All-inclusive Coconut Bay on St. Lucia’s south end is a great starting point for seeing the island's rich culture, history, and people. The activities desk arranges whatever you want. I took a half-day “Soufriere Experience” ($120, 4-person maximum) of the southwestern side of the island, dotted with pastel-hued villages and home to some of the friendliest Caribbean people I’ve ever met.
My driver was Albert from Nerv’s Taxi, a funny, informative young islander who picked me up in an immaculate Toyota Crown, which you don’t see in the U.S., a gorgeous luxury car straight from Japan with many markings in Japanese.
Our first stop up a hilly, windy road (there is no other kind in St. Lucia) was the Maria Islands, a mountainous nature preserve and home to a lighthouse that, legend has it, was destined for another island, but when the ship carrying it got stuck here, up went the lighthouse. It’s home to rare species like the Kouwes snake, found only here. Not to worry, they never show themselves. What did was the humped shadow of Martinique in the far distance on this crystal-clear day.
Albert told me of the history of the island which changed hands between France and England more than a dozen times. St. Lucia, 14 miles long and 7 miles wide, is home to roughly 150,000 people spread out in 10 fishing villages and the northern capitol of Castries. The island gained independence Feb. 22, 1979.
We hit West Coast Road, the one and only main road, a beauty that hugs the coast, cutting high and low and through tiny villages, a well maintained throughway that’s smooth and incredibly windy. They drive fast here, Albert included, but since everyone does, I felt no sense of danger. There are precious few straight portions, meaning you pass when you can pass, quickly and smoothly. To me, it adds to the adventure.
We made a quick stop at the Brown Sugar Café, about 20 minutes from Coconut Bay just outside Laborie, a gorgeous, brightly painted, open-air eatery very popular with locals and tourists where 20 bucks gets you a whopping grilled mahi mahi steak for dinner.
We pulled over where Albert pointed out a cotton tree by the side of the road, a vestige of a long-gone part of island agriculture. Next stop was Choiseul, a beautiful town with one of the most gorgeous churches I’ve ever seen, Our Lady of Lourdes, completed in 1909, a pristine blue-and-white stone structure. Nearby, Albert bought some grape-looking fruit from a local vendor. You suck on it, cracking it open to feast on the meaty, succulent flesh surrounding a giant seed. Beats Doritos any day.
Choiseul is a wonderful little town, noted for its local arts and crafts such as hand-woven grass mats and baskets. Near the church is a skinny street with Milan's Bar's wall painted in gigantic letters touting the island’s best beer, Piton, named after the twin, iconic dormant volcanoes nearby.
Along the way, we stopped at a ubiquitous red-cement roadside stand selling grilled chicken and fresh bread, both out-of-this-world good, the locally grown bird meaty, tasty and crisp, particularly when covered with a just-right hot sauce. Better road food I’ve never found.
Sulphur Springs Park (the smell lives up to the name) in Soufriere was next, the island’s biggest tourist draw that pulls in some 200,000 folks a year, site of a drive-through volcano that’s more drive-over. The dome collapsed thousands of years ago, leaving behind a giant caldera with 24 steaming vents of boiling water and mud and quite dangerous. I heard from others that a guide was severely burned when he ventured too close to a vent, the brittle ground gave way and he slipped in, sustaining third-degree burns from the chest down. Signs abound warning you to stay away from the vents. Heed them.
One way to safely enjoy Mother Nature’s thermal offering is doing the baths here. For $11, you get admission to the park and a turn in the mud baths, a very popular way to spend time at the park. Just walking the park is a mere $8. And fear not danger of another explosion; seismologists regularly visit the place, hooking their info into the main Caribbean volcano monitoring station in Trinidad.
We next stopped at the gloriously colorful Diamond Botanical Gardens, where for $5 you walk through the lush landscape and spy amazing flowers like red ginger lily, hibiscus, Ixora, hanging Heliconia, Anthurium and Balisier. Not all flowers bloom at all times, but chances are you’ll see some that you’ve never seen before.
Also here is the Diamond Waterfall, behind mineral baths and through a shady path of ferns and banana plants, falls fed by sulphur springs and so laden with minerals such as copper sulfate, magnesium, iron, manganese and calcium, it contributes to the changing colors of the rock face behind it.
We next stopped in Soufriere, an amazing village of colorful architecture and people, including David, a native, dreadlocked chap making baskets by the harbor with Little Piton over his shoulder, his long, bony fingers curling palm leaves into his latest creation. He has three boys, he told me, including one in the Army in Barbados. He lives nearby, pointing to a pleasant house on the hill overlooking the harbor and spoke of his dream to open a restaurant serving real tropical food, “not that rice and peas crap,” he smiled. I have no idea if he’ll pull it off, but the passion in his eyes suggest he just might.
Downtown Soufriere is a collection of tiny stores and restaurants with names like Archie’s Creole Pot, a tiny, noise-filled grid of skinny, two-way streets that defy reason to be, resulting in a horn-honking dance of squeezing around corners, inching forward here, backing up there, to let traffic slide by. And it all works; there are no angry shouts, no bug-eyed stares, no one-finger salutes that pervade American cities, just a smooth, cacophonous ballet of humans and machines.
On the drive back to Coconut Bay, I recalled how much I'd seen -- and how much more remained to be seen. A return trip is a must.
For information, visit http://www.coconutbayresortandspa.com