St Lucia Holiday

My wife, Liz, and I were up at 4.30am to drive to London Gatwick for our 10 night holiday in St. Lucia. We'd spent quite a bit of time researching a villa for a relaxing, quiet holiday and had booked Stonefield Estate Villa Resort which looked perfect. We had just had a new bathroom fitted and been up til 1am clearing up, but who cares, we're off to St. Lucia.

After a 10 hour flight with BA we arrived to 28 degree sunshine, leaving behind 3 degree cloud and rain. A shuttle bus took us to Stonefield which is on the west coast of St Lucia, about 40 minutes drive from Vieux Fort airport and right next to the town of Soufrierre.














We checked into our villa, Tamarind, and it was  exactly what we'd hoped for. Private plunge pool, huge verandah with a double hammock, outshide shower and views across to Petit Piton. We went to The Mango Tree restaurant on site for dinner and the views to The Pitons were even more incredible from here.

 

Woke early to rain and cloud, this wasn't what we ordered!! Had a lovely breakfast at The Mango Tree. Our Wranlger Jeep was delivered at 11am and we headed into Soufrierre for provisions. The rest of the day was spent lazing around by the pool and winding down from London life. The sun came out intermittently and we made friends with some of the local wildlife. We opted for dinner at The Mango Tree again as it was easy, has good food and amazing views across the bay below.

The electricity had gone off in the morning so I decided to have pancakes for breakfast again, just to make it easy for the staff you see :)

The skies were really clear this morning and we were hoping for a full day of sunshine.

 

 

Mid morning we headed to a local waterfall, just 2km outside of Soufrierre called Torallie. The waterfall wasn't as impressive as we'd hoped and actually looked like a big overflow pipe. Still it was only a few dollars and was worth dropping in to see. Liz bought a red ginger necklace from one of the sellers outside and we headed back to our lovely villa for an afternoon in the sun.

Liz was going to have her first alcoholic drink tonight for a month, after having January off the booze. We'd read about a restaurant called Mago that was built into a cave looking over Soufriere on the other side of the bay to our villa. We arrived to an empty restaurant, rude staff and shocking food. There was no choice of wine wither so we had to have the red wine vinegar on offer. The food culimnated on a "blue grapefruit" dessert, which tasted just as bad as it looked! It was an experience though but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. $120 for terrible food. Of our 10 nights it was the only place that served bad food, everywhere else was great.

 

mmmmmmmmmm.

Breakfast of Mango Pancakes today! We headed to Jalouise Beach today to explore a bit more. Jalouise Beach is part of quite a big resort, called Jalouise (funnily enough). We had to get a free shuttle bus to the beach from where we parked the car. The resort looks great from what we could see and the beach is beautiful. A real picture postcard white sand beach in between the two Pitons. All the other beaches on the island are dark volcanic sand but Jalouise has their white sand imported from Africa which is cheating a bit but looks perfect.

 

 

 

 

Jalouise Resort and Beach

We drank Pina Colada's on the beach, swam in the warm Caribbean Sea and had lunch in the Jalouise waterfront restaurant, what a great day.

For dinner we headed to Dasheene at Ladera Resort. The cocktail bar at Ladera has ana amazing view from the mountains above Jalouise across to Grose and Petit Piton. The food was fantastic and Liz finally had some decent wine. 

 

We hate Mondays! Just found out it's snowing heavily back in London which is nice! Spent most of today lounging in our villa and in the afternoon  headed to Anse Chastanet Beach. The snorekling is supposed to excellent there and we headed along a very rough 2 mile track to get to the beach and resort. Good job we got a Jeep hire car. There was a good view across to Petit Piton from the road though and I even managed to pick it up!

 

The water was amazingly clear for snorkeling but as the sand is volcanic it doesn't quite have the wow factor of golden sand on the sea bed. We swam around for nearly an hour and just as were about to turn back we saw our first turtle swimming along the sea floor about 10 feet below us.

 

We had a drink at The Tree House bar at Anse Chastanet, took another picture of Petit Piton next to the beer of the same name, and had dinner back at The Tree again.

Today we very nearly headed north to Castries and to explore some more, but at the last minute the sun came out and we opted to stay home. In the morning I managed to get a little sunburnt. In the afternoon we drove to the very nearby Sulphur Springs, billed as The Caribbeans only drive in Volcano. This isn't strictly true as it's really just a couple of smelly mud pools!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was all quite interesting though as the guide we had showed us how the island was formed and explained about it's history. We went to Ladera for cocktails to enjoy the beautiful views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stonefield was having a cocktail party around the pool at 5.30 so we went for free Rum Punch and to watch the stunning sunset, then had dinner at The Mango Tree.

 

We plucked up the courage to head north and explore the island today. The weather was not great so the timing was perfect. It felt like it was time to have a day out of the sun too. We headed north out of Soufrierre along the West coast road, for the hour or so drive to Castires, the islands capital. The scenery was beautiful and felt a bit like Jurassic Park. We drove through a number of run down towns on the way and the road was exciting and twisty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived in Castries to see 4 massive cruise ships in port. Becasue of this the town was busy and there was some hassle from hawkers selling us tat so we left quite quickly to head to Marigot Bay. Marigot Bay was where the original Doctor Doolittle was filmed so we wanted to have a look. The bay was very pretty but had been slightly ruined by a huge resort and some big houses but it's still worth a visit. We got a boat across to a restaurant called Doolittles and had lunch.

 

For dinner we headed to The Tree House at Anse Chastanet resort. Food was really good and we headed home to dominoes and an early night.

Today we went for an early morning Kayak around the bay off Jalouise Beach. We didn't go far but it was fun and Liz was drawn to the biggest yach in the harbour like a magnet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had a lovely relaxing afternoon at the villa and headed back to Jalouise Beach to watch sunset and have dinner in the beachfront reataurant. The restaurant is lovely with views across Jalouise Beach, with fantastic food. I had to make some important phone calls using local mobiles too.

 

 

After breakfast we drove into Soufrierre. The car goes back tomorrow so we needed to stock up on provisions. We love our Jeep, zipped up windows, door tops that pull off, holes in the roof and a huge 4.0lt engine, brilliant. It was quite cloudy and wet until about 11am but then turned into another beautiful day. For our morning activity we headed back to Jalouise Beach for some snorkeling. Snorkeling was much better that Anse Chastanet. The water was crystal clear and we were followed round by some stripey fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On our way back from Jalouise we dropped in to The Piton Waterfall and Springs, which were billed as being ambient, among other things, see picture below. Actually they were a bit like a car park with a warm bath in!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liz won dominoes last night and got to choose the restaurant for our penultimate dinner in St Lucia. She chose Dasheene at Ladera. We had cocktails and watched sunset, beautiful. Dinner was amazing again and we ended up meeting the chef, Orlando Satchall from South London. Finished the night with rum and a cigar at the villa.

We've decided the perfect day is:

Breakfast at The Mango Tree - Lunch at Jalouise Beach Restaurant - Dinner at Dasheene

 

 

 

 

Our penultimate day. The Jeep goes back today at 11 so we headed to another near by beach, Malegroute, to see what it was like. It was quite pleasant but no where near as nice as Jalouise. Today was probably the hottest day yet and the tan is coming along nicely. The day was mostly spent in and out of the pool or in and out of the sun. It was a great Saturday. We went to The Mango Tree to watch a beautiful sunset as a sailship passed by. We drank cocktails and our "crazy" waitress took a strange angled photo as she couldn't seem to keep the camera straight.

 

 

 

Our last day, such a shame but we've had a fantastic time in St Lucia. However, we weren't flying til 9pm so still had a whole day. We had to check out of Tamarind and move to another villa for the day as a late check out. We'd got up at a silly early hour again and were ready to leave our villa by 8am! The villa they'd given us for the day was Plantation Villa and was the biggest on the estate. It was a 3 bed villa, higher up on the hillside, bigger pool, massive kitchen etc, perfect for out last day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day was everything we could have hoped for our last day. Sun shining all day and one more gorgeous sunset. We've had an amazing time and are truly relaxed.