March 2017 | Business View Caribbean

58 59 that time, it was still a banana and cocoa plantation,” Eroline remarks. Indeed, for many years, St. Lucia’s economy was built on agriculture. “A lot of farmers exported their green bananas to England,” she says. “They called them ‘green gold,’ because even though it takes nine months for a tree to mature, after that, every week, you can cut bananas for export.” However, when the European Union was cre- ated in the mid-1990s, St. Lucia lost its preferential treatment and the country began to diver- sify into tourism. “At the time, if you had a hotel in St. Lucia, you had to be on the beach,” says Lamontagne. “It was all about sea and sand. But then, there was a new trend: eco-tourism, where persons wanted that authentic feel; especially inde- pendent travelers who wanted to be responsible about the environment.” The Fond Doux Plantation & Resort AT A GLANCE The Fond Doux Plantation & Resort WHAT: A 19th century eco-friendly, colonial resort WHERE: Soufrière, St. Lucia WEBSITE: www.fonddoux estate.com And since Fond Doux is not on the beach, and is set back from the road on a UNESCO World Heritage site, its main appeal lies in its scenic beauty and its stature as a still-working plantation. Full of cocoa, nutmeg, and breadfruit trees, thick swaths of palms, bananas, and bamboo, and sprinkled with exotic flowers, the hilly, bird- rich estate is overpoweringly beautiful. “We started with just a restaurant and we catered primarily to the cruise ship passengers,” Lamontagne relates. “It did so well that we transplanted the first three cottages from the other end of the island.We broke them down, trucked them, and put them together on Fond Doux, and that was the start of the plantation resort theme and eco-tourism.” Today, the resort’s one- and two-bedroom cottages are spread widely over the estate. They come with attractive fretwork, wooden floors, four-poster beds, perhaps rock-