17th
August 2010
A
Respite
For
a while there, it seemed as though we
were going to take one of those giant
backward steps, when it comes to the question
of respect and stature in the eyes of
the international community.
There were threats of removing St. Lucia
and her Pitons from the list of World
Heritage sites.
How did it get to that stage? For decades,
centuries even, we – and everyone
from the outside world who knew of their
existence – would look in awe upon
the pristine, unspoilt beauty of Gros
and Petit Piton and marvel at the sheer
beauty of the site.
In recent times, even Oprah Winfrey, in
her “O” magazine, described
the Pitons as “the number one spot
in the world that everyone should see
before they die”. We visited, we
looked, we admired, we burst with pride.
Once in a blue moon, someone would dare
to suggest that we do something ungodly
about our twin peaks … like the
time it was proposed that we level out
the tops and install a cable-car system
that could be exploited for touristic
purposes … and the very idea would
bring out activists and defenders of the
environmental purity of the area in droves,
to ensure that nothing was tampered with,
nothing was done to mar the unspoilt beauty
of “the breasts of Fair Helen”.
So wonderful, so awesome were our Pitons
that eventually, due credit was accorded
them and they gained the supreme distinction
of obtaining World Heritage Site status.
And that is when matters began to go downhill.
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