St Lucia: The Mini Rough Guide (Miniguides S.)

This guide provides an insight to all of St Lucia's attractions, from the bustling capital, Castries, to stylish yachting resorts such as Rodney Bay. Special features profile the island's curious and picturesque style of Creole architecture, its street parades, and the St Lucian Jazz festival.

Introduction

St Lucia more than lives up to the paradisal Caribbean stereotype: a glorious mix of honey sand beaches, translucent waters sheltering reefs swarming with tropical fish, lush interior rainforests, and a thriving culture that encompasses literature and theatre as well as music and dance. However, in contrast to other islands in the region, where the tourism infrastructure has been steadily expanding since the 1960s, St Lucia has only recently begun to attract visitors in any number. As a result, tourism has a much lower profile here, and this low-key feel is one of the island's biggest assets. With little of the jaded hustle that can mar more established Caribbean destinations, you'll find St Lucia a relaxed, informal and incredibly friendly place to visit. Despite the lack of hype, St Lucia's tourist facilities are top-notch, and, unusually, cater to all budgets - you can stay at luxury hotels or inexpensive guesthouses, dine in world-class restaurants or at roadside kiosks, and shop in large duty-free malls or at open air village markets.

You could spend an entire holiday exploring St Lucia's beaches, but you'd be missing out on the island's less obvious highlights. St Lucia's 616 square kilometres are ripe for exploration, and though a rental car is the optimum way to get around, bus links to most areas are good, and taxis are always available. If it is beaches you're after, you'll probably head first to the tourism strongholds of the northwest coast, where scores of hotels and restaurants are clustered around the villages of Rodney Bay and Gros Islet. Reef-fringed swaths of white sand along this stretch of coastline justify its "Golden Mile" nickname. There's plenty of historical intrigue - as well as more idyllic seashores - at former pirate hangout and British military bastion Pigeon Island, and the remains of stone forts scattered throughout the area are a telling reminder of the fierce Anglo-French battles for possession of St Lucia, which saw the "Helen of the West Indies" change hands more than a dozen times. South of Rodney Bay, the bustling capital of Castries is also worth visiting, with its peaceful town square named after St Lucia's Nobel Prize-winning author Derek Walcott, and a clamorous, colourful market that provides a vivid insight into everyday island life.

These days, though, visitors are increasingly gravitating to the south of the island, where the pace is slower and the bays are lined with brightly painted fishing boats rather than the garish concrete of resort hotels. With a deep-water harbour framed by St Lucia's best-known landmark, the monolithic twin peaks of the Pitons, the attractive, laid-back town of Soufri?re boasts gorgeous colonial architecture as well as unusual stretches of dark grey-brown volcanic sand. Within reach of the town are numerous managed attractions: sugarcane plantations established by French and English colonists have been opened up to the public or transformed into botanical gardens, while the bubbling, odorous La Soufri?re sulphur springs have been re-packaged as the world's only drive-in volcano. These mineral-rich waters have been harnessed at nearby Diamond Estate, where you can take a restorative bathe in an outdoor pool.

Southern St Lucia is also the most convenient starting point for excursions into the rainforest-smothered mountains of the interior forest reserves. Laced with hiking trails, abundant with swimmable waterfalls and home to some rare and exotic wildlife, the forests provide an absorbing alternative to beach life. St Lucia's tropical environment is also showcased at the protected nature reserves along the southeast coast: the Fregate and Maria islands are home to magnificent frigate birds and endemic lizards, while pristine offshore reefs make for great snorkelling. Windswept, wild and pounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the spectacular beaches of the east coast are better for hiking than for swimming, and leatherback turtles visit more regularly than tourists.

A fusion of French, British and African traditions, St Lucia's Creole culture is an intriguing mix: while the official language is English, the lingua franca is a mellifluous, French-based Patois that employs African vocabulary and structures. Similarly, the local cuisine blends French traditions with island ingredients, focusing on local seafood and root crops originally imported from Africa on slave ships. However, the most conspicuous - and exciting - expression of St Lucia's culture are its festivals, Christian in origin but African in character. Carnival is by far the biggest event, a colourful, animated round of frenetic parties, calypso contests and parades of revellers decked out in wild costumes portraying spirits and devils. If you're not lucky enough to be in St Lucia for Carnival, or for the more intimate summer saints' festivals, the St Lucian propensity for partying is indulged each Friday when the tiny village of Gros Islet is overtaken by a classic West Indian "jump up", a street party where tourists and locals alike descend for a night of eating, drinking and dancing under the stars. St Lucia's fastest-growing event, the annual Jazz Festival is a more sophisticated gathering, with some of the genre's biggest names performing under the palm trees of Pigeon Island.

When to go

For many visitors, St Lucia's biggest attraction is its tropical climate. During the December to April high season, the island is pleasantly hot, with little rain and constant northeasterly trade winds keeping the nights cool. Temperatures rise even further during the summer months, which can also be wet: the rainy season lasts from June to October, and during this time, short, heavy bursts of rain are matched by an increase in humidity; rainfall is nearly three times heavier in the central rainforests than along the coast. The rainy months also coincide with the hurricane season, which runs roughly from late August to October.

As you'd expect, St Lucia is busiest in the first few months of the year; during this time, some beaches, particularly those in the northwest, are likely to be crowded, and hotel prices are at their peak. In the mid-April to mid-December low season, accommodation rates, airfares and even car rental prices can decrease significantly.