We spent many long hours banging away at Kayak.com trying to find the magic combination of flights that would bring the price under $1000 (per person at Christmas from California). We finally found a relatively cheap flight in to St Lucia and out of St Maarten. …

We booked our tickets relatively late, and as such, didn’t have much luck finding reasonable fares online. We ended up using a discount Asian travel agent/consolidator called Dada Tours, based in Los Angeles.…