Somnolent early morning Caribbean Sea like a pale blue curtain barely disturbed by a window left slightly ajar. Sun rising in the east behind our cottage on Choc Bay slowly warming and illuminating the flat wet sand down below. Our last morning on St Lucia, this felt like a suitable and quintessential farewell from this delightful island. Surveying the peaceful canvas in front of me I noticed a fisherman ambling along from the south, big net slung over his broad shoulders and immediately sensed a picture story. I grabbed my camera and raced down to introduce myself.

Marcel Philip was a 58 year old fisherman patrolling the shallows of the otherwise deserted Choc Bay, ready to cast his lead-weighted net to catch the sardines that he would then grind into a paste to use as bait for the more lucrative snapper that he subsequently sold to restaurants. Marcel was an absolute delight to walk and talk with, possessing a broad, easy and engaging smile like the sun rising through palm trees, his large face enriched with stubble and dried salt as white as the sand below his bare feet. He regaled me with stories of his life on St Lucia, his stentorian boom of a voice like heavy waves hitting the shore in a tropical storm. He had a career in tourism on the island which had been curtailed by Covid-19 and so he was temporarily reverting to his passion for fishing to make ends meet. With a twinkle in his eye, this thrice married father of seven said “yah maan, interesting life. The women kept comin’ and so did dem babies!”

Wearing a white singlet over his vast, barrel-sized chest he sloshed through the still, warm water as he surveyed the inert surface. Occasionally he would point out the shoals of sardines as they dimpled the water like rain drops. He would corral his large, cumbersome fishing net, his shoulders dark and smoldering like the slopes of the volcano above Souffriere and then heave the net quickly and expertly, usually snaring a handful of the tiny silver fish.

We continued our conversation heading north, and he thanked me as I collected a bag of flotsam and jetsam to keep this marvelous bay pristine. He had a wonderful sense of humor, happily diving into the warm water just to celebrate the simplicity and beauty of his own ‘commute to work’.

As we bade farewell I felt like St Lucia had granted me a final gift, a brief and serendipitous encounter with a good man with whom I would have liked an evening of sharing stories over a few glasses of rum and some saltfish. Those random, ephemeral encounters are, to me, one of the enduring delights of travel.