St. Lucia: Peak attractions

Nothing against wow-factor, but I like homey. I appreciate the personal touch you get at the nicer owner-operated places. I love it when a host can talk about a childhood spent in the kind of place we all dreamt about in our own. That whole family/roots thing is priceless as far as I’m concerned, so I’m rapt when Brown takes me for a walk on the grounds. His adorable daughter toddles along with us, accompanied by their pets, a lizard-chasing Jack Russell terrier and a verbose macaw.

The foliage alone is worthy of a botanical garden. Food hangs heavy: wild breadfruit, soursops, bananas, mangos, and oranges. We suck on slippery sweet ’n’ sour cocoa pods while admiring all the familiar tropical flowering trees: jasmine, jacaranda, oleander, flamboyant and  a new specimen for me, something that Brown calls a thumbersia, a beauty that has lavender leaves with yellow centers.

Brown leads me down a jungly path to some mossy boulders and the rock carvings he discovered in boyhood. “I was walking up from the beach, following this streambed with my sister, brother, aunt and uncle,” he says. “I saw the carvings and didn’t think anything of them. But later, an anthropologist came out and, sure enough, they are petroglyphs from A.D. 350.” Brown says they’re the finest specimens on the whole island.

Pointing at the three figures, Brown explains they represent a family unit that not only faces the Pitons, but mirrors them: The father figure is Gros Piton, the mother is Petit Piton, and the child is Petit-Petit Piton, a spur that juts from the flank of mama mountain. The interpretation is that the Arawaks who carved them did so as an act of Piton worship.

Debbie Snow / Caribbean Travel & Life

Piton worship is still in style; it is impossible not to pay the mountains a reverent kind of awe-struck attention when you wake up in the morning in a place like Stonefield and step out onto the porch of your cottage: There they loom, massive and impassive. If you happen to be a yoga person, you will reflexively take deep, conscious breaths, root your feet and square your shoulders in Mountain Pose and commence your Sun Salutes. Afterward, you can go jump in the pool by the restaurant, wrap a towel around yourself and order the pan-fried flying fish for breakfast.

A less neo-pagan brand of worship is under way down the hill in Soufrière this morning, which happens to be Sunday. Ladies in pastel dresses and fine hats linger by the doorway to Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church at the head of the town square, while the heated exhortations of evangelical preachers blast from more modest structures along the side streets. Down by the waterfront, though, among the men clutching plastic cups of amber liquid, there’s a strong sense that Saturday night has spilled effortlessly into Sunday morning.

The road north of Soufrière is all switchbacks and hairpins and, at a certain altitude, is nearly overgrown with humongous ferns creeping down from the rain forest above. On such a road, you never know what lies around the next turn. I pull over at a roadside shed where a Rastafarian family is cooking and selling cassava bread made with cherries, raisins, cinnamon, nuts, coconut and sugar. The cake is savory, sweet and fresh-hot, almost too much to eat, and far superior to any $2 snack one could find on the entire length of the American interstate highway system.

Driving along the coast, you keep being stunned, finding yourself stopped in your tracks again and again as each turn in the twisty road brings you around to face one of the Pitons. It is impossible not to pull over and take another picture.

A few more miles up the road, I roll into Anse la Raye, a village whose current claim to fame is the Friday night fish fest — part food frenzy, part jump-up. Today, it’s the scene of the finals of the Creole Cook-Off between six teams of women from various villages who’re competing for EC$5,000 (US$2,000) — a dear sum, judging by the intensity of spectator interest. They’re being judged not only on their pelau, but also on who offers it with the most authentic costuming and presentation. Their booths are crammed with kitchenware and household bric-a-brac from some indeterminate, pre-modern past. “You can tell how old this mirror is — it’s seen many faces,” says one of the ladies, investing this simple, everyday object with a world of pride.

The next morning, I make a halfhearted attempt to drive from Soufrière up into the rain forest, but even with a sporty little four-wheeler the road presents tough going. Instead I go for a hike partway up the Spyke Waterfalls and Baths, where I take the waters in a natural pool with plunging falls massaging my shoulders, neck and head. No spa treatment could beat that. My nimble 66-year-old guide sells a deliciously floral local honey with the promise, “honey and rum make you strong,” which would seem preposterous were he not such a fit and fine advertisement for the proposition, flexing as he delivers it.

From there, I head south for 20 or 30 minutes along a stretch of new highway toward the next town, Choiseul. I very quickly find myself beyond the reach of the tourist trade and in another environment altogether — a rural area where cattle, with their attendant egrets, graze on grassy slopes that terminate at black sand beaches. Palms clatter overhead as schoolchildren in blue-and-white uniforms goof around by the side of the road at lunch time.

MORE FROM CARIBBEAN TRAVEL

Caribbean Travel Section Front

The Caribbean's 'Nature Island' 7 Caribbean diving classics Cuba not ready, but expecting U.S. tourists The Caribbean’s new ‘it’ destination Hottest Caribbean hotels The 6 best authentic Caribbean all-inclusives A tale of two sisters Summing up the seasons The Caribbean's exotic indulgences Island for two: Honeymoon on Nevis Caribbean Travel Section Front   Add Caribbean Travel headlines to your news reader: