Two cones of green rock spring from the sea and rise almost vertically: Gros Piton and Petit Piton, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, guard the entrance to Soufrière Bay. The small ships that anchor here offer their passengers one of the most spectacular arrivals in the Caribbean. The tender docks at the town's jetty; the town was founded by the French in 1746 and is the oldest settlement in St. Lucia. On the pier, the smell of sulphur sometimes hangs in the warm air, a reminder that the earth is at work just behind the hills.

A Creole town at the foot of the volcanoes

Around the central square and the Church of the Assumption, Soufrière lines up its houses with ornate wooden balconies, a legacy of the French families who grew sugar cane, cocoa and cassava here. The small seaside market sells fruit, cinnamon and cocoa sticks under multicoloured umbrellas. The town can be explored in a leisurely half hour; above all, it serves as a base camp for the natural wonders that surround it, all less than fifteen minutes away by road.

The drive-in volcano

About three kilometres from the landing, Sulphur Springs bills itself as the only volcano in the Caribbean where the road leads right into the collapsed crater. No cone, no lava: rather a lunar landscape of grey earth where fumaroles and mud pools bubble at more than 100 degrees Celsius. The site's guides explain the slow breathing of this constantly monitored geothermal system. Below, pools of warm mud welcome bathers for the island's messiest and most fun experience: you coat yourself in volcanic clay, let it dry, then rinse off in the hot river.

Diamond Falls and the estate gardens

On the former Soufrière Estate sugar plantation, a path lined with ginger lilies and heliconias leads to Diamond Falls, whose rock face changes colour, ochre, grey, yellow, depending on the minerals carried by the water. Nearby are stone baths built in 1784 for the troops of Louis XVI, on medical advice: the King of France was then funding thermal cures in the West Indies. Some restored pools are still in use. The whole site is five minutes by road from the landing and is easily combined with the volcano in the same half day.

The sea at the foot of the Pitons

Between the two giants, the bay shelters some of the richest underwater life on the island, protected by a locally managed marine area. Anse Chastanet and its neighbour Anse Mamin, reached by water taxi from the pier, offer snorkellers coral walls a few metres from shore. The more athletic will dream of Gros Piton, whose guided climb to nearly 800 metres takes about four hours round trip; an ordinary port call rarely allows you to attempt it, and the summit is worth coming back for.

Port call landmarks

As the bay recedes

At departure, passengers crowd the decks: the Pitons slowly shrink in the wake, and no one puts their camera away. Soufrière condenses into a few square kilometres the most intense of what Caribbean nature has to offer: a smoking crater, a mineral waterfall, Creole gardens and two mountains rising from the sea. Few port calls leave such a sharp image in a traveller's memory.