Look 12 years younger! Such a request makes most people who have been allowed to purchase alcohol for a long time without having to show photo ID sit up and take notice. Exactly twelve years younger; not ten, not eleven: not bad. That’s what the Sulfur Springs website promises to anyone visiting the mud baths of a geothermal field on the western side of the small Antilles island of St. Lucia. A free drive-in volcano comes with it: a road leads straight into a collapsed crater and down to a couple of bubbling holes. The smell of hydrogen sulphide wafts towards you as soon as you open the car door, a smell of rotten eggs. But twelve years, or at least the prospect of seeing those rotten joints spring back a little, leads most visitors straight down the steps to the dressing rooms.
A sign (Act 7 of 1989) urgently warns against stealing mud or rocks here, fines of up to 5000 dollars are threatened. Shouldn’t there be something in the fountain of youth effect of the navy-grey mud that’s being passed around in black buckets in front of the four pools? People are grouped around the buckets, who have therefore left their floating holiday home, a cruise ship lying in front of the island, and perhaps did not feel like going to the beach or ziplining in the green hills.