St. Lucia ATV Tour

A St. Lucia ATV tour in the back country of the island ranks among the most beautiful and most fun of any excursion in the Caribbean.

St. Lucia doesn't have the lush beauty of a Jamaica, but its landscape nonetheless is beautiful for its wonderfully contoured hillsides, flowers and wide sections of uninhabited land.

Castries Harbor alone is a highlight of any southern Caribbean cruise.

e took a relatively brief ride from Castries to a vast section of privately owned land where our ride would begin.

I wondered if it was worth the money -- this was the second most expensive excursion on the entire cruise among more than 100 choices, second only to golf at a luxury resort.

My concern increased when we arrived over a bumpy road at the ATV facility.

We sat there idling in the bus for 15 minutes while the previous tour  maneuvered the four-wheel vehicles back into place. All of us noticed that both the vehicles and people were covered in mud.

A stern and unsmiling young woman eventually motioned us -- eight women, my 19-year-old son and myself -- out of the bus.

he gave us quick instructions on how to work the vehicles, and we took off on our ride up the path on a hillside with one male guide in the front and the woman in the rear.

We climbed and zig zagged up the muddy path of the hill to the top and started down the other side.

Within a few minutes, we saw a vision ahead -- a pair of small but deep coves facing the Caribbean Sea and surrounded by hills with grass, trees and flowers.

No people or buildings could be seen. With the aqua water and blue sky, it was one of the most beautiful landscapes in all of my Caribbean travels.

The young male guide zipped up and down our line a few times and eventually led us down toward the land by the water.

ur dirt path became a sandy path. Suddenly he hit the gas and we went fast to the left around a large sand dune with a steep sidewall to the path.

We turned to the right and kept turning and kept turning until we came completely around the large dune.

We went around the dune several times until the woman led the rest of us out onto a spit of land between the two coves.

I realized my son and the young male guide weren't with us.

Looking back, I saw them continuing to round the dune at a high rate of speed, sand flying all over them. After a few more turns, they followed us onto the path that now changed from sand to mud.

he woman guide took us on a simple circular mud path around the spit of land that was several hundred yards long.

After going around a handful of times and getting a small amount of mud splattered on us, we pulled into a picnic area in the middle of the spit.

The male guide and my son kept going, but again going fast and this time huge globs of mud flew off the back wheels of the guide's ATV and all over my laughing son.

They finally slowed down and joined us in the picnic area for drinks and snacks.

The group talked quietly among themselves, although one teenage girl insisted to her mother that she wanted to get as covered with mud as my son.

The mother did not agree.

One of the guides pointed out a nearby hill that apparently contained what remained of the foundation for a lighthouse.

We climbed the hill, avoiding the droppings from horses, to reach the top and look out over the wonderfully peaceful view on the St. Lucia coast.

In time, we all all resumed our rides, circled the the spit of land and the sand dune a few more times and made our way back to the facility.

Although I can't speak to other ATV excursions in the Caribbean, the one in St. Lucia is worth the high price just to experience the beauty of the land -- and to photograph a son who was encased in mud.