Beaches in Saint Lucia

A volcanic island where mountains reach the sea, so the beaches are short, dark-sanded and set between headlands rather than long and open. The Pitons in the south-west are two volcanic plugs rising directly from the water, a World Heritage site, and everything on that coast is photographed against them. The Soufrière Marine Management Area, zoned since 1994 after open conflict between fishers and divers, is cited internationally as successful coastal management, and the reef inside it is in noticeably good condition as a result. Sugar Beach, on the water between the two Pitons, has imported white sand on an island whose own is volcanic, which is the kind of decision this register exists to record. Soufrière itself sits beside a collapsed caldera with sulphur springs the island markets as a drive-in volcano, and the water that runs off it is why some of the bays here smell faintly of it. The north around Rodney Bay holds the marina, the resorts and the transatlantic yacht arrivals each December. Practically: beaches are public by law, several of the best are reached more easily by water taxi than by road, and the roads themselves are steep, narrow and slow. The dry season runs December to April, hurricane season June to November.