little Soufriere. They are Gros Piton, just under 800m high, and Petit(not very)Piton, 750m above sea level. Like two giant's ice cream cones, upside down. Fuzzy, green-tinted, they grow enormous as we approach the coast. Tiny sailboats at the base emphasize their gigantic size.
Just beyond is the village, Soufriere. Small wooden houses, blue and turquiose like the sea, wooden fishing boats with big outboards, painted in hot-rod colors, red, yellow, pink and orange. Once the French capitol, it is a small town, (pop. 14.000) with a large Catholic Cathedral by the town square. The town lies at the base of a longish, protected bay, under steep, green jungly hills. Palms swaying along the beaches. A picture of paradise.
The poverty, occational begging, and a great number of "boat fruit-sellers", and dinghy-watchers, trincket-sellers, and the like witness more on a sort of paradise lost. Their history records the paradise being lost already when the marauding Caribs wiped out the peaceful Arawaks. And many times since.

It is peaceful enough when we pick up a mooring under the vertical wall, just beyond the "Bat Cave". We're in a (Coral Reef) protected area, no anchoring. Just as well, since we've just lost our two anchors in Tobabo Cays!
Since 1995 they've been sheltering the delicate coral reefs against fishing and anchoring. The whole Piton protected bay is now a Unesco World Heritage Site. Rightly so.