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In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, France and England fought so bitterly over St. Lucia that the the prized Caribbean island switched hands no fewer than fourteen times, becoming known as la belle Hélène, after Helen of Troy, whose beauty was also famous for starting wars. France eventually lost the fight, ceding St. Lucia to the British in 1815. The island remained part of the British Empire for more than 150 years; it was granted self-governing power in 1969 and full independence in 1979 (it remains a member of the British commonwealth). Today the mixing of St. Lucia’s colonial past with the influence of the African, Indian and Creole cultures here has yielded a tapestry that’s as lush and varied as its fabled rain forest. You can hear it in the patois, the blend of French and English interlaced with Caribbean melodies that island residents speak; you can see it in the games of cricket that local children play in front of their homes, and you can taste it in spicy dishes like curried fish and sweet native fruit like fleshy soursop.

As for the landscape, there’s something primordial about the 239-square-mile island, one of the Caribbean’s most mountainous. The Pitons, two rocky pyramids that rise out of the Caribbean Sea in the southwest, are part of a UNESCO World Heritage site and have become St. Lucia’s most iconic symbol—even the local brew is called Piton beer. In addition, the rain forest here covers 19,000 acres and is so untouched in parts that it could easily serve as the backdrop for the television show Lost (in fact, the movie Jewel of the Nile was shot on the island). Driving across St. Lucia, along roads that snake up and down steep hills in heart-stopping hairpin turns, you will see the island’s beauty at its most spectacular: sweeping green valleys, expansive banana plantations and everywhere flowering jasmine, orchids and frangipani plants.