Auberge Seraphine Hotel Castries

I was finally off on my fam trip to St Lucia! Having met with the 8 other travel agents from all over the UK and Genevieve (the representative from the St Lucia Tourist board) at Gatwick airport, and finding everyone in the group was lovely I was feeling confident I would have a great time. We even had our own check in desk – the VIP treatment had started already!
The flight was as expected from a ...

Travelling abroad is a fantastic perk of working in the travel industry and when I was given the opportunity to join an educational trip to St Lucia in the Caribbean, organised by the St Lucia Tourist board, I couldn't contain my excitement. The Caribbean is one of those places everyone would like to visit, and I thought my chance of going was a long way off. So of course I grabbed the opportunity with ...

... Unfortunately the best thing about being there is not being able to see this monstrous building.

Two hotels are actually located between the peaks of the famous 'Pitons’ . The Ladera is a small comfortable hotel with all ...

... the villages of Anse La Raye and Canaries---filled with colorful fishermans houses. At Soufrie're about 8 km farther south, old wooden buildings line the streets. From far we saw the spectacular dark green cone shape coated with lush forest peaks of Petit Piton (736 meters) and the Gross Piton (795 meter) create a magnificent backdrop! This Caribbean landscape seems too good to be true! This ...

... the paths and learned how the local farmers cultivated certain crops and about the different uses of the plants and herbs. It was quite interesting.

The cocoa fermentation, drying and coconut processing buildings were also visited. They are all still in use. One worker in the building showed us how the cocoa was processed. It was quite amazing seeing him in this huge barrel, barefoot, jumping over the cocoa beans. This ...

... is widely accepted. The crime rate is generally higher in Castries than it is in other Caribbean cities, although the town is not dangerous as long as proper precautions are taken.

... landmark. We finally drove into the town of Soufriere, a small town nestled at the base of one of the Pitons. From here, we drove into the world's only drive through volcano. Most of the volcano had been blown away in a huge eruption but you can still see evidence of volcanic activity in the remains. When we got out of the van, the first thing you noticed was the smell of sulfur. We walked over to the edge of a railing and on the other side, you can see the sulfuric gases ...

... tried to consume the food, alcohol and cake as well as inviting the locals to come help. 25 minutes go by and I strongly encouraged everyone to head to the pier while I got the boat to tie up and then had to forcefully grab people and drag them to the pier to get on the boat because everyone wanted to enjoy it longer. We all finally boarded with a few bottles of champagne under our arms and the boat hit it full throttle as we sped out of the bay. So now everyone's having a ...

... difficult than I thought, as many didn't do Saturday dives apparently. I searched for places by foot with no luck, I tried to call 3 operations and big hotels with no luck, and it dawned on me that if I really wanted to dive in St. Lucia, I'd have to go all the way from Castries to Soufriere (the other side of the island) and arrange the transportation myself. It wasn't really easy to do, especially since it's very expensive to hire a taxi for a full day, but I managed to persuade ...

... seated, an enormous bum will bulldoze the poor bugger into the side panelling, squeezing the breath out of him and rendering him immobile and quite unable to protest. I hate to think what would happen if one of these posteriors ex-haled, I think the bus would burst like a paper bag! Fortunately, in Grenada at least, they do not overload, or rather, I should say, exceed the allowed head count. Whilst in Carriacou, we decided to replace our bimini and sunscreens, since the existing ones ...