St. Lucia: Peak attractions

Rambling along and drawing closer and closer to Gros Piton, I finally put two and two together: The book I happen to be reading says that massive bodies (like mountains) actually exert a gravitational pull on smaller bodies (such as ours). It occurs to me that since my fly-in to the island, which passed right by the peaks then circled back around to approach them again in an impossibly scenic holding maneuver, this force has been hard at work. For days now I’ve been orbiting the Pitons like a moon around a planet, inexorably.

Driving past working plantations with closed gates arouses my curiosity about contemporary plantation life. A partial answer (and lunch) is to be found back out along the main road at Fond Doux Estates, a historic property with hiking trails that lead to relics from the French-British wars and a significant slave revolt; it’s now an attraction where nutmeg and cocoa are produced using traditional methods. It’s also got one of the loveliest, lushest gardens I’ve seen anywhere (or at least since the day before, at Stonefield). 

Fond Doux is home to Leighton and Eroline Lamontagne, proprietors of a bustling grocery store in Soufrière. The restoration of Fond Doux over the last 25 years is proof of the Lamontagne family’s preservationist mindset, so it is no surprise that once you get Leighton started on the topic of Soufrière’s condition — from quality of life issues to architecture and construction, to bayfront management and planning in general — you hear his sadness and outrage.

“Soufrière is the tourism capitol of St. Lucia, and we’re destroying it a piece at a time. The next few years will be very interesting,” he says portentiously. “We’ll see what happens.”

The nostalgia trip inevitably brings me back around to the resort hotel where I stayed during my first visit in the mid-1990s, Anse Chastanet. I ease back into the luxuriously large rooms with three walls and the famous views of the Pitons across the bay, enjoying the uncommonly high standard of hospitality — and make a promise to myself to return before another nine years pass so I can check out the over-the-top new wing that’s under construction and set to open this year. But even more than the killer setting, architecture and accommodations, what I remember most vividly about the place is the fascinating scuba diving.

There used to be a divemaster here named Victor Antoine, who at the time was a candidate for the Guinness Book of World Records for total number of hours spent underwater, accrued over 27 years of commercial diving and a couple in recreational diving. He took me out to see an unclassified creature called The Thing (or “Da Ting” in Victor’s patois-flavored parlance), which lives on the reef in the marine park along the shoreline. It’s some sort of eight-foot-long purplish-brown segmented worm with centipede feet and whiskers. Fugly, in a word, but damn interesting to see.

Debbie Snow / Caribbean Travel & Life

I figure Victor must’ve retired by now — how much more bottom time can one man stand? — but it’s worth a shot.

“Does a man named Victor Antoine still work here?” I inquire at the dive shop.

“Yes he does,” comes the reply. “He’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

Now, a guy like me is always going to remember a guy like him — but vice versa? When he meets dozens of new divers every week, month after month, year after year? Not bloody likely.

Well, not only does Victor recognize me, he recalls details of our dives that have long escaped me: “Do you remember I caught that fish with my hands?”

“Well, now that you mention it ...”

I’m flattered and impressed — that’s nine-tenths of the hospitality game right there, making your guests feel special.

We perform some cocktail-napkin calculations and reckon that Victor has racked up somewhere in the ballpark of 26,300 dives in his lifetime, with 6,864 (and counting, at two or three daily) recreational ones. He figures he’s spent eight or nine years underwater.

As for Da Ting, still there, still unclassified. “I don’t really show it to people very much because they’ll trouble it and it will go away,” he says.

Victor guides me on a gentle drift dive along the wall that’s a submerged part of Petit Piton. With all you hear about bleaching, I’m delighted to report that the reef remains healthy and bursting with as much brilliantly colored life as the gardens and jungles topside — probably lots more. When we come across a couple of golden spotted moray eels, Victor reaches playfully for one, but it snakes away. Maybe he’s slowing down now that he’s been diving for 38 of his 59 years. Victor plans to hang up his regulator either when he’s 60 or when he’s notched 40 years of diving — which means that the next time I come to St. Lucia, should the trade winds blow that way, Victor will probably be retired; I’ll definitely miss the man and his brilliant smile.

I realize my next dose of nostalgia for southern St. Lucia is starting to set in already, before the old one has even worn off — before I’ve even left the island.

Caribbean Travel & Life is the magazine for anyone in search of the perfect tropical getaway. Each issue presents expert insider’s advice on where to find the Caribbean’s best beaches and attractions, its finest resorts and spas, liveliest beach bars and activities, and its friendliest people.   

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