There is a mysterious island offshore of Choc Beach. When tourists are warned by local hotels to stay away from Rat Island, they become more curious. This government-owned island was a quarantine center for small pox victims. Rat Island was later abandoned until 1994 when a foundation was formed to convert the land into an artist retreat. This was done to honor Derek Walcott, a Saint Lucian who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. He was a professor at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. When he died in 2017, he was buried in Saint Lucia.
