Fantastic tour with a great guide - This is an amazing tour to do, but be prepared to work up a sweat. Making your own chocolate is hard work, but is great fun. What Hotel Chocalat have set up is is a fantastic thing, especially the FarmHer initiative. But your arm will ache after. Our driver Sheldon was amazing, very knowledgeable about the Island, and the additional stops for photos and rum tasting were a great addition to the tour.

Solid one stop shop for transportation to and from Hotel Chocolat - Highly recommend Xceptional Tours! My fiance and I are staying at the Sandals Grande which is unfortunately so far from everything and getting to any activities could easily take 2 hours on the other side of the island. This tour makes it easy with including transportation to and from Sandals, and Lennon was a fantastic driver/guide. He was highly flexible with us, including allowing us to stop for lunch elsewhere and offering to stop by elsewhere for local rum if we wanted to. The bonus was that he had multiple stops for viewpoints which was very kind and unexpectedly added a great touch to the day. As the ticket states, you get nice cold beverages included in the ride too. Note this Bean to Bar experience doesn’t include the plantation tour, so consider that before booking via Tripadvisor or Viator. I'm sure you could arrange something separately if you booked with Xceptional Tours on your own as a private taxi for the day. Also, make sure to message them via the app about the day before to confirm info like pick up time and options on when to start the experience. Very responsive taxi service!

Sweat a little for your own chocolate bar - An overall very enjoyable family activity. Very well organized and executed in a pleasant environment. All hte included casual lunch was appropriate and delicious

Topaz Made Our Day - Project Chocolat Bean-To-Bar - My husband and I had Topaz as our driver and guide for our Hotel Chocolat - Project Chocolat Bean-To-Bar chocolate making tour. Having Topaz as our driver/guide truly made our day and overall experience an amazing one. Topaz is so caring, personable, and funny, and paid extra attention to ensure my husband and I were comfortable throughout our round-trip drive from the very north to the very south of the island. Topaz was stocked with refreshments and items to help with the onset of any motion sickness symptoms, but the drive went so smoothly we did not even need anything for motion sickness. After our Project Chocolat experience, Topaz brought my husband and I to several photo op sites under the pitons, and even brought us to one of the other chocolate factories on the island - Cacoa Sainte Lucie. The entire day/experience was a 1000/10. For anyone looking to do any type of tour while in St. Lucia, you cannot go wrong with booking through Viator and requesting Topaz as your driver/guide.

Hotel Chocolat and John! - We booked this excursion as the last of our honeymoon trip and really felt like we saved the best for last. We were staying at a Sandals resort and wanted to do something not promoted or sponsored by the Sandals brand so I went looking on TripAdvisor and found John and Xceptional Tours. As this was our third day doing the drive from Castries to Soufriere I was mentally ready for the drive (I get extreme motion sickness). Riding with John was the best I felt in any transportation while on the island. He maneuvers the roads with ease and is still extremely interactive with his guests which isn’t easy with windy roads. He answered any and all questions we had about the island and gave us local insights that honestly made St. Lucia feel more special. Hotel Chocolat was great and the chocolate making was fun/informative. The food they have on site was also very good and worth getting there a little early for. We only got to experience this because John was prompt and efficient and got us there 30 minutes early which I highly recommend. Overall, I would recommend this tour, and John specifically, to anyone wanting to visit St. Lucia. We are already planning our next trip back and hoping John can show us a new adventure. Thanks John!!

Excursion with sheldon - Sheldon was our driver.he was the best.very prompt,great conversation during ride there and back.He stayed with us entire time.He even stopped us to a restaurant buffet for some authentic food.great experience.10/10 highly recommend

The Fast & The (not) Furious - The Fast & The (Not) Furious May 2024 We booked this tour for our last day in St. Lucia with a flight scheduled to leave in the afternoon. Our driver arrived on time, and when we hopped into the car, I heard the tune of 50 Cent. I felt my New Yawker vibe in the car and asked our driver, Sheldan, where he was from, and he responded that he was from St. Lucia but grew up in New York and is now living in St. Lucia. I will say that the best part of the chocolate tour was the ride with Sheldan. Don't get me wrong, making chocolate was great and educational (grinding cacao beans in a hot mortar, making a bar above the grade of 65%, etc), but being able to talk with Sheldan for almost 2 hours to and from about anything St. Lucia, is what I'll remember the most. When I told Sheldan we were limited with time because of a flight in the afternoon, he let us know the location of Project Chocolat was on the other side of the island and not close to our hotel, but not to worry; he'll get us there and back in time for our flight. We were in great hands with Sheldan. Our Fast but not Furious (very kind and sweet) driver was the right person for the drive because he's into cars and knew how to handle the winding roads…the roads that seemed to have cliffs that dropped off into the abyss and went up and down like a roller coaster ride. Sheldan was professional, personable and attentive. He offered us refreshments, talked about sights along the way, stopped for photos and in general, answered whatever curious questions I had. Also, during the chocolate tour, Sheldan informed the instructors of our limited time so they could adjust the chocolate-making experience class to our schedule. He took care of us so that we didn't have to worry about anything.

Great trip - Amazing experience! Would recommend to anyone interested in chocolate. Everyone was so kind. Chocolate was amazing it was cool to have it in it authentic form.

Chocolat and Rum - John our driver was very professional. Kept us safe on the winding roads. Patient too. Recommend this guy ...clean taxi and refreshments too . Nothing was any trouble and we all got on well

Highly recommended island tour- ask for Sheldon - I highly recommend this tour if you want a nice drive down the island with chocolate included. Our guide, Sheldon was AWESOME! He was very knowledgeable about all the locations and knew where to stop for the best views. We partook in the chocolate making experience at Hotel Chocolat and got to bring home our own chocolate that we made. On the way back we had an authentic St. Lucian lunch and stopped for great photos.