A mere 15-minute drive transports me from the 21st-century luxury of my resort on St. Lucia's northwest coast to the island's primeval rain forest.
I relax under the canopy of giant gommiers and other trees whose Creole names -- bwa kilibwi, balata chyenn, kosol mawon, bwa tan wouj -- are as melodious as the songs of the St. Lucia parrots, orioles, scaly breasted Pashas and red-neck pigeons that fill the forest.
I'm at the head of La Forestiere nature trail, one of 10 sites in St. Lucia's Heritage Tourism Program, a model of people-friendly, small-scale ecotourism. The program offers unique insights into St. Lucia: a tour of historic Castries, the capital, and its Folk Research Center; a park where traditional Creole customs are still practiced; old estates and working plantations; rain forests and waterfalls.
In the valley below the village of Babonneau, at the Fond Latisab Creole Park, traditional log sawing is still practiced. Canice Thomas, whose family has owned these 11 acres since the end of slavery, reaches for a drum made of goatskin stretched over an old rum cask. ''I just beat the drum to get the log-sawing crew, and they'll come,'' he explains.
While we wait, Thomas shows me the garden. Where there once was sugarcane, bananas now flourish. Up in the hills there's cassava, and ancient mango trees -- including Graham and sweet Julie, two of St Lucia's 50 species -- line the bank of the Marquis River. Love apples, wax apples, paw paw, soursop and plum trees dot the property.
The sawing crew is old men, including Thomas' father, who, despite his 70-plus years, nimbly climbs the scaffold above the ground. A tree trunk rests on the support, ready to be sawn into planks.
Siyai, as this traditional log sawing is called in Creole, is a communal effort led by a drummer who chants call-and-response songs ''to give zest,'' says Canice.
The flech holds the 8-foot-long saw above the log while two halbas grip the double handle underneath, working in syncopation. Though it sounds crude, the technique yields precise cuts.
I leave Thomas preparing cassava bread in his bamboo-thatched kitchen and drive east through the lush Mabouya Valley to the Fond d'Or park. Poised above the rugged Atlantic coast, Vernon Emmanuel, my guide, points out the large stage constructed on the foundation of an old sugarcane mill, now used for cultural shows, including the annual folk festival.
From the breeze-cooled interpretation center in the old plantation house, I can hear the roaring Atlantic and see far up the fertile Mabouya Valley. The name is Amerindian for ''without beginning,'' and the natives' trails still exist alongside the tracks on which slaves fled to freedom. The 13 settlements of Mabouya played a prominent role in the slave revolt and subsequent guerilla warfare of 1794 to 1797. Far from the colonial authorities in Castries, African and Creole culture have survived here.
This sense of the past is heightened when I visit Mamiku Gardens above the fishing village of Praslin, a major French port in the 18th century. Veronica Shingleton-Smith has turned this former estate into a tropical Eden.
Shingleton-Smith, an Englishwoman, arrived on a banana boat in 1951 ''for a holiday,'' married a St. Lucian and after dreaming about her garden for 30 years, now runs it as a heritage site, growing ginger lilies, heliconias and orchids.
I climb the trail above the garden to the ruins of Madame de Micoud's great house, where French troops were stationed during the Brigands War in the 1790s. Buttons, china and parts of muskets are still being found in the ruins. As I stand here in the late afternoon, I sense that after many trips to the island, this one day has shown me the real St. Lucia.
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Posted online 02/19/02.
