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COPYRIGHT 2005 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
Beginning in my high school days, whenever I happily browsed through books on geography and travel, I was fascinated by pictures of the Pitons, two pyramidal volcanic peaks that rise along the coast of the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. My chance to see them "in the flesh" finally came in January of last year, when my wife Beverly and I traveled to the island. We flew to the capital city, Castries, on the island's western coast, and headed south in our rental car toward Soufriere, Saint Lucia's third largest city. The journey along the narrow, crooked, but well-paved road took about an hour. Although our route never strayed far from the coast, it passed almost entirely through mountainous terrain, only occasionally dipping down to a picturesque fishing village.
The final leg of our drive took us through rainforest, virtually announced by tree ferns as high as forty feet. As we rounded one sharp curve, I could not contain my own excited announcement, as the mighty Pitons came into view through a forest opening: "There they are!" I exclaimed. The two peaks, Gros Piton (French for "large peg") and Petit Piton...
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