St Lucia - The Journey Begins

I did wonder whether I would be able to cope with Angus bouncing around at 5 in the morning, when the boys arrived to pick me up for the airport run, but he was quite demure (for him!).

An uneventful run and quick check in soon saw us greeting Peter K, Heather and Matt in the Virgin Clubhouse, and enjoying a rather scrummy Eggs Royal breakfast before our 8-hour flight. Fredrik was around somewhere too. But that’s a different story.

Onto the plane and time to bid goodbye to the boys who only got just a gentle ribbing as they headed up the stairs to the Upper Class cabin, and us lesser mortals were despatched into steerage. I should tell you, though, that there has been no squandering of hard earned profits on posh plane seats. Richard Branson shouted these Upper Class tickets when HC achieved its Fast Track 100 top place. Heather and I settled down to watch Shrek, while Matt and Fredrik went for something more highbrow altogether, and enjoyed Hot Tub Time Machine. The standard has been set for the week, you see.

Well, let’s fast forward over our 2 hour emergency medical stop in The Azores, and get to St Lucia where we had our first glimpse of the Pitons and a beautiful, lush Caribbean landscape.

A lovely friendly welcome awaited us, with Herod the taxi driver brandishing a splendid HC sign, and Judy and Janice greeting us with cold Piton beers and lavender-infused cold towels. That was amazing.

40 minutes later, after a windy drive along the coast, Peter suddenly announced, “This is the start of Rabot Estate!” and there it all was. I can’t tell you the names of the trees yet – well, some of them were cocoa, obviously – but that was all us! Finally, there it was. Rabot Estate, in all its glory. It really does exist, folks. And it’s gorgeous!

The well-photographed gate house soon loomed, and the coolest of cool security dudes in a fantastic HC-branded hat. I’ll get a snap of him tomorrow because he is simply splendid. Barrier raised, and up we go into the tranquil setting for the 6 cocoa lodges and the Boucan bar and restaurant, overlooked by the estate house, which is prettier than the pictures have ever done it justice.

Phil was there to welcome us with many of the key team members, who I will introduce to you over the course of the week as we learn more about what they do.

A charming gentleman by the name of Ian checked us in, handed us our cute little cocoa pod keyrings and poured me the most enormous peanut butter and rum punch. Yes, I was the first to get a rum punch. Why would you be surprised by that?

Olivier and David were hard at work in their new kitchen preparing a veritable feast of canapés. We couldn’t help but notice that Matt helped himself to a second mini-cocoa burger, while Heather gave the thumbs up to the red snapper with nibs and a mango salsa.

I saw some squid go by in the direction of Fredrik and Peter, and a number of replacement Piton beers were issued.

And in the background, the Piton rose majestically, and a brief evening rain shower gave us the perfect end to the first blog posting. Welcome to St Lucia – I think we’re going to be very happy here.