Windjammer Landing (St. Lucia)

Member Name: macluke

Product:	St. Lucia
Date:	08/12/03 (300 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great accommodation, Wonderful Beach, water sports

Disadvantages: kidnapping!!!, a long way from main road, a little expensive

The second part of our recent trip to the West Indies took us by air from Barbados to Saint Lucia. If you have never travelled by a turboprop aircraft then it is an experience in its own right, but to travel in the Eastern Caribbean then it takes on a whole new meaning.

The first part of the experience begins when you take your seat and watch the other 'local' passengers come on board, it is as though you are on the local bus taking you into Bridgetown, where everybody seems to have come on board with everything including the kitchen sink. At one stage with a particular woman I was half expecting her to bring on some goats she had so much hand luggage, however LIAT airways are prepared for this local foible, they do not provide a lot of space above your head for goods but there is plenty below as long as you are prepared to put up with putting your feet on top of your luggage. After everyone has settled down then comes the next bit of excitement, we have to wait whilst Concorde takes its last but one flight from Barbados, now Concorde needs the whole runway that can't be said for this plane. Off we go straight up to about 12,000 feet and as we try to speak to each other there is the strangest sensation as your voice box vibrates in time with the aircraft, it's really weird! This is a very short flight and you would not expect to have the usual services, but low and behold around comes the stewardess with the trolley of drinks! No sooner has she been round than we are descending past the Pitons and we taxi into the airport, slamming on the anchors as we go, hoping against hope that the pilot stops before he hits the fence as we can see Castries getting closer and closer. Having made the landing we grab a taxi and go to our accommodation on this island. We are staying at Windjammer Landing and for those who have never been there, well all I can say is it was worth the trip. Set on a hillside it is not ideal for anyone who is not fit
but the resort
does run its own free taxi service to your piece of the hillside at any time of the day or night. Having received our welcoming fizzy drink we toddled of to our villa, although the interior could probably do with a little modernising you could not complain about the terrace as we went outside and gazed across at the Caribbean Sea, what a view!

Windjammer Landing has a few restaurants on site and would probably prefer you to stay on site and take up their offer of all inclusive, but I would warn against that as personally unless you truly are an alcoholic and eat incessantly you would find truly find it difficult to justify the cost, better to buy what you want when you want, afterall it is a self catering complex and it does have happy hours! Not all restaurants on site are available to families, but if you so desire you can hire a baby sitter, not be that way inclined we chose to either eat in, at Papa Don's or Jammers. Papa Don's was latterly at the bottom of our garden so did not involve a trek down to the main complex and as the name implies it was an Italian restaurant so our son could tuck into his usual piazza and we could enjoy some thoroughly good Italian cooking at fairly reasonable prices considering we were in the Caribbean. Jammers on the other hand was the snack bar at lunch time and the Caribbean style restaurant at night time with entertainment, but you mustn't forget that like most restaurants in the Caribbean it has a tendency to cater for the American market. That said there is nothing better than sitting eating your dinner listening to the rollers coming in and watching the fire-eater at work. It would, of course, be a shame to come all this way without touring the island and this island is certainly interesting to tour as we were about to find out.

We decided that we must see the Pitons closer up and since there was a drive-in volcano nearby we headed towards Souffriere, the previous capi
tal of St. Lucia. It was inter
esting take an automatic four by four along the island's roads, especially since having never driven one before I did not know what all the different positions for the gear stick were for (it turned out that neither did the people who hired it to me!). We travelled through the island's new capital Castries and got lost, but it is relatively small so we eventually found our way out. After an hour or so of some interesting bendy roads we got to our target and immediately got lost again , but before we could sort ourselves out we were surrounded by some rather drunken locals offering their help, which was rather off putting as they kept getting in the way of my driving, eventually I got away from them but seemed to have picked up a local on the car. This turned out to be a local who would for a price show us round ? yes we were being kidnapped!! Or so my wife thought. Well the better part of valour took hold and we allowed him to show us round and although he did a thoroughly good job I must admit it spoilt the island for me, as when I go on holiday to a holiday island I expect to be able to go and explore on my own and St. Lucia therefore disappointed me. It is one of the reasons I have never bothered going to the likes of Jamaica because you are hassled there, when you go to Barbados you do not have this problem, in fact quite the opposite they are so genuinely helpful there not expecting a reward for just telling you the right road to go on, unlike the drunks above. It was with some relieve that we dropped the local guide off at the bridge entering Souffriere some two hours later. I cannot even without this high jacking really recommend the area, as Souffriere itself is a pretty weird ex capital probably the size of a village in this country and as for the drive in volcano I think that is a bit of an exaggeration personally, if you'e expecting to see a crater and perhaps some lava, forget it all you'll get

is the smell of rotten eggs and a bit of steam, hardly worth the journey time and the 'kidnapping'

Having done our trip out and gone to the local supermarket to get supplies we decided to spend the rest of the holiday on the resort, which I suppose is a bit of a shame but I didn't like to push it, despite being told by another intrepid explorer about the bit of the space shuttle that had crashed on the island and was being used as a tourist trap by a restaurant on the east coast. It seems the Americans were supposed to come and collect it but haven't done so yet!

The rest of the week was spent lounging on the beach or eating in the restaurants (in between the happy hours etc.). There are plenty of sporting activities that can be undertaken (and some are included in the all inclusive package), especially in the water, but fortunately it so much more relaxing to watch people fall into the water than to do it yourself. They also have a fun sport to get involved with and that is betting on crabs in the crab races, my son was particular fortunate as he bet on three of the four races and won on each! You can if you so desire also watch the occasional wedding take place as the complex does have a beautiful spot on the headland for this to take place although a few paces on it is a little disconcerting to spot a sign that says it isn't recommended for clients to go beyond this point.

If you want a beautiful part of the island to stay in then I can recommend Windjammer Landing as nearly everything you want is available on site, however you should take into account if you want to visit some parts of the island on your own then it can be a bit daunting, I would recommend the use of a local taxi driver who knows his stuff. You should also take into account that if you are flying in to the international airport and want to get to this part of the island by yourself it is some one and half hours away by car/taxi; we were comi
ng in from a local island and hence used the local airport. However you can
always take a helicopter fight from Hewannora, it will cost about £120 for the flight! One final point to take into account not all the amenities were open at this time of year (last week in August) as it is not classed as high season, hence the need occasionally to either go out of the resort or eat in.

The return trip was nearly as exciting as the previous trip (I'm still looking for the goat), but on arrival at Barbados there was something rather special waiting for us. As we got off the plane we could see that familiar snout looking out at us, regally poised wondering what all the fuss was about. I quickly snapped off a couple of photos as I thought I would not get another chance once inside the airport, how wrong I was, just as we got to see the full picture the local airport staff moved out of the way to allow those with cameras to snap the very last pictures of the big bird herself, yes it was Concorde's last flight out of Barbados and there she was no more than 100 metres from me and so I snapped a picture off and being digital it is forever engraved with the date 30/08/2003. and even as I write this tears well up for such a beautiful piece of engineering and such a waste to let something as magnificent be mothballed, I like many citizens of this island and France helped to pay for this machine and it still deserves to be flying. As we left the airport in a taxi everyone on Barbados seemed to have stopped what they were doing just to stand and watch the big bird fly it's last trip out of the island, even cars pulled up including our taxi just to watch and think of what had been and what could have been. What a site.

For more on Windjammer Landing you can go to http://www.windjammer-landing.com/

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