St Lucia is a beautiful volcanic island with lush rainforests, undulating agricultural land and unspoilt beaches. It is also one of the world’s breeziest places, where the trade winds blow in from the sea to the southern shore.

Before the visitor influx, banana exports sustained St Lucia, especially after 1964 when it stopped producing sugar cane. Realising the island's potential as a tourist destination, the government is now focusing its efforts on further diversification, principally directed towards the creation of a service sector based on tourism and financial services.

There is indeed a lot on offer on the island: St Lucia has excellent beaches, mountain scenery, the Qualibou Volcano and its boiling sulphur springs, orchids and exotic plants, and tropical flower-lined roadsides. There is still considerable British and French influence felt on the island. Fierce resistance from the indigenous Carib Indians kept British and French colonists away from the island for 50 years. Then, between the signing of a peace treaty with the French in 1660 and the British takeover of the island in 1814, ownership changed no fewer than 14 times! The British maintained control until 1979, when St Lucia was granted independence. The French influence lives on in the patois spoken in the country.

Add the people's friendliness and hospitability, and any visitor to St Lucia will be able to relax and enjoy the islanders' leisurely lifestyle.

Geography
St Lucia is the second-largest of the Windward Islands. It has some of the finest mountain scenery in the West Indies, rich with tropical vegetation. For such a small island, 43km (27 miles) by 23km (14 miles), St Lucia has a great variety of plant and animal life. Orchids and exotic plants of the genus anthurium grow wild in the rainforests and the roadsides are covered with many colorful tropical flowers. Flamboyant trees spread shade and blossom everywhere. Indigenous wildlife includes a species of ground lizard unique to St Lucia, and the agouti and the manicou, two rodents, common throughout the island. The Amazona versicolor parrot is another, though more elusive, inhabitant of the deep interior rainforest. The highest peak is Mount Gimie at 950m (3117ft). Most spectacular are Gros Piton and Petit Piton, ancient, volcanic forest-covered cones which rise out of the sea on the west coast. Soufri (vents in a volcano which exude hydrogen sulphide, steam and other gases) and boiling waterpools can be seen here. The mountains are intersected by short rivers which in some areas form broad fertile valleys. The island has excellent beaches and is surrounded by a clear, warm sea.