A Long Expected Party In St Lucia

Ever since Ariel and I had the incredible privilege of celebrating our honeymoon in Tahiti, nearly 10 years ago, it has always been our plan to try and return for a future anniversary. We knew it would be unlikely to find our way to the South Pacific again, despite having a very amusing moment of foreshadowing on our flight there, where people de-planed ahead of us to make a connecting flight. And I was like “who flies to Tahiti to go to somewhere else?!” To which one passenger remarked “New Zealand!”

18 months later it would be us going to Middle Earth, although we managed to secure a direct flight from LAX.

We did manage to get back to some Polynesian islands in 2022 when we went with Jacob to Hawaii while Ariel was pregnant with Ethan.

In any case, any journey to that part of the world is really at minimum a one week, and really a 10 day affair from the East Coast where we live. And there’s no scenario where we’re leaving our kids with anyone for that time period… Nor would we really want to if I’m being honest. I love travel, and I love travel with my forever travel partner more than anything else in the world. But at this point, I don’t think we’re ready to be apart from them for anywhere near that amount of time.

Instead, we tried to find something within a 3-5 hour flight that we could go to for an extended weekend. I’ve written before about lots of semi-local destinations that we’ve loved like Bermuda, or Turks and Caicos. We also had great experiences in Jamaica, and some challenges in Antigua and Aruba.

But none of those destinations give you the mountains/volcano/beach experience. There’s just really nothing like Tahitii or Hawaii in the Caribbean. Turks and Caicos have amazing beaches. Bermuda has cool rock formations, world-class dining, and a really cool vibe. But the sight of a tropical mountain rising up out of the ocean is just not there and that’s what we were really craving.

I think it was sometime around the Covid era that we recognized that a return to our honeymoon surroundings for just the two of us was just not in the cards until sometime in the 2030’s most likely, so we started searching for alternatives.

Enter St. Lucia.

I don’t know that there’s anywhere else quite like it within 10+ hours of New Jersey/NYC. Especially where we were lucky enough to stay – Sugar Beach Resort (part of the Viceroy network of properties). This hotel really gave us basically exactly what we were looking for, as it is nestled between the two Piton mountains – the incredible geological formations St. Lucia is well known for.

And wow, did this location deliver in a huge way. No, it was not a carbon copy or stand-in for Bora-Bora… but Moorea? Not that far off really!

To be clear, no one should really compare countries/islands in terms of better/worse. Every single place I have ever been, I have found something special and unique to appreciate. Even in the United States, I’ve written about places like Iowa and Minnesota that aren’t going to stand up to the raw, nearly shocking beauty of places like Monument Valley or other points in the American southwest. But they’re 100% worth visiting, and have their own special and unique charms.

But still… the South Pacific constantly calls to us… And because we are unlikely to get there again for a few years (although I feel a return to Middle Earth in our relatively near future I think…) we had to look for some closer alternatives.

St. Lucia had some absolutely stunning scenery that I simply have not seen since our Hawaii trip. And it was so special to be able to celebrate our long expected 10 year anniversary in a place that mentally both made us feel like we were back on our honeymoon, but was also chock full of new experiences that surprised and delighted us.

Now we are heading back home (I’m writing this on the plane heading back) and we have a whole new set of incredible memories from much closer to home – we will certainly be returning to this absolutely beautiful land at some point again in the coming years.

I’ll be doing a write up of what we actually did there, as well as an absolutely amazing/surreal experience at the TWA hotel at JFK in the coming days. But while these feelings are most fresh I wanted to get all this down.

St. Lucia is an amazing and beautiful country and our trip there wasn’t long enough to properly do it justice.