Saint Lucia's Hotel Chocolat: Not Made of Chocolate, but Surrounded by It

March 3, 2011 at 5:24 PM | by JetSetCD | Comment (1)

We have a confession to make. Just over a year ago, while on a visit to the Fond Deux Cocoa Plantation Hotel on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia (see those awesome pics here), we inadvertently trespassed on the edge of a new hotel property. Don't worry—a guard stopped us after emerging from a gingerbread-looking guardhouse. Where the heck were we? As it turns out, it was the Hotel Chocolat, which just opened February 28.

The Hotel Chocolat isn't so named because it sounds pretty; the place is high up on the island, within the actual chocolate-producing, 18th-century Rabot cocoa estate. The hotel was constructed here because its British owners are themselves crazy for the stuff, and manufacture a brand of chocolate already named Hotel Chocolat. This then is the embodiment of their dream, and guests are of course invited to learn from and participate in various chocolatier activities.

For right now, it's only the six 450-sq-ft "cocoa cottages" that are available for booking, averaging $280 per night for a garden view or $320 for a prime Piton mountain vista. These have queen beds and all the amenities of an upscale tropical hotel, plus an open-sky shower. On July 1, it's expected that the rest of the hotel will open to welcome guests to the 750-sq-ft villas, which boast separate bedrooms and lounge rooms, plus open-air terraces and forest showers. These are banked to begin at $600 per night.

There's no beach at the hotel since it's set up so high, but a hotel shuttle can easily bring you to one in a 15-minute drive. And although the villas won't be ready for while longer, the hotel's infinity pool, restaurant and lounge are open now and ready.

So can you handle being surrounded by chocolate? It seems a bit too chocolate-obsessed to us, with spa treatments and meals and rooms and everything all focused on the cocoa culture, but we guess when in Rome...

[Photos: hotel website]

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