First days at Sandals La Toc

We spent our first morning in St. Lucia thoroughly enjoying our private patio and its magnificent view.

To take full advantage of it, we ordered room service for breakfast. Jason mixed us a morning drink from our fully stocked wet bar while we waited for food to arrive.

When at last our eyes and our bellies were full, we headed out to explore, starting with the nearest pool and its waterfalls—a major selling point for choosing this resort.

We discovered later that the pools warm up a surprising amount each day when the midday sun hits them, but in the morning they were pretty chilly—not as cold as our personal polar plunge pool, but chilly enough that the hot tub made a nice change.

The view from the hot tub deck was also spectacular.

By early afternoon we were debating what to do about lunch. Do we go back to the same nearby restaurant? Do we make the trek down the hill to the main part of the resort? Should we call the butler? But what would we ask for? What are we supposed to do with a butler anyway?

Lo, as if on cue, Marvin the butler appeared at our pool chairs bearing two blue concoctions and a pizza.

So this is what a butler is for.

We did eventually check out the other pool (the one with the “vibe,” according to the butler). Seemed accurate, since people at our pool lounged peacefully or sat at the swim-up bar, but down the hill we watched a kayak race across the pool.

After a full day of sun and fun, and a little sunburn, we cleaned up and had dinner at Neptune’s, right on the beach.

And found this cute little guy in our room afterwards:

By Monday morning we were starting to figure out the butler thing. Most frequently we called them for rides to and from the main resort, but we quickly learned that it behooved us to use them every day to save us seats by the pool, lest all the chairs were taken by other people’s butlers.

They would set up towels and a cooler stocked with beverages of our choice (mostly water, in our case, since we were 20 feet from a swim-up bar).

We intended to eat at our nearby restaurant for breakfast, but we slept in a little and the line was long when we got there, so we proceeded straight to the pool and had Marvin the butler bring us our breakfast out there.

That was pretty sweet.

The water was cold again in the morning, and unfortunately while waiting for it to really warm up, it clouded over and started raining.

Last time we were in St. Lucia it rained briefly almost every day, usually during breakfast. Five minutes later the sun would come out and we went on.

True to form, the shower passed quickly and the brilliant blue sky was back.

We decided to relocate to the main resort for the afternoon, so we had Marvin drive us down and get us all set up with our cooler and our towels and our snacks…

And it let loose again. Granted, it’s not cold rain, but we had three phones (including the butler phone) to try to keep dry, and eventually you just feel like you’re molding.

We decided to give up and had Marvin drive us back to our room.

The sun came out again long enough to set at dinnertime, although everything was still pretty wet.

It was Caribbean barbecue night at the buffet, followed by a show put on by fire dancers. I couldn’t resist sending a video to the kids, although I fervently hoped they wouldn’t try it at home.