Poseurs' paradise
Anthony Torrance
THE little harbour is crammed with unimaginably expensive yachts, the quayside is wall-to-wall Hermes and Versace boutiques, and the girls sipping Camparis in the waterside cafes look as if they have stepped straight from the cover of Vogue magazine. St Tropez, perhaps, or could it be Portofino? No, this is the Caribbean, but not the Caribbean that Papa Hemingway would have recognised. This is St Barths.
St Barths — or, to give the island its full name, St Barthelemy — is not for the budget traveller or the fiscally challenged. It is not compulsory to furnish a copy of your bank statement when making reservations at the island's swankier hotels, but it is advisable to review your overdraft facilities before signing the bill. An island where the likes of Rockefeller and Nureyev made their homes does not wish to encourage an invasion of the shellsuited hoi polloi.
It was not always thus. The island was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1496, who named it after his younger brother, Bartolomeo. Nobody was much interested in the place until 1648, when a group of hardy Huguenot peasants from Brittany and Normandy established the first permanent settlement. The great powers — Britain, Spain and France — were far too busy fighting over the rich sugar islands to pay any attention to a barren little rock with no water and hardly any arable land.
The settlers struggled hard to eke out a living, but things improved a bit in 1784, when Louis XVI sold the island to Sweden, in exchange for a warehouse concession in Gothenburg. The Swedes declared Gustavia a free port, which duly prospered as the smuggling capital of the Caribbean, and did very well out of transhipping embargoed Confederate goods during the American civil war. However, Sweden eventually got bored with it and sold St Barths back to France in 1878.
St Barths then fell asleep for the next hundred years, and when it woke up it cleverly reinvented itself as the chic resort island in the Caribbean; a little bit of France in the tropics. The credit for this nifty makeover, from impoverished colony to hideout for le beau monde, lies largely with rich Americans from the East Coast. A whole lot of Noo Yawkers (never shy of promoting their own brand of elitism) decided that St Barths was the most exclusive place in the Caribbean to vacation during the winter months. The locals were not slow to respond with hotels and facilities designed to cater for the needs of the megarich and famous. During prime time (Christmas and New Year), luminaries such as Madonna, Sylvester Stallone and Ralph Lauren can be spotted casually hanging out at Maya's, the celebrities' favoured restaurant, where it is considered incredibly vulgar to stare. The beaches are full of wonderfully toned bodies, where languid posing is de rigueur; there must be some sort of local bylaw which prohibits the display of cellulite.
The whole scenario — a kind of poseurs' paradise — induces a suspension of disbelief. The sun beats down relentlessly, the sea is fantastic shades of turquoise-blue found only in the tropics, and everywhere there are pretty bungalows festooned with bougainvillaea. But are you really in the Caribbean? There are none of the usual smells, such as charcoal smoke or freshly cut sugarcane. And, when strolling along the beach, do not expect to bump into friendly dreadlocked figures, quietly grilling a couple of lobsters and offering you a spliff the size of a small broomstick.
This sort of thing does not happen in St Barths, where your croissant and café au lait are served by a Frenchman. Wellheeled natives of Manhattan's Upper East Side seem to draw great comfort from this. St Barths never had large, labour-intensive plantations, which would have necessitated the importation of slaves; as a result, there are hardly any non-whites.
Flying into St Barths is a famous whiteknuckle ride. The pilot has to aim at the top of a hill (there's a road that runs over the brow of this hill, and God help any vehicle that happens to be crossing the brow at the moment critique), fly vertically down the hill. land on a centime, and then try not to fall into the sea at the end of the runway.
During the season, an enigmatic figure can be seen daily at the airport, carefully scrutinising the new arrivals. He is not from the immigration department, but is employed by the paparazzi to spot the incoming celebs. Occasionally, a cameraman will get a scoop — such as the snaps taken of Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt frolicking au nature! in their private pool. Lesser mortals need have no such concerns over the invasion of their privacy, and as long as you have enough moola to afford the prices — 050 will get you a nice room for the night — then you can relax in pretty exalted company.
Previous page
