For my birthday this year, I went to St. Lucia in the West Indies. It had been on my bucket list forever because of the terrain. Mountains and volcanoes are my jam. There are trails in the rainforest leading to spectacular waterfalls too. I wasn’t going to go and one of my best friends talked me into it and I’m so happy she did because, YOLO.

Located in the Eastern Caribbean Sea, they are a British Commonwealth, but the people speak Creole which is good because I speak a little French and know some Creole phrases.

We flew into the southern part of the island and chose to take a helicopter to the northern part where the resort was. Our female pilot made us feel very secure and as we flew into the airport, I was getting more and more excited.

The resort is called Body Holiday where their slogan is “give us your body and we’ll give you back your mind”. When I looked up this all-inclusive resort before I left, I was sold. This all-inclusive wellness resort is the only one on the island to combine an active beach vacation with an endless array of classes, adventures and sports. I swear, they had something going on every hour on the hour. I even took a class on gut health given by an Ayurvedic doctor. Spa treatments were included every day as well. There are six restaurants on the property and a pavilion that turned into a nightclub with a DJ as soon as the sun went down. Here is a rundown of our trip and what we did.

We finally got to the resort and from our room, we had a spectacular view of the ocean.

On the first night we had dinner at Tao, which is a famous Asian Fusion restaurant. It was absolutely delicious.

After dinner we watched the sunset. Beautiful.

In the morning, we walked down to the cafe to see what they had for breakfast. Everything was healthy and included a wellness bar that had smoothies and juice shots.

My first spa treatment was awesome. There were scrubs, massages, facials, etc. I felt so pampered.

The massages were in an open air rotunda. So soothing.

We literally had to walk up a mountain to get to the spa center. Here’s a view on the way down from getting our treatment. So beautiful.

In the middle of the week, we learned that Tropical Storm Bret was headed our way and it might turn into a Category 1 Hurricane. As the day went by, it got worse and worse and the employees started getting ready to go home to secure their houses. We had to go down to the dining room and get boxed dinners and went back to our room until the morning. It ended up not being as bad as predicted because right before it was going to hit St. Lucia, it went South and missed us. Thank God.

The day after the storm and the sun was starting to come out.

Water aerobics was so much fun and the instructors were hyped.

We went scuba diving the day before we left and rode past the Pitons, which are inactive volcanoes.

Heading back from scuba diving. We saw many fish, but the water was a little murky because of the storm.

We had a pretty quiet night as we were leaving the next morning. All in all, it was a great vacation and I’m glad I decided to go. St. Lucia had a lot of people from the UK visiting and we learned that it’s mostly marketed to the UK but they are starting to target the United States. So, if you want to go, I would go soon because you know the prices will start going up when the Americans find out about it. This is a place where I’d definitely go back. Because of the storm I didn’t get a chance to go zip-lining which is supposed to be fabulous there.

Let me know if you’ve been to this wonderful island and if so, what was your favorite part.