Tips, opinions, etc, if you please!

Many air miles to spend, thought it looked nice. Thanks in advance.

🙂

Whats the Real Ale like in St Lucia?

More chavs than other Caribbean islands.

with all this willy waving its like you are trying to compensate for some sort of inadequacy in your life
do up date us with a spurious post when you are there wont you?

Is there a market for Post-it notes in St Lucia, what with all that humidity and that?

🙂 responses as expected! Just asking for advice from a usually outstanding source of info, thanks!

Now, anyone with any real advice? Wallop, is that from experience?

wallop – Member

More chavs than other Caribbean islands.

Others?

Such as?

More than others in the Lesser Antilles. Sorry – should have been more specific. Probably less than places such as the Dominican Republic.

Still nice though.

More chavs than other Caribbean islands.

My sister has time share in St Lucia – for years they’ve been going every January for 3 weeks.

Considering your expressed views concerning Elf’s mother, I’ll let you decide what that means.

The whole of the Caribbean is lovely – some islands have higher numbers of gobby British tourists on package deals than others, that’s all I’m saying.

Well I expressed doubt that she’d like the same things as me. I could well have been wrong, but there you go. Feel free to read more in to it if you like.

Tell me, why did your sister choose that location? Must be good to keep going back!

Wallop, have you been? Went to Barbados last year and loved it, pondering somewhere else, though.

I was at a conference there at a nice resort (anse chastenet I think it was called), but it was a full program so I didn’t see any of the island really. Nice swimming and they actually had some MTB trails. Half decent bikes and it was cool MTBing in the jungle – really short loop though. Great spot really but there must be a 100 similar in the Caribbean.

Wallop, have you been?

Hilariously, no, so you can ignore me if you like. I have spent a bit of time in the area though, and my folks have spent quite a bit of time on St Lucia itself so I have heard a lot about it. To be honest, you can’t go far wrong with any of those islands in that area – they are all fabulous (except for maybe Guadeloupe which I have heard isn’t quite as nice).

What sort of things do you like to do on your holidays?

Usual regular destination is usually Barbados here, thanks to WI wife/extended family but we went to Lucia “for a change” for our honeymoon.

St Lucia is a very “green” island with more than the average rainfall, and is a bit more hilly than the others. Plenty of scenery to see, and typically caribbean in many ways. In most of the inlets / coastal places you’ll get traditional carribean fayre, local fish / dishes, laid back hotels, laid back friendly people and great local rum and food and fantastic beaches – inspired by tourist demand which is a main industry. Some of the inlets have hotel apartments which go up on the slopes connected by paths and boardwalks which are pretty cool. If you’ve been to the caribbean before you’ll recognise the shops. In addition though St Lucia has a massive Jazz history, with a particular time of year which has a long jazz festival (can’t remember when) and some festivities in certain places on Friday nights. Quite a lot of the bars will slowly move into a jazz-ish environment late night as the local instrument players turn up and if you’re lucky, you can listen in to a jam into the early hours over a few rums.

On the negative side, the gap between tourist / poor seems quite wide, and in some of the towns, expect to feel slightly out of place in some streets / markets. The locals though are friendly and even they despise the odd beggar that’ll try to get some cash of you if you’re unlucky (we had a couple of office workers threaten the bloke who approach up with a beating!). Oh, and they have deadly snakes introduced by the french in the slavery days as a deterrent to the slave making escape plans, which mostly frequent the heavily green jungle areas.

Finally, there are some bike trials if you are inclined with a trail allegedly cut/inspired by Tinker Haurez. I never rode that one, mainly because the old Cannondales on offer didn’t inspire me (although I took my kit) and the 33 degree heat/thought of snake at the time put me off a long solo ride in the jungle, but if it still exists and you want to take your bike…..

Otherwise a lovely warm friendly place, which we enjoyed very much. Very much worth taking a boat trip to see the Pitons.

Hope that helps.

“Worked” there for 5 weeks as a medical student – loved it! If you get away from all the 5 star hotels, there’s an awesome island to explore!

Some pics from 2006:

why did your sister choose that location?

Well it was years ago but iirc they went there on holiday and were very impressed, so decided that they would like to return regularly.

I guess it’s a welcome break from their villa just north of St Tropez – specially as the swimming pool isn’t in use during January.

I’ve got speak to her tomorrow so if I remember I’ll ask if she has any comments to make about St Lucia.

their villa just north of St Tropez

Heavenly – we spent Easter weekend in Saint Maxime – what a gorgeous part of the world. I want to live there.

Kryton, thanks for that. Barbados struck me as a rather well balanced economy, so interesting to hear re that.

Wallop – beach, boats, snorkel/dive and some cold beer!

Went in 2000, and can’t remember a great deal. Erm, Jazz Festival very good, hot, very beautiful picture postcard beaches with azure blue ocean etc, some chavs, good snorkelling with the colourful fishes, lots of locals living in shacks, volcano, sulphur springs smell pretty bad, local weed is dynamite.

Hope that helps.

Wallop – beach, boats, snorkel/dive and some cold beer!

British Virgin Islands would be a good shout for watersports. The other requirements will be satisfied wherever you go! St Lucia beaches are stunning by all accounts.

The sea can be quite lumpy around some islands. I was sicker than a sick thing in Antigua – big, big swell.

Amazing place – the volcano is not much more than some goat gnawed, farting rocks but the rest of the island is great. Went there in 2001 and got married to an ex-MrsPJM and aside from the choice of wife the holiday was excellent.

Was also where I got back into mountain biking…I hired a bike there and was taken on a guided tour around the forest. I was told to try to avoid crashing in ditches because that’s where the fer-de-lances usually lurked!

Great place.

St Lucia now, is what Barbados was like 10-15 years ago, if you know what I mean 😉

A great island to visit mind.

Did not strike me as a chav island in any way, well not like Barbados, Domin, Jam, which we have also stayed.

We loved St Lucia, worth going just to see the Pitons alone. We did a short island flight to sail round the Grenadines islands which is not far away, amazing in every way, flight is a real roller coaster of a landing too 😉

Some great spots/beaches if you are prepared to travel outside your hotel.

Saying that, of all the islands we have been, Cuba would be top of our list to go back too, Havana is simply amazing, link it in with a week stay at Varadero, you get a week on the beach, plus a week in Havana 😉

I got married there, but that was a bloody long time ago… *sighs*