St. Lucia

Our Posts about St. Lucia

Patrick

Caribbean Wallpaper Wednesday: Marigot Bay, St. Lucia and the Gift of Travel

Marigot Bay, St. Lucia

Gifts. Gifts! Gifts! My inbox is overflowing with emails sporting subject lines like “Last-minute shoppers: hurry for holiday shipping!”  Everywhere I look, I’m being bombarded with promises of the “Perfect Holiday Gift!”
Am I the only one suffering flashbacks to the outlandish coverage of Black Friday mayhem from less than a month ago? (And really every year before that?) Remember the woman pepper-spraying her fellow deal fanatics just to secure herself a 3D HDTV, or iPad 2 or $1.99 dish towels or whatever it was?
But ask yourself this: when was the last time you received a gift, bought from a store and all wrapped up with a bow, that you’d cherish for a lifetime?

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Steve

Saturday Video: Bursting Bamboo, the Caribbean’s Most Explosive Holiday Tradition

bam

If my dog Hershey had her way, we’d spend every Holiday Season in the islands, such is her abject fear and loathing for all things fireworks. For many of our South Florida neighbors, any night between Thanksgiving and New Year’s seems a good time for some pyrotechnic fun, leaving poor Hershey unequivocally un-merry during this hap-happiest season of all.
What Hershey doesn’t know, though, is that we have our own style of explosive celebration in the Caribbean called Bursting Bamboo. As this video shows, it’s more thrilling than your run of the mill Roman Candle.

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Steve

Uncommon Envy: Hotel Chocolat, the Sweetest New Spot in St. Lucia

Courtesy Hotel Chocolat

Being the avowed chocoholic and history buff that I am, there is one property above all others that’s really drawn my envy lately: Hotel Chocolat in St. Lucia.
As we noted previously, combining fancy hotels with one-of-a-kind chocolate travel experiences is nothing new in St. Lucia. Hotel Chocolat furthers the notion in fine style, with upscale accommodations and interactive experiences providing a unique window into how chocolate gets made.
And not just any chocolate, mind you. The business of Hotel Chocolat’s parent company, also called Hotel Chocolat, is the production of some of the world’s finest choco-treats. The UK-based company originally founded in 1988 as MMS, is renowned for its iconic Giant Slabs, half-kilo chunks of chocolate available in various flavors, and its Purist collection, featuring some of the world’s rarest cocoa.

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Steve

Wish You Were Here

Photo credit: Jade Mountain

Marveling at the natural masterpiece that is St. Lucia‘s Pitons World Heritage Site from the comfort of your very own private infinity pool in one of the sublime sanctuaries at Jade Mountain.

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Steve

Jade Mountain’s Chocolate Festival Promises Decadent Dessert Fun

Photo credit: Jade Mountain

Cacao is not commonly seen as a prominent cash crop in the Caribbean. After all, sugar was king here for hundreds of years. Tobacco, cotton and coffee were even grown in various places at varying times.
Chocolate? Doesn’t that all come from Africa?
Indeed, a good 90% of all the world’s cacao is cultivated in West Africa, but the earliest evidence of cacao seeds being turned into the types of chocolate treats we enjoy today can be traced to Central and South America, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for the tradition to extend into the Caribbean. You can find (and taste) evidence of the Caribbean’s chocolate culinary tradition in a number of destinations, including Belize, Grenada, Martinique, and Trinidad & Tobago.

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Steve

Saturday Video: How to Mix an XOXO Summer Cooler, Featuring Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum

xoxo

Following up on yesterday’s post introducing Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum, here’s a quickie video showcasing a quick, easy and refreshing cocktail recipe featuring this most sexy spiced blend. Not sure if this particular Chairman’s rum is even available here in Fort Lauderdale, but I’m heading out now to look for it in hopes that I can enjoy an XOXO of my own tonight.
Cheers to a great weekend!

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Steve

Friday Happy Hour: Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum Literally Offers Sex in a Bottle

spiced2

Chairman’s Reserve may be the #1 Rum for Young St. Lucians, as my brother asserted earlier, but if those young St. Lucians are in the mood for some lovin’, then you’re more likely to find them sipping this spicy new blend.
Chairman’s Reserve Spiced Rum is h-o-t-t, HOT. Real hot, and sexy too. It’s a notion underscored quite emphatically by the blood-red lettering of the word “Spiced” within an equally red box right on the front of the bottle.
The presentation comes across almost like a warning label – something you might see at the side of a box of some pain reliever advising against over-dosing, side-effects and other assorted dangers.

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