St. Lucia: My Favorite Caribbean Island, and Why We Keep Going Back

We have been to a fair number of Caribbean islands over the years. Some of them blur together in my memory, which I say with no unkindness. Beautiful water, a resort, a buffet, a week that was pleasant and then over. St. Lucia did not do that. St. Lucia stuck.

This is not really a review. It is an account of a place that gave Josef and me one of the best stretches of time we have had together, and of why I would tell any couple our age to go.

The first morning

We landed at Hewanorra in the late afternoon and took the long drive up the west coast in a taxi with a driver named Curtis who talked the entire way and pointed out the house he grew up in. The road bends and climbs and drops, and every so often the trees open and you see the sea below you and you make an involuntary noise. By the time we got to Soufrière it was dark and I had no idea what was outside the window.

I woke up before Josef the next morning, opened the shutters, and there were the Pitons. Two enormous green volcanic spires standing straight up out of the water, close enough that they filled the whole frame. I stood there in my nightgown for a good five minutes. Then I woke him, which he did not appreciate at the time and has since admitted was the right call.

I have seen a great many photographs of that view since and none of them do it, because photographs flatten scale. You have to be standing there with the humidity on your arms and the birds going and the sheer size of the thing in front of you.

What we actually did for ten days

Less than we planned, which turned out to be the whole trick. We had a list. We did about half of it and spent the rest of the time doing nothing in particular, and the nothing in particular is what I remember.

We walked down to the fishing beach most mornings while the boats were coming in. There is a rhythm to it, men hauling and sorting and calling to each other, and after four or five days a couple of them nodded at us like we belonged there, which is a small thing that made me ridiculously happy.

We took a boat out to snorkel under the Petit Piton. The water there drops away into deep blue very suddenly and I will admit that made me nervous, and Josef, who swims like an otter and always has, held my hand for the first ten minutes until I settled. We saw a turtle. He talked about the turtle for the rest of the trip.

We did the sulphur springs and the mud bath, which is exactly as absurd as it sounds. Two retired professors covered head to toe in grey volcanic mud, laughing at each other like teenagers, while a young woman patiently explained the mineral content. My skin genuinely did feel wonderful afterward. My dignity took a week to recover.

And we ate. Green fig and saltfish for breakfast at a place with four tables. Grilled snapper with a plantain that had been caramelized within an inch of its life. Josef developed a serious relationship with the local hot sauce and brought three bottles home, two of which he gave away and immediately regretted.

The evening I keep coming back to

On our seventh night there was a rainstorm, the sudden hard tropical kind that arrives like a decision. We were on a small covered terrace with a bottle of wine and there was nothing to do but sit and watch it come across the water toward us. It went on for maybe forty minutes. We hardly spoke.

Forty two years of marriage and you would think you have run out of quiet moments that feel like something. You have not. I remember thinking, quite clearly, that I was completely happy and that I should notice it while it was happening rather than afterward. That is the thing St. Lucia gave us, and it is why it is my favorite.

Why St. Lucia over the others

The honest reason is that it is a real place first and a destination second. There are resorts, plenty of them, and you can absolutely do the sealed-in version of the trip. But the island is not organized around you. There are towns with schools and churches and a Saturday market and people going to work, and you are a guest in it rather than the reason for it. I find that far more interesting than a manicured strip of hotels.

It is also unusually varied for somewhere so small. Rainforest, mountains you can genuinely hike, waterfalls, a drive-in volcano, and beaches that range from calm and pale to dramatic and dark. On a lot of islands the week is beach, beach, beach. Here we had a different kind of day whenever we wanted one.

And the people. I taught for thirty years and I have a pretty finely tuned sense of when someone is performing warmth versus feeling it. The warmth we met in St. Lucia was not a service posture. Curtis the driver checked in on us twice during the week for no commercial reason at all.

The honest drawbacks

It is not cheap, particularly around Soufrière, where the views command a real premium. We stayed somewhere mid-range rather than at one of the famous properties and I have no regrets, but budget accordingly.

The roads are a genuine consideration. They are steep, narrow, and winding, and if either of you gets carsick the transfer from the airport will be an ordeal. It took us over an hour and a half. Some people fly or take the boat up the coast instead, and if I had a sensitive stomach I would do the same.

We also would not go in September. We visited in early May, which was warm, green, and quiet, and the shoulder season pricing was noticeably kinder. Late summer is hurricane season and the risk is not theoretical.

If you go

• Stay near Soufrière rather than the busier north if the Pitons are why you are coming.
• Give it at least seven nights. The island needs a few days to slow you down before it does its work.
• Hire a driver for a day instead of renting a car. Better company, less white-knuckling.
• Eat somewhere without a view at least twice. The food is better and the conversation is livelier.
• Go in May, or between December and April if you want the driest weather and can accept the prices.

We are going back. Not to see anything new, particularly. To stand on that terrace again and to walk down to the boats in the morning. At our age you learn which places give you your own life back for a little while, and you stop apologizing for returning to them.