St. Lucia is a beautiful, small volcanic island in the Eastern Caribbean, about 27 miles long. There are two Sandals resorts on the island: Sandals Halcyon, which is about 10 minutes by car North of the capital, Castries, and Sandals St. Lucia La Toc (the one we stayed at), which is about 5 minutes South of Castries. Both resorts are on the North-West coast of the island. The best scuba diving all seems to be near the town of Soufriere, which is on the South-West coast, 30 minutes from Castries by boat.
1: Sandals St. Lucia La Toc
2: Castries
3: Sandals Halcyon
4: Anse Chastanet
5: Soufriere
6: Ladera Resort
7: Jalousie Plantation
8: The two Piton mountains
9: Hewannorra Airport
10: Club Med St. Lucia
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Basically, it's a pain in the butt. We had the option of going in December through Chicago and San Juan, or waiting until peak season and taking a charter with one single hop in Atlanta. The first option was going to take about 12 hours each way, and on the way back, we'd have to leave the resort at about 6 in the morning. That didn't sound like fun, so we opted for the charter. After a one and a half hour trip from St. Louis to Atlanta that started at 8 AM, we were supposed to leave almost immediately for St. Lucia. Instead, Club America (the company our travel agent booked the package through) decided to save some money, and put a bunch of St. Thomas passengers on the flight with us. This meant waiting in Atlanta for over an hour for them to arrive, stopping for well over an hour in St. Thomas to drop them off and pick up more passengers, and then finally head to St. Lucia. Instead of a total of 6 hours for our trip, it ended up taking over 11 hours. From what other people we met on the trip said, Club America has done this sort of thing many times. The next time, we might try Apple Vacations instead, but we heard complaints about them as well.
After arriving at the airport in St. Lucia, going through immigration and customs was a breeze. For the people that had decided to bring a birth certificate and drivers license instead of a passport, it took 10 times longer to get through immigration. It's probably worth getting a passport for the trip, if you don't have one already. In any case, for U.S. citizens, a visa is not required.
St. Lucia has two airports. A small one in the capital, Castries, which is probably 5-10 minutes away from the Sandals resorts, and a large one named Hewannorra on the island's southern tip. Passenger jets can't land in the small one, so you either fly in a prop plane from close by and land at the convenient airport, or take an hour mini-van ride from the far away airport to the resort.
We opted for the mini-van ride. The roads in St. Lucia were nowhere near as bad as I expected. They are in perfect shape almost everywhere. The only pitfall is that they wind all over the place, and most drivers pass blindly and dangerously. Our driver wasn't like that, but he had to slam on his breaks several times to avoid head-on collisions with very large fast moving buses. Yikes.
We finally arrived at the resort. They gave us a glass of champagne, a package containing fairly large bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, soft soap, and sunburn relief (I'm sure honeymooners just perceive these to be 5 bottles of lubricant :-), and then lead us to our room. Our baggage arrived a few minutes later, except for our golf clubs, which were automatically sent to the pro shop. We were glad we packed everything we needed for golf (including shoes) in with our clubs.
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Our plane wasn't scheduled to leave until 5:45 PM, which meant almost an entire extra day at the resort. We ended up loading up in the mini-van at 2 PM, and our flight left a half hour early. Immigration and customs in Atlanta were a breeze, and we arrived in St. Louis right before midnight, as scheduled, so the trip went much smoother on the way back.
One couple we met got so upset during the drive from the large airport to our resort, that they decided to take a scenic helicopter ride on the way back. They said this cost US$95 per person, and included a nice tour of the island.
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We tried to get the absolute bottom-of-the-line rooms (called 'Standard'), but they were booked solid from November through February (they probably only have one or two). We ended up going up one level, to 'Superior'. We were told the only difference between the two is the view. At Sandals, they always like to make you feel good, by claiming you've been upgraded to a better room once you get there. The upgrade seemed to be a myth for some guests and obviously true for others. We couldn't tell about ours.
All rooms have a nice firm king size extra high four poster bed, an adequate bathroom, a blow dryer, a porch or balcony, a desk, a closet, a TV, air conditioning, a ceiling fan, a radio alarm clock, a small safe deposit box, and a phone.
The maid service is incredibly good. They stopped by at least three times a day, so we never had to use a wet towel.
Being the party animals that we are, were were usually in bed between 9 and 11 PM. Most nights there was a band playing music not far from our room, and we could hear it quite clearly. As it turns out, we had no trouble falling asleep to the music, and it always ended at 11. For more peace and quiet, some people might prefer the more expensive suites, which are rather secluded. We were very happy to be 1 minute away from the water sports, the golf, and the food.
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The Sandals resorts offer a resort course for those who want to try scuba diving without getting too serious. For the already certified divers, they require a quick check-out session in the swimming pool. This was necessary even for those with advanced open water certifications. They didn't check log books, just your C-card.
There are three one-tank dives scheduled each day. The first one is a 9 AM deep dive for certified divers only; the second is an 11 AM shallow dive for resort divers only; the third is at 2 PM, and both types of divers can come along. There are a few exceptions to this schedule. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the certified divers get to go on a two-tank 8 AM dive, and I have no idea how that affects the later dives. Also, on Sundays, there's no diving at La Toc, but you can always shuttle over to Halcyon.
We arrived late on a Friday night. We couldn't go on the 9 AM dive the next morning, because we hadn't been checked out. We did our check-out at around noon, and signed up for the 2 PM dive that same day. While we were at it, we signed up for 9 AM dives for the following 5 days. Since we were leaving on a Friday, we ended up only getting to go on one two-tank dive. If we did this again, we'd make sure we arrived between Sunday and Tuesday in order to get to do both.
The 2 PM dive on Saturday was to a site they called Sting Ray Wall (although there were none to be found). We went down to 35 ft, and stayed for 30 minutes. The water was very murky. Visibility was maybe 20 ft, and we didn't see much of interest. They had apparently had some storms before we arrived, so we hoped it would get better later on in the week. The coral looked grey and the fish were sparse.
Since there was no diving at our resort on Sunday, we had asked one of the divemasters to radio the Halcyon to sign us up for their 9 AM dive. We had the impression that there were shuttles every hour between the two resorts in the morning, so we showed up at the front desk at around 7:30. As it turns out there was one at 7 AM, and the next wasn't til 9 AM, which would've made us late for our dive, so we ended up having to take a taxi ($US12) to the other resort. This was really just stupidity on our part. There's a shuttle schedule on the front desk, and from then on we checked it carefully.
When we arrived at the Halcyon's water sports, we were told that there were no dives that day because nobody had signed up. We should have made sure that the La Toc divemaster radioed in our request, instead of just assuming he would when we asked. In any case, Hamil, one of the Halcyon's divemasters managed to get the dive setup for us anyway. We just had to dock the boat at a gas station first to fill up.
We eventually arrived at a site called Anse Cochon (which translates to Bay of Pigs, although there were none to be found). The reef started at a depth of about 35 ft. Our total bottom time was 45 minutes, and our max depth was 78 ft. We spent half of the time in a very slow diagonal descent, following the gradual hill of the reef. We spotted two tiny moray eels, a spiny lobster, and lots of small fish. There was red fan coral and purple sponges. We then started a very slow diagonal ascent, drifting the whole time with the current, and making our way back up to 35 ft. The visibility had improved to about 40 ft. The reef looked somewhat beat up, but we enjoyed the dive since we had the divemaster to ourselves.
We had left our scuba bag at the Halcyon resort, and that proved to be a small mistake. If we hadn't, they could've dropped us off at La Toc at the end of the dive, since it was on the way. Luckily, we managed to make it back to Halcyon in time for the 12 PM shuttle. The next one would've been at 3 PM.
Monday morning we dived 'The Wreck', which I think the divemaster called 'the wreck of the Leslie M.', or something of the sort. It's a sunken cargo ship, about 165 ft long. Visibility was 50 ft. We started by going down to the outside bottom of the ship, which is around 80 ft deep. As we circled the ship, we saw lots of beautiful coral growing on it. The colors were fairly vivid, and lots of small critters peeked out of the crevices. As we swam up and inside the ship, we found a large crab and a small spotted eel. The main divemaster was Charlie, the only staff member who seemed comfortable allowing my husband and myself to go off on our own. We heard from other guests that he was the best. After about 25 minutes of bottom time, we surfaced.
Monday afternoon we went back to Anse Cochon for a shallow dive (40 ft for 25 minutes). The visibility was significantly better than the first time.
Tuesday morning we went to Virgin's Point (there were none to be found). Visibility was about 60 ft, and was getting better with each dive. We went down to 72 ft for 25 minutes. |
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