St. Lucia Travel Guide

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St Lucia is a beautiful volcanic island with lush rainforests, undulating agricultural landscapes and unspoiled beaches. It is also one of the world’s breeziest places, as the trade winds blow in from the sea to the southern shore.

Traditionally banana and sugar cane exports sustained St Lucia, however, the government is now focusing its efforts on the island’s fast-growing tourism sector.

St Lucia boasts more than enough to keep visitors enthralled, hosting a wealth of natural wonders from excellent beaches and mountain scenery, to the Qualibou Volcano with its boiling sulphur springs, as well as tropical flower-lined roadsides.

The island’s unique cultural heritage also proves a significant draw for visitors, with a considerable British and French influence still felt today. After fierce resistance from the indigenous Carib Indians, British and French colonists were kept away from the island for 50 years. Then, between the signing of a peace treaty with the French in 1660 and the British takeover of the island in 1814, ownership changed no fewer than 14 times. The British maintained control until 1979, when St Lucia was granted independence. This cultural diversity is still evident in St Lucia from the colonial-style plantations to the French influence felt in the patois spoken throughout the country.

With the local’s friendliness and hospitability, visitors to St Lucia are invited to enjoy the islanders’ leisurely lifestyle.

Geography

St Lucia is the second-largest of the Windward Islands. It has some of the finest mountain scenery in the West Indies and is rich with tropical vegetation. For such a small island, 43km (27 miles) by 23km (14 miles), St Lucia has a great variety of plant and animal life. Orchids and exotic plants grow wild in the rainforests, and the roadsides are covered with many colorful tropical flowers. Indigenous wildlife includes a species of ground lizard unique to St Lucia. The Amazona versicolor parrot is another, though more elusive, inhabitant of the deep interior rainforest.

The highest peak is Mount Gimie at 950m (3,117ft). Most spectacular are Gros Piton and Petit Piton, ancient, volcanic forest-covered cones which rise out of the sea on the west coast. The mountains are intersected by short rivers which in some areas form broad fertile valleys. The island has excellent beaches and is surrounded by a clear, warm sea.