Everything on St Lucia sits on one coast road. The Pitons are at the end of it.
What the catamaran down the west coast costs. Whether the mud baths are worth the drive south. How long the run from Hewanorra really takes. Reviews of every tour you can book on the island.
The Pitons, the sulphur springs, a waterfall and a day on deck.
The four bookings a first St Lucia week gets built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The whole islandSt. Lucia Land and Sea TourThe coast road south, the springs and the falls, then the boat back up. One day that covers the shape of the place.
02The day on deckSt Lucia Full-Day Catamaran Sightseeing Cruise With SnorkelingA full day under sail down the west coast with a swim stop and lunch. Most people book this for their second morning.
03The volcano hourSt Lucia Diamond Mineral and Mud Baths Plus Waterfall AdventureDiamond Falls, the mineral baths and the steaming vents, all inside a couple of miles of Soufrière.
04The climbGros Piton Hike with Dannyboy & Co.Gros Piton with a guide from the village at the bottom. Two and a half hours up, and you want the early start.
Soufrière for the peaks, Rodney Bay for the beach, Castries for the boats.
A mountain range runs down the middle of this island, so every trip between two places is the coast road and a lot of switchbacks. Where you sleep decides how much of it you drive. Start with the place, then pick the day.
The west coast reads better from a deck than from the coast road.
Rodney Bay to Soufrière is ninety minutes of switchbacks by car. The same trip under sail is a swim stop at Anse Cochon, lunch, and the Pitons coming up out of the sea in front of you. Three kinds of day afloat, and what it costs to board each one.
Soufrière holds the Pitons, the springs and the falls in one valley.
Everything in Soufrière →
The old French capital sits inside a collapsed crater with two volcanic plugs behind it. The sulphur vents, Diamond Falls and the botanical gardens are all within a few miles of the jetty, which is why the island’s best day tends to be spent down here.
The drive-in volcano and the mud baths
You drive to the rim, walk a boardwalk over vents running near boiling point, then sit in warm grey mud downhill from them. The sulphur stains light fabric permanently, so wear something you do not mind losing.
Toraille, Diamond and the bathing pools
Toraille drops straight onto a shallow pool you can stand under. Diamond runs through the botanical gardens and changes colour with whatever mineral is in it that week. The good days out stop at both.
Gros Piton, guided only
Two and a half hours up over loose rock and roots, and the same again coming down. Guides from Fond Gens Libre are compulsory. The gate opens early for a reason: by ten the heat coming off the rock is the hard part.
The days out St Lucia sells more of than anything else.
Every St Lucia tour we have reviewed →More travellers take these than anything else on the island, and each one earns the slot for a different reason.
1
St. Lucia Land and Sea Tour
Spend about six and a half hours touring St. Lucia by minibus and boat, with stops in Anse La Raye, Canaries, Soufriere, Sulphur Springs, Toraille Waterfall, and Jalousie Beach. You’ll get a local lunch, mud-bath time, snorkeling gear, swimming, and views of the Pitons. Guides such as Laura, Kumba, and Smalley add history and humor, though much of the day is spent on the road.
From · $115
Read our review →
2
ATV Tour in St Lucia
from $107
3
St Lucia Customize Private Island Tour
from $130
4
St Lucia Full-Day Catamaran Sightseeing Cruise With Snorkeling
from $145
5
St Lucia Diamond Mineral and Mud Baths Plus Waterfall Adventure
from $159
6
Rainforest Hike and Waterfall Safari
from $66
7
Wow Tours St. Lucia (COVID-19 Certified)
from $92
8
Project Chocolat Tree to Bar Tour at Hotel Chocolat Saint Lucia
from $124
Behind the beaches St Lucia goes vertical and turns into rainforest.
An aerial tram runs through the canopy above Chassin, ziplines cross the same valley lower down, and bamboo rafts drift out near Roseau. The interior is wetter, several degrees cooler and half an hour from almost anywhere on the coast.
Sulphur, mineral water and three waterfalls inside four miles.
Everything geothermal on this island sits in the same collapsed crater behind Soufrière. The springs heat the streams, the streams feed the falls, and the gardens were planted around the hottest of them in the eighteenth century. Most people take the lot in a morning.
What a day out on St Lucia actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. The island is not cheap, but the market mornings, the fort and the beach passes sit a long way under the boat days.
Market mornings in Castries, the forts at Pigeon Island, beach passes and the short runs out of town.
The standards: the Soufrière loop, waterfall safaris, the aerial tram and a seat on the catamaran.
- 1St. Lucia Land and Sea Tourfrom $115
- 2ATV Tour in St Luciafrom $107
- 3St Lucia Customize Private Island Tourfrom $130
Private charters, a driver for the whole day, and the transfers that cross the island end to end.
Rodney Bay: the beach you can walk to, and the fort above it.
Reduit runs flat and calm for the better part of a mile, the marina behind it is where the charters leave from, and Pigeon Island closes the top of the bay with a pair of ruined forts and a view across to Martinique on a clear morning. Friday night the whole thing moves up the road to Gros Islet.
Every day out in the north →
Castries is a working port that sells mangoes on the pavement.
Two ships can tie up at the edge of town, and that shapes the day: the market halls are busiest and best before eleven, the hills behind hold Morne Fortune and the view down over the harbour, and Vigie beach is a short ride from the cruise pier.
- 1St Lucia Castries to Pitons Tourfrom $85
- 2Full-Day Catamaran Tour to Soufrierefrom $145
- 3St.Lucia Island Guided Tourfrom $180
Three things that only happen on St Lucia.
Rainforest and beach bars run the length of the Caribbean. A volcano you can drive into, two peaks rising straight out of the sea, and cocoa you grind yourself on the estate that grew it do not.
Gros Piton and Petit Piton
They are the cores of two ancient volcanoes, weathered back to bare rock, and they come straight out of the sea rather than off a ridge, which is why they look wrong in photographs. Gros Piton is the taller of the two and the easier climb. Petit Piton is shorter, far steeper and largely a rope job, and most guides will talk you out of it.
- 1Gros Piton Hike with Dannyboy & Co.★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 210 reviews
- 2St Lucia Castries to Pitons Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 136 reviews
- 3Gros Piton Hike★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 89 reviews
The drive-in volcano
The Soufrière caldera collapsed long ago and never fully went quiet, so a minibus can park inside it. The vents run near boiling and the ground crusts over between them, which is the whole reason for the boardwalk. The mud pools further downstream are grey, warm and shallow enough to sit in for twenty minutes.
- 1St Lucia Diamond Mineral and Mud Baths Plus Waterfall Adventure★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 589 reviews
- 2Saint Lucia Sulphur Springs Rejuvenating Mud Bath Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 320 reviews
- 3Sulphur Springs Mud Bath and Toraille Waterfall Tour with Creole Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 122 reviews
Tree to bar on the estate
Fine-flavour cocoa grows on old estates in the Roseau valley, and those estates now sell the walk between the tree and the bar. You open pods, look into the fermentation boxes, then roast, winnow and grind your own. What you carry home tastes of the particular hillside it came off.
- 1Project Chocolat Tree to Bar Tour at Hotel Chocolat Saint Lucia★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 501 reviews
- 2Hot Chocolate Tours St. Lucia★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 240 reviews
- 3Project Chocolat Bean to Bar Experience from Hotel Chocolat★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 107 reviews
Four St Lucia bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this island can be arranged over breakfast the day before. These four run on airport timings, guide quotas and boats that sail once a day.
- 01St. Lucia Private Airport & Hotel TransfersHewanorra sits at the far southern end of the island and most hotels are in the north. That is an hour and a half of coast road, arranged before you land or negotiated in the arrivals hall.
- 02Gros Piton Hike with Dannyboy & Co.The climb is guided only, the guides come from the village at the foot of it, and numbers on the trail are capped. Turning up without a booking means waiting for a slot.
- 03Project Chocolat Tree to Bar Tour at Hotel Chocolat Saint LuciaEstate sessions run in small groups around the fermenting and grinding schedule, so there are only a few places a day and they go to whoever booked.
- 04St Lucia Full-Day Catamaran Sightseeing Cruise With SnorkelingThe west-coast catamarans sail once a day, and they fill first whenever a ship is berthed in Castries.
June to November the afternoon rain arrives off the mountains, fast.
It rarely lasts long. What it does do is close the trails, brown the rivers and slow the interior roads to walking pace. The answer is the one locals use: take the hill in the morning and give the afternoon to something under a roof. A distillery, a cocoa estate, the market halls in Castries.
By place, north to south
By kind of day: boat, volcano, rainforest or road
North to south: Rodney Bay, the rainforest, Marigot, then Soufrière.
The rainforestThe newest St Lucia tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
St Lucia Transport from Hewanorra Airport Private Transfer
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UVF Private Luxury Transport Service in St Lucia (Round Trip)
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Private Guided Piton Hiking and Mud Bath Experience
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Fast Track On Arrival at St Lucia Airport & Round Trip Transfer
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Explore Saint Lucia | Piton | Mud bath | Drive-In Volcano | MGM Tour and Travel
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St Lucia Pitons Waterfalls and Mud Bath Experience.
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St Lucia Food & Rum Tasting – Rodney Bay Edition
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