Saint Lucia

Two forested volcanic spires, the Pitons, rise from the sea beside Soufrière on Saint Lucia’s leeward coast. Behind the town, the Sulphur Springs steam and bubble in a collapsed crater that cars can drive into. Rainforest covers the mountainous interior, where the Saint Lucia parrot survives below Mount Gimie, and banana valleys open towards the sea. In the north a causeway joins Pigeon Island to the mainland at Rodney Bay, while leatherback turtles nest on Atlantic beaches.

Arawak farmers and then the Kalinago, who called the island Hewanorra, lived here first. France and Britain fought over it for a century and a half; in 1782 Admiral Rodney watched the French fleet in Martinique from Pigeon Island before beating it at the Saintes. Britain held the island from 1814, and later bananas for the British market became the mainstay. Independence came in February 1979, the year Arthur Lewis won the economics Nobel; Derek Walcott took the literature prize in 1992.

Kwéyòl, a French-based creole, is heard everywhere and celebrated on Jounen Kwéyòl. The flower societies of La Rose and La Marguerite hold rival festivals in August and October, with costumed kings and queens. Fridays in Gros Islet turn into a street party of grilled fish, rum punch and soca. Green fig and saltfish, boiled green bananas with salted cod, is the national dish. Resorts and cruise ships carry the economy, alongside bananas, cocoa from estates around Soufrière and rum from the Roseau valley.