Eat up your provisions,” said Magdalena Frederick, and for a brief moment, I
thought she was talking to me. Glancing up, I saw that she was addressing
her son, Kirsten, who was sitting beside me at the dinner table.
“How d’you like my creole sauce?”
That question was definitely aimed at me, so I answered truthfully.
“Absolutely delicious.” As were the fresh tuna steak, marinated overnight
then pan-fried, and the vegetables — dasheen, sweet potato and yam —
collectively known as ground provisions.
The Frederick family — Magdalena, her husband, Leander, and seven-year-old
Kirsten — were putting me up for the night as part of a new type of
Caribbean tourism: homestays. Most visitors to the island of St Lucia shut
themselves away in all-inclusive hotels, but from this summer, they will be
offered the chance to bed down with a local family.
It’s an idea born of necessity. Next winter, the Cricket World Cup comes to
the West Indies, and St Lucia will host all of England’s group-stage matches
and a semifinal. The island’s Beausejour cricket ground — one of the most
picturesque in the Caribbean — will have its capacity temporarily boosted
from 12,000 to 21,000.
If English fans turn up in force, as many predict they will, St Lucia’s 4,500
hotel rooms will have no chance of coping, particularly as the tournament
falls during the busy peak tourist season. Which is where Magdalena comes
in.
“I think a lot of St Lucians will want to take part in this,” she told me as
she cleared the dinner table. “We love our cricket, and if we have fans
staying in our homes, we’ll treat them like members of the family.”
It’s not only the Barmy Army who will benefit from the scheme. The tourist
board has confirmed that it will begin trialling homestays this summer and
will continue to offer them after the end of the tournament. A rigorous
system of standards and inspections has been established and, from tomorrow,
visitors will be able to select and book individual homes on the tourist
board’s website.
St Lucians have a reputation for being friendly, even by Caribbean standards,
so a warm welcome is all but guaranteed. When I turned up at the Fredericks’
house — a smart three-bedroom detached on the outskirts of Soufrière (pop
7,000) — I was met with grins, handshakes, jokes about the British weather
and a hastily opened bottle of Piton beer.
Leander proudly showed me the garden he had planted — rose bushes, lime and
grapefruit trees — then Magdalena took me for a walk around the
neighbourhood, waving greetings to friends and passing drivers. “Everybody
round here knows me,” she laughed.
We turned off the road up a dirt track and through an old cocoa plantation to
the house where Magdalena was born. Her parents, Francis and Glory, now both
in their seventies, were sitting outside in the shade of a mango tree,
watching one of Kirsten’s cousins play.
Magdalena explained that her great-grandparents had arrived from India as
indentured labourers, only a notch up from slaves. St Lucia is now a happy
melting pot of cultures — French, Creole, African and British — but its
small Indian community has tended to keep itself to itself. Even a
generation ago, Magdalena’s marriage to Leander, a black man, would have
been unthinkable.
When we got back to the house, Magdalena put the finishing touches to dinner
and opened a bottle of wine I’d brought as a gift. “If you’d have come on a
Wednesday, I’d have made you dumplings and callaloo soup,” she said.
“Dumplings on a Wednesday. I don’t know why — it’s just tradition.”
Another tradition on St Lucia — thanks to its strict Catholic upbringing — is
fish on a Friday. Just up the coast from Soufrière is the sleepy fishing
village of Anse la Raye, where every Friday evening, on the main street
overlooking the narrow beach, local people set up stoves, cool boxes,
benches, tables and sound systems.
The food they serve — grilled lobster, curried shrimp, lambi (conch) kebabs
and steamed dorado — is hearty, fresh and almost embarrassingly cheap. Even
with a couple of accras (saltfish fritters) and floats (fried bread) thrown
in, plus an ice-cold beer, you’ll struggle to spend more than a tenner.
It’s popular with locals — and an excuse for a mighty drinking and dancing
session that rolls into the small hours.
Back in Soufrière, the nightlife is more soporific. After Magdalena had washed
the dishes (I offered to help, honest), we decided to pop out for a drink.
We stopped first for a quick one at the Fredericks’ local, where a sign
above the bar read: “No Credit Today. Come Tomorrow.”
From there, we took the family car into downtown Soufrière, an atmospheric
little fishing port in the shadow of the island’s iconic twin peaks, the
Pitons. On the town square, there’s a memorial on the spot where, during the
French revolution, some of the island’s wealthy plantation owners were
guillotined by former slaves.
One of the dilapidated wooden buildings that line the square now houses a rum
shop, where, at the sound of the saloon-style doors swinging open, a group
of domino players looked up from their game. “Evening,” nodded one.
“Bonsoir,” said another. As the barmaid poured fat fingers of Bounty rum, I
discussed the state of West Indies cricket with Leander, and his time in
London working as a car-maker at Rolls-Royce.
In the morning, Magdalena served breakfast on the terrace: sardines in a spicy
sauce, warm creole bread from the local bakery and freshly squeezed cherry
juice. She asked if I’d like to try the cocoa tea, a local delicacy.
I had been told of the alleged health benefits of cocoa tea by several St
Lucians. They had variously claimed that it cools the blood, is good for the
heart and prevents cancer. A taxi driver told me: “It’s a male formula...
good for the guys, know what I mean?”
It’s not a drink to order if you’re in a hurry. To make it, you need first to
roast your cocoa beans in a clay pot, then pound them into a paste. This is
dried for a few days, then grated and mixed with cinnamon, bay leaves,
cloves and sugar before being boiled in water.
The result is a rich concoction, with a delicate spicy aftertaste, that
deserves to be drunk slowly. I can’t vouch for its medicinal properties but
— blimey — it tastes good.
With bags packed, e-mail addresses exchanged and taxi waiting outside, I said
goodbye to Magdalena. There was a brief moment when neither of us was quite
sure whether to kiss, shake hands or hug.
We hugged.
You don’t get that at any fancy five-star hotel.
Mark Hodson was a guest of the St Lucia Tourist Board and Virgin Atlantic
Travel brief
Getting there: Virgin Atlantic (0870 574 7747, www.virginatlantic.com)
flies three times a week between Gatwick and St Lucia; from £527.
British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) flies to St Lucia from Gatwick;
BWIA (0870 499 2942, www.bwee.com) flies from Heathrow. Virgin Atlantic will
start a direct service from Manchester next winter.
See the cricket: tickets for the 2007 Cricket World Cup go on sale
to the public tomorrow at www.cricketworldcup.com, with prices starting at £14.
The tournament runs from March 11 to April 28; England’s group-stage matches
will be against New Zealand on March 16, Canada on March 18 and Kenya on
March 24. If England win or come second in their group, they will play their
next matches in Antigua and Guyana. A combined ticket for all England games,
including (if they get that far) the final in Barbados, starts at £215.
The homestay programme: homestays will be available from about
£15pp per night, depending on location and facilities, and can be booked
from tomorrow at www.stlucia.org.
Packages: operators offering escorted Cricket World Cup packages
include Gullivers Sports Travel (01684 293175, www.gulliversports.co.uk),
ITC Sports (01244 355390, www.itcsports.co.uk) and Kuoni Sport Abroad (01306
871038, www.sportabroad.co.uk).
Further information: St Lucia Tourist Board (0870 900 7697, www.stlucia.org).
Where else to stay
Most package tourists find themselves in Rodney Bay, a noisy strip of bars, restaurants,
shops and resort hotels in the northwest of the island. Only the beach
retains some of the beauty that drew developers to the area in the first place.
A better bet is to stay in the lush volcanic hills and coves surrounding Soufrière.
The best of the beach hotels is Anse Chastanet (0800 894057, www.ansechastanet.com),
where many of the large, open-plan rooms have mouthwatering views of the
Pitons. Doubles start at £140, room-only.
The Jalousie Plantation (0870 389 1931, www.thejalousieplantation.com) has a fabulous
location on a deep cove wedged between the Pitons, with a beach of (imported)
white sand. If its new owners invest some cash in refurbishing the rooms, it
will be stunning. Doubles start at £155, room-only.
In Soufrière, Ladera (00 1 758-459 7323, www.ladera.com) is a gorgeous boutique
hotel carved into the rainforest, with rooms that open to the elements and
sensational views. It’s big with honeymooners, who are shuttled down
to the Jalousie beach. Doubles start at £162, B&B. Or, for a more
authentic St Lucian experience, rent a stylish clapboard villa with private
pool at the family-run Stonefield Estate (459 7037, www.stonefieldvillas.com),
on a former cocoa plantation. Its restaurant, the Mango Tree, is well worth
a visit. One-bedroom villas start at £118, room-only.
