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After the snorkeling we were taken up the hill to our final accommodation: the stunning Jade Mountain! This is what we had been looking forward to the entire trip. Jade is reputed to be one of the most stunning and luxurious adult-only resorts in the Caribbean, if not the world, and regularly features in various top-ten lists and travel-related literature. The outside of it alone is quite an amazing sight. Notice each room has its own private walkway bridge hehe.

And this was our room, or "sanctuary" as they call them, complete with infinity pool :) The architect and owner of Anse Chastanet where we just came from, Nick Troubetzkoy, also architected and owns this joint. Each sanctuary is completely open to the elements with no fourth wall, but still maintains complete privacy. Incidentally, it was Nick's wife Karolin who offered Kristina free nights here when she visited Kristina's store in New York earlier this year. Thanks!				Bottle of bubbly waiting for us by the pool.

I mentioned the shower in Anse Chastanet and felt I should mention this one too ;)		If you get tired of the infinity pool, there's a hot tube there too hehe.		I did a quick video walkthrough of the room here.

Unfortunately we didn't have long to enjoy it all before heading back down to Anse Chastanet beach for a sunset cruise, with this bunch largely-uninteresting people.				Except for this guy - he was interesting, and our entertainment for the evening hehe.

Looking back at Anse Chastanet beach...		Anse Chastanet Resort and Jade Mountain up the hill...		And the Pitons.

After a bit of liquor those uninteresting people started to become a little more interesting ;)		The view at night from our sanctuary. Another video here of the noises of the night - basically flowing water from the infinity pool and a lot of insects. Quite nice to fall asleep to :)
The next day was our last full day, and we were given a site inspection of Jade which gave us a chance to scope out the rest of it.		Jade Mountain has 29 rooms in total: 24 sanctuaries each containing an infinity pool and five rooms without. Every room has a different layout from the others, and the rooms are grouped into five categories from least to most expensive. Our room was in the middle category, and worth $1,900/night at this time of year (quiet season due to it being hurricane season in the Caribbean). Be that as it may, I actually preferred our room to those in the category above, such as this one!
The cream of the crop are the so-called Galaxy rooms, of which there are three. They are the largest rooms, and are situated on the corner of the resort and hence have the largest exposure to the outside. While every room has a view of the Pitons and the Caribbean Sea, the views from the Galaxy rooms are pretty unbeatable except from the resort's restaurant and rooftop terrace. The price for one of these is currently $2,550/night in the quiet season and $3,100 in the busy season. Damn! We were perfectly content with our $1,900 room hehe.
Walkway to the restaurant upstairs, complete with its own infinity pool. The resort opened in 2006 and took three years to construct. Supposedly there was no heavy machinery was used in its construction (just a lot of man power). I had to ask the obvious question: what the hell do they do during a hurricane given the rooms are so open?! The answer was not what I expected. If it's really bad, they move their guests down to Anse Chastanet or anywhere else there is accommodation available, and sink all of the room's furniture into the infinity pools hahaha! The cushions are taken off the seats etc. and in it all goes. Afterwards they pull it all back out, let it dry off for a bit, and lay it all back out again. Makes sense I suppose.

View of the Pitons and the Caribbean Sea from the rooftop terrace above the restaurant (Anse Chastanet beach is down on the right).

Speaking of the restaurant, we ate like kings and queens. Three-course meals followed by desserts, all of it amazing! The presentation alone pretty much sums it up. Here we have fruit cannoli, mango sorbet, and the best cheesecake I've ever put in my face!		This is why we travel :)
We kicked back in our sanctuary with a few drinks until dark before heading up for our final dinner.

The next morning we had a couple hours to have breakfast and another quick dip in the pool, before packing up and driving back down that bloody awful road, and into another one of these so-called traffic jams en route to the airport hehe. This is nothing compared to New York ;)

Wow, what a week! Needless to say the resorts themselves are amazing, and Jade Mountain certainly lived up to the hype, but it was great to see a little bit of the real Saint Lucia away from all of that. It reminded us a little bit of Central America. Rough around the edges, pretty run down in parts, and people making the most of what they have and getting by. Not a place I wouldn't feel safe wandering round at night though, in fact the locals have a reputation for being very friendly and accommodating to tourists (and given their economy relies heavily on the tourist dollar, I'm not surprised).

We did a bit of tallying up and figured that between the accommodations and excursions we did, it was about a $10,000 trip excluding flights. $10,000 that we got for free. We paid $700 each for the return flights from New York and that's about it. Awesome, and needless to say very fortunate! We certainly made the most of it. I already have friends asking whether Kristina has any single work mates who can rummage up these sort of deals hehe.

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