In the Caribbean
Carol Wright
And so prices continue to sink for packaged holidays to the Caribbean. The old Noel Coward and smart set in Jamaica and dinner jacket dinner scene at Sandy Lane in Barbados in the winter; the cottage cliques at Round Hill near Montego Bay are still there but their exclusivity has been shattered by the packaged tour boys chipping away at the prices.
The Caribbean is happy to expand this side of its business. But for the more individualistic traveller, there are dozens of small hotels in the islands. These hotels are rarely prominent on tour operators' brochures yet they are the ones with good and friendly service, food and in general have more local character than the so many faceless large international hotels.
The little hotels come in de luxe or simple life varieties with prices to match. With the excellent daily inter-island plane links of LIAT airways the discerning visitor can make a more varied tour of some of the less trumpeted and less packaged islands.
Simple-life seekers could travel among the Grenadines to Cariacou and stay at the Inexpensive (for the area) Mermaid Tavern. Its scruffy appearance belies a genuine hospitality and informality; guests eating round the patio table with owner Major Rigg. The tavern is set on one of the most beautiful and unspoilt sweeps of sand in an area that has built its finances on possessing unrivalled beaches. This is for the man who wants to cast off sophistication with work routine shackles on holiday, for the person whose sole sightseeing would be searching (and finding) broken caribe pottery along the shores. Gentle and homely is the Grand View hotel on St Vincent, a good base for touring the Grenadine chain by fishing boat or interisland schooner. The hotel is clean and wholesome — light airy rooms furnished simply and scented with franipani blossoms from the cliff garden below. More sophisticated is Young Island across the bay — stylised thatched huts among the palms, open air dining tables with pointed thatched roof and double hammocks slung for togetherness lazing.
The nearby island of Bequia, 11 hours sail away, has the Sunny Caribbee plantation house style hotel. Colin Tennant has shares in this but his main development is on Mustique where he is trying to keep the island as natural as possible for sophisticates to walk and ride through sea grape screens to secluded beaches.
He supplies the comforts of good plumbing and gourmet food combined with the intimacy and better service of small hotels. Escapists can go to Peace and Plenty, a pubby place near wonderful beachcombing strands in the Bahamian Exumas. Bluff House on Green Turtle Cay in the Abaco group offers family house party atmos
phere and a motor dinghy for every guest to use.
Domenica, with her steep green cone shape, has deliberately developed little hotels in the interior where you can be pampered even to the extent of having your own personal room servant at Island House in the rustic grouping of cottages round a cool natural river pool, even including a tree house room for the agile. Down in the capital of Roseau, the Fort Young hotel was charmingly converted from a police fortress right on the harbour. The high beamed dining room is the original dormitory, the pool is sunk in the parade ground. Rooms are like wood-lined cabins suspended with their wide balconies overlooking the sparkling waters. Hammocks swing on each spacious room terrace of Hotel Cozumel Caribe in Mexico's Caribbean. At the Spice Island Inn on Grenada some of the rooms have their own private courtyard swimming pool and the beach yards away.
Antigua is not one of my favourite Caribbean islands; it is too arid, too unlovely in many ways and yet it Ilas that enchanting corner: English Harbour clustered in steep green hills with a couple of delightful hotels. One, the Inn, is set within the halls of Nelson's old harbour. Varnished glossy wood stairs and floors lead to ship-shape rooms with cool white canopies to four-posters. Across the bay, the Admiral's Inn tops a hill with bar and restaurant area where madras ginghamed girls bring drinks as one looks down the hill to the secluded room blocks descending to the beach.
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