Why you should visit St Lucia?

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Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a TRINI TO THE BONE MARROW, but St Lucia, oh sweet sweet St. Lucia has a special place in my heart. This small island in the eastern Caribbean with a population of under 200,000 persons is one of my absolute favorite places.  You need to put this on your list of Caribbean countries to visit. The beaches, the tours, the food, the Pitons, all make for a wonderful and memorable trip. ❤

In September 2017, I had the pleasure of visiting this beautiful island with my cousin Shivonne. I was truly impressed by the raw beauty of the island and the hospitality of the locals, from the hotel staff to the vendors to the tour operators. I felt like they genuinely wanted to make sure that I had a great time 🙂

We stayed at Coco Palm Resort and there are two things I loved about this resort:

• Firstly, the breakfast: The breakfast was a buffet styled and had eggs, pancakes, oats and many other items to choose from including a wide assortment of fresh fruits. In addition, the breakfast options changed slightly every morning, so you didn’t get bored of eating the same thing every day.
• Secondly, the location:  Coco Palm is ideally located with the beautiful Reduit beach only about a five minutes walk away and with the Bay Walk Shopping Mall about five minutes walk in the other direction. This provided ease of access for shopping for local souvenirs to carry back to your friends and family and also provided more options for food as there was a Dominios, Pizza, KFC, even a Roti Shop and many other restaurants all within walking distance.

Our trip was a short one, as we only stayed for two nights and three days. However, the highlight of the trip was our day tour on-board the Carnival Sailing Catamaran led by the charismatic and very friendly tour operator Valerie. We opted for the cruise which included sailing along the west coast of the island to our first stop, the village of Soufriere. Here we disembarked and were taken on a guided tour of the Diamond Waterfall and Botanical Gardens. I especially enjoyed the botanical gardens, I wish my backyard could look like that! 😎

We then continued on to the beautiful Pitons where we opted to do the tour of the volcano (you had the option to bathe in the Sulphur Springs if you wanted to). This was followed by lunch at an estate and some snorkeling and swimming off the boat in the clear Caribbean Sea.

It was an awesome trip! We were also picked up and dropped off by our hotel lobby! The convenience! The service! I loved it. It was the best money I spent all trip (it cost around $110 US per person). 🙂

Sidenote:

The Pitons

The Pitons (Gros Piton and Petit Piton) were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. The two volcanic plugs which were formed when magma hardened in a vent hundreds of thousands of years ago when the volcano was active. It is fondly referred to as the only “drive thru” volcano in the world and it really is worth the trip to see it. When you first catch a glimpse of these two 700+ metre peaks in front of you, you can’t help but admire God’s work.

 

PS. I recently read a blog post about hiking to the top of Gros Piton and Petit Piton and I hope to do this hike on my next trip to St. Lucia. It seems like it is extremely challenging, but absolutely worth all the effort. For more information about hiking to the top of Gros Piton or Petit Piton check out this entertaining and informative blog post:

https://feelgoodandtravel.com/2017/10/07/hiking-petit-piton-st-lucia/

Thank you for reading this post. Feel free to like and comment below. Have you ever been to St Lucia? What is your favorite island in the Caribbean?

Much Love,

Celly