St. Lucia crafts colorful

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When I was last there in 1995, what had started as a local gathering some 25 years earlier had evolved into a rollicking street party with body-to-body guests enjoying congenial sensuality. Chubby tourists with cameras around their necks moved as freely as native vendors dispensing barbecue chicken and beer. Although visitors were welcome and made to feel an integral part of the celebration, it remained an authentic island happening that hadn’t deteriorated into a commercialized venture staged mainly for tourists. That was then.

It was now a crowded mishmosh of mostly tourists waiting in long lines at barbecue chicken stands. No one moved freely. We were advised to wait until close to 11 when all the tourists return to their all-inclusives and the locals who work at the same resorts leave to come to Jump Up and restore it to the memorable and far more authentic experience it once was.

Other things had not changed. Traveling the steep windy roads that slither and slink through the harrowing hills provides a glorious view of the island. You are engulfed in lushness: small, large, low, high and enormous, with leaves the size of surfboards.

Well-kept, multihued huts mix with less quaint, more rundown dwellings. Women balancing seemingly unmanageable loads on their heads wave as you pass by.

You haven’t even hit your basic tourist attractions yet. There’s a hike through the rainforest, a walk through the botanical gardens complete with another waterfall, a visit to bubbling springs lying within a dormant volcano — and beaches, lots of them.

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