St Lucia discovery guide

Saint Lucia has the most dramatic skyline in the Caribbean. The Pitons, two volcanic spires rising straight out of the sea to around 750 metres, are UNESCO-listed and visible from most of the west coast, and the island is volcanically active in a way you can walk into at the Sulphur Springs. It is also culturally double -- English law and administration over French place names and a French-based creole most people actually speak -- and it has produced two Nobel laureates from a population under two hundred thousand.

The main travel issue

Timing and geography: December to April is dry, busy and dearest, with Christmas and February at the peak, June to November is hurricane season, and long-haul flights land at Hewanorra in the far south, ninety minutes from the northern resorts.

The solution

Take May, June or November, match where you stay to the airport you fly into, and use the minibuses, which are cheap and cover the island.

December to April is the dry season and the high season: warm, sunny, low humidity, calm sea, and correspondingly the busiest and most expensive months. Christmas and February are the peak.

May and June and November are the shoulder months — still good weather, noticeably lower prices, fewer cruise ships.

June to November is the hurricane season, with the greatest risk between August and October. Rain in these months usually comes as heavy afternoon showers that clear rather than as days of grey, and the island is at its greenest.

Two dates are worth planning around: the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival in May, which draws international acts and fills the island, and Jounen Kwéyòl in late October, when the whole country turns out in madras cloth for a day given over to the creole language and its food.

If you have a week

Base in or near Soufrière for the Pitons, the sulphur springs, the botanical gardens and the diving, and spend a few nights in the north around Rodney Bay for the beaches, the restaurants and the Friday night street party at Gros Islet.

If you want to climb

Gros Piton takes about four hours up and down with a licensed guide, is genuinely steep, and is the better of the two — Petit Piton is shorter, harder and not officially open. Tet Paul is a gentle alternative with the same view.

If you want the water

Diving and snorkelling are best on the west coast in the Soufrière marine reserve, where the reef comes close to shore beneath the Pitons. Catamaran trips run the coast from Rodney Bay; whales and dolphins are seen year round off the west.

If you want the quiet side

The Atlantic east coast is windswept and almost undeveloped — Mamiku Gardens, the mangroves at Praslin, and the trail out to the dry forest and cactus of the Maria Islands, which hold a snake and a lizard found nowhere else on earth.

Saint Lucia is a small island with a doubled inheritance, and the seams between the two halves are what makes it interesting.

French and English at once

The island changed hands fourteen times between Britain and France, which is why the law, the schooling and the official language are English while the place names, the food and the everyday language are French-derived. Nobody finds this strange here.

The flower societies

La Rose and La Marguerite are rival organisations with their own kings and queens, officers, songs and feast days — 30 August and 17 October. They function as mutual aid societies as much as cultural ones, and the rivalry between them structures village social life in a way found nowhere else in the Caribbean.

Two Nobel laureates

Sir Arthur Lewis in economics and Derek Walcott in literature, from a population under two hundred thousand — the highest per-capita rate of any country. Both are national figures and Nobel Laureate Week in January marks them.

Cricket and the Friday jump-up

Cricket is the sport, and the Gros Islet street party on a Friday night is a genuine local institution that has absorbed visitors rather than being staged for them.

Cruise arrivals concentrate on Castries for a few hours at a time, which distorts the economy towards duty-free shops that keep very little on the island. Eating at local restaurants, using island-owned guides and staying outside the big resorts changes where the money lands.

Anse Chastanet and the marine reserves around Soufrière have mooring buoys and zoning for a reason — the reef here has suffered and is recovering under management. Do not touch or stand on coral, use reef-safe sunscreen, and go with operators who use the moorings.

The Pitons are a protected area. Gros Piton is the one that can be climbed, and only with a licensed guide from the community at Fond Gens Libre — which is both the rule and the point, since the fee supports the village.

Buy chocolate, cocoa and rum from island producers. Saint Lucia grows fine-flavour cocoa and several estates process it here rather than exporting beans, which is worth supporting.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the island

Almost everything is imported, so supermarket prices are high. Eating where Saint Lucians eat — a roadside barbecue, a Friday night fish fry — is both cheaper and better.