Chastanet's ambitions range from moving the container depot out of Castries to reorienting the waterfronts of the island's nine fishing villages so as to encourage more visitors to hang out there. He told me, when we chatted by phone, that at least three golf courses and 1,500 rooms are under construction, to add to the current inventory of 4,800. When I suggested that some of the recent projects I'd seen seemed somewhat weak on environmental responsibility, Chastanet said, "We're learning as we go." Current environmental guidelines mandate density of no more than three hundred rooms and a hundred villas per thousand acres. And, he said, they are continuously upgrading the rules. Sustainability, he acknowledged, is very important.

Driving up and down the island's main highway, it's easy to see the allure. The views are all knockouts—dramatic, intense, instantaneous. I dip down into the heart of Choiseul, a small town between two mountains, and see that there's a church by the beach in the small harbor—but before I can take a second look, I'm heading up and out again. Since the car and I are dancing such tight do-si-dos with the road, twisting around to see where I've been seems unwise. Choiseul, the church—it's gone before you know it.

Then, approaching Soufrière from the south, there's a turnout. I am on the top of a ridge, where I can stop both to catch my breath and to inhale the view. The vertiginous beauty of the place is exhilarating. I look down into the basin of Soufrière, which from up here seems more like a postcard of Caribbean splendor than a real place. The boats are moving on the glistening water, there's traffic off the beach and hubbub in the town and—up, up the hill on the other side—houses, trees, and then Jade Mountain. From across the bay, the resort looks jarring, like a multilevel parking garage stacked against the hillside.

The southwestern corner of St. Lucia was designed by the Qualibou caldera 35,000 years ago. Though dormant, the volcano still spits gray boiling water and sulfurous gas out of a scattering of pools of bubbling mud and cracks in the earth's crust. The original French commander, with the blessing of Louis XVI, built baths here to soothe the aches and pains of his soldiers. Chastanet would like to pick up on that idea: He dreams of a high-end spa putting the same to good use. But this attraction is the least of the volcano's gifts. The caldera, which stretches two by three miles, is what gave St. Lucia the Pitons as well as the eighteenth-century town of Soufrière and its bay.

"The improving little town of Soufrière," wrote Henry Breen in 1844, in his history of the island, St. Lucia: Historical, Statistical, Descriptive, is "unrivalled for the beauty and diversity of its tropical scenery." His description stands, despite the town's being a bit down at heel. There is still wooden French colonial architecture, ramshackle though it may be, and painted fishing boats pulled up on the beach; and the town feels local, with markets, shops, and offices keeping things running. There is much boat traffic, again largely local. Everyone on the street—seemingly everyone who lives on the island—speaks Kwéyòl, which sounds just like French even if it doesn't look like it. There is a sense that grimy Soufrière is like Cinderella—overlooked and waiting for a wand to be waved in her direction.