Savour International

Caribbean Island, St. Lucia – Everyone who escapes from the luxury resort to explore St. Lucia by taxi will experience the Antillean island's authentic side: the home of artists and Nobel Laureates presents a vibrant world filled with music. But the island would still be the wrong choice for the starring role of "Pearl of the Caribbean".

 

Ras Jah Lamb cooks in a small hut on the edge of the city. The plywood walls of his restaurant feature posters by Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie. Bob Marley sings, of course. "Irie," says Ras Jah Lamb with a traditional Rastafarian greeting, slapping the dishcloth over his shoulder. "Pizza?"

 

It's the midday break in Soufrière. The picturesque and shabby little town in the south of St. Lucia was always the capital when the French were in charge on this Caribbean island. Now, half of Soufrière is packed like sardines into the restaurants, eating vegetarian pizza and drinking mango juice. Outside, it's so hot that even the chickens have stopped running about. "Good for you," Ras Jah Lamb shouts over Marley's music and hands over a pizza, "no meat, no alcohol. Rasta food, man!"

 

When he's not standing over a hot stove, the Rasta chef works with down and out youngsters: creased up newsprint photos hang on the walls, showing him shaking hands with all kinds of award winners. Nor has he lost his delight in a good sense of humour. "Look at me. I'm beautiful. Do I look like I'm 50?" Restaurant guests smile and laugh – they enjoy joining in the fun. The man, a born entertainer, could actually pass as being in his late 30s.

 

Luxury resorts beneath volcanoes

A wide range of accommodation awaits German tourists. The north-west coast is featured in the brochures as a typical Caribbean holiday island – the area around Rodney Bay, where Coco Palm Resort and Cap Maison Resort are only two among the latest attractions fighting to gain favour with the holidaymakers.

 

Several of the Caribbean's most beautiful resorts are situated in the south-west in the misty air of the pitons, the two moss green volcanic cores soaring over 700 metres skywards and with Unesco heritage status – a must for every St. Lucia glossy brochure. The resorts include the legendary Ladera Resort, the traditional Stonefield Estate and historic Jalousie Plantation.

Jade Mountain courageously stands out as an exception. The adventurous blend of tree house and space station offers windowless suites opening out towards the ocean and each with a private pool, whose waters spill over the external façade from one level to the next, below. Harrison Ford already landed here on the hotel's private helipad, and the bar tender vividly remembers the boozer, Amy Winehouse.

 

But these luxury oases are only an isolated parallel world on this island. The other world is less glamorous, but it's the reality of St. Lucia's most famous son. "I am just a red nigger who love the sea, I had a sound colonial education, I have Dutch, nigger and English in me, and either I'm nobody or a nation." That's how Derek Walcott once harmonised the island feeling. Since he became a Nobel Laureate for Literature in 1992, he is regarded as the voice of the Antillean island. His St. Lucia is the unbeautified one, influenced by slavery and emancipation. This real St. Lucia begins as soon as you leave the resorts and throw yourself into the reality of a routine island day.

That's best done from Castries. And by taxi. "Ca ka fete?" my taxi driver, David, immediately wants to know, "comment y e?" Not even a Frenchman realises that this means something like "how are the shares doing? How are you?" Castries, narrow, labyrinthine and with towering container ships packed with Japanese used cars, was previously the capital city of the English. Between 1660 and 1814, the island changed hands 14 times as the English and French changed ownership.

 

In the end, both left a society, whose African heritage is written on the faces of the people – this society produced two Nobel Laureates, the other being the economist, Sir William A. Lewis. English is an official language, but the street language is Creole, a rapidly spoken mixture of English, French and African-Caribbean sentences. "Maschina kalé trop slow," shouts David out of the window, "ba me le!" He's complaining about the slow pace of the bus in front of us: "The coach is too slow, man, let me pass!"

David seems to know about half of the 10,000 capital city dwellers. He greets to the left and right and his taxi crawls through the busy, chronically jammed city centre. Two tyres are always a hair's breadth from the edge of the canyon-like drainage channels where tropical rainstorms gush through during the rainy season. We slowly pass by Derek Walcott Square, with the old cathedral standing powerfully and solemnly English alongside. In the Vide Bouteille district, we pass old wooden houses and through tight serpentine bends to reach the summit of Morne Fortune and glimpse the views that inspired Walcott as a young poet to create his word paintings. From here, he saw "one thousand miles of aquamarine with lace trimmings, one million yards of lime coloured silk" and the villages like castaways washed by the sea.