Blog / Random thoughts and musings.

Reflections of St. Lucia

As we’re packing up for our flight back to the cold of Virginia’s winter, we decided to summarize some of our general impressions of St. Lucia:

Weather
Currently St. Lucia is still in the rainy season so the weather changes at the drop of a hat. If it’s raining wait 5 minutes and it will be bright, sunny, and very warm. The temperature is usually between 80-85 degrees each day, but since we’re so close to the equator, the sun is a lot more intense and it feels closer to 90-95 degrees. There is a constant breeze blowing on the coast so it helps with some of the humidity. For Kathie who is almost never warm, the sun and temperature felt wonderful and she could probably live here quite comfortably (with the exception of the mosquitoes). Mike found the temperature borderline hot and appreciated the air-conditioned rooms after a while in the heat.

Food/Service
We found most of the restaurant service to be extremely relaxed. We’d get service, but it could take a while before the wait staff meandered over to our table to take our order, plus we would often wait at least 20-30 minutes for our food. This is the off-season so there were very few tourists at the restaurants so we know it wasn’t due to crowds. Since this happened at every restaurant we stopped at, we figure it’s the norm here. As in most european countries, people seem to eat much later here so some restaurants don’t even open till 7pm. Since we’re such early eaters, we were often the first one in the restaurants. The food here seems to be average and a little expensive. The food on the Brig Unicorn was quite good – the lamb and chicken, but the restaurant food wasn’t as good as we hoped.

Hotel
In general, we tend to prefer the comfort and service of a nice hotel but we got some really good experiences staying at a non-inclusive hotel. Bay Gardens is quite nice for it’s price range and the staff was very friendly and helpful. The front desk personnel helped us figure out the right bus to take, the fare for taxis, and various tour sign-ups. Bay Gardens hotel is very close to Reduit Beach and the local restaurants so it was very easy for us to walk down to the area to find food, plus the supermarket was between the hotel and beach so it was easy to get some snacks and breakfast food. Since Bay Gardens is located in Rodney Bay, we were close to all sorts of activities. A lot of the all-inclusive hotels are further away from the main city so self-exploring is more difficult and requires taking taxis.

Locals
We got mixed reactions from locals. Our first bus ride, one of the women on the bus told us where we needed to stop and told the bus driver when he passed our stop. She wished us a good time here as she left. Others would just stare at us or avoid us as we were on the bus or walking the streets. Some of the locals would wave as we passed them while others would leer. So no different from the US really. The local vendors were definitely annoying though. Random strangers would flag us down, ask our names and try to sell us something. “No, thank you” was not very effective. In main city areas where there are more tourists (ie Castries harbor where cruisers would disembark), the locals may not be as aggressive since there are so many tourists to flag down, but in the Rodney Bay area, they will continue to harass you until you walk away or buy something.

Closing Thoughts
The island is extremely beautiful with lush vegetation and flowers blooming everywhere. As all caribbean islands, the waters are warm and blue and so much nicer than the beaches on the east coast. St. Lucia seems to still be growing its tourist business and is less crowded than most caribbean countries. Most of the tourists here seem to originate from the UK and European countries. The buildings are very close together, the shops are small, and the roads are rather narrow. We would recommend taking the taxis or buses here and not renting a car. The locals drive pretty quickly and on the left side of the road. As with other Caribbean countries, we enjoyed staying here for the week but probably would not come back since we’ve seen and done most of the main sites here, and there are so many other places in the world to left to visit!