The Cricket World Cup kicks off today with the opening ceremony. Photo / Reuters
Monique Devereux, former chief reporter at the Herald and now Christchurch correspondent for Radio New Zealand, is at the Cricket World Cup. She brings nzherald.co.nz regular news and views from the West Indies
Now that we have landed in lush St Lucia, there are more signs of a building excitement over the Cricket World Cup.
On leaving the tiny airport at the north end of the island, it's hard to miss the huge square billboards on roundabouts proclaiming "We Are Ready",
even though the roadworks continue all around them.
It's a bit different to Barbados where the most obvious signage regarding the cricket contest were the billboards featuring an attractive young lady in cricket whites, holding a bat and condom, with the bold type above her head reading "It's your wicket - protect it".
It's not the only difference between the neighbouring Caribbean islands of course.
Where Barbados was flat and made of coral, St Lucia is green, tropical and mountainous.
The roads are better quality, and the drivers go just that little bit faster, which is just enough to placate the not-yet-quite-adjusted Kiwi driver.
There is one road sign missing though - the one that should say "winding road, next 500km".
We took a Sunday drive south to the famous Pitons, two volcanic mounds that poke straight out of the water up to the sky virtually side by side.
The journey was probably only 35km but we were twisting and turning, climbing and coasting for nearly two hours.
The only cricket we saw today was the best kind; street cricket played by kids of all shapes and sizes in between the banana plantations. There were no winners and no losers, and everyone bowls underarm.
Eventually we saw the Pitons and they are magnificent, as is the lager named after them which we very much enjoyed on return from our long hot journey.
