Morne Coubaril Estate

Morne Coubaril is an eighteenth-century estate on the hillside above Soufrière, still worked, and the tour takes visitors through the processing as it was done before machinery: cocoa fermented and dried and then danced on with bare feet to polish the beans, a practice that survives here; cassava grated, pressed and baked into farine; copra dried; coffee hulled with a mule-driven mill turning a wooden wheel. Reconstructed workers' huts show how the estate's labour lived. The setting is the other half of it, with the Pitons across the valley and the sulphur springs steaming below.

What you actually see

• Dancing the cocoa - polishing the beans by foot, still done here.
• The mule-driven mill - the wooden wheel that hulls the coffee.
• Cassava processing - grated, pressed and baked into farine.
• The Piton view - across the valley from the estate.

When to go

December to April is the dry season. Tours run through the day; mornings avoid the cruise excursions. Two hours covers the estate tour. A zip line operation runs on the same property.

Honest expectations

It is a commercial estate tour and the demonstrations are staged for visitors, though the processes are genuine. Cruise groups fill it in the middle of the day. The zip line and other add-ons are charged separately. The estate's history rests on enslaved labour and the tour handles that lightly.

Nearby

Soufrière is ten minutes below; the Sulphur Springs are nearby.