East Winds

East Winds

East Winds is thirty cottages in a garden on La Brelotte Bay, and it is the highest-scoring resort in our St. Lucia listings at 9.4. The scale is the product: one restaurant, one pool, gardens the guests write about, and a level of service and cooking that guests describe in terms usually reserved for much larger budgets. The bay is calm and you can snorkel from the sand, with seasonal seaweed the usual eastern Caribbean caveat. It is not adults-only, but it comes close, and the rule is specific: children under eight are not admitted, and there is no kids club for the ones who are. What is included goes further than the size suggests. Meals and drinks, the stocked minibar, gratuities, non-motorised watersports, yoga and pilates, and the cooking classes, rum tastings and beach-party evenings that make up the resort's own programme. Spa visits and off-property excursions are charged. So is the transfer, at a published rate of about 135 dollars each way for up to four people. Our samples run from 585 dollars a night to a median of 960 for two, and the practical planning point is the road: Hewanorra is ninety minutes away, which eats an arrival afternoon and a departure morning. Build that into the week rather than the itinerary. The garden cottages are much of the charm, so pay for oceanfront only if being on the sand is the specific thing you want. Nightlife does not exist here, deliberately.