The West Indian Islands

AND we saw the trees very green, Columbus wrote, and much water and fruits of diverse kind. . . . Bright green trees, the whole land so green that it is a pleasure to look on it.

From the plane one discovers the islands that rise like mountaintops from a clear sea of many colors: the mixed colors of semiprecious stones, of coral reefs, of green volcanoes, of bizarre fish; the white fringe of long beaches and of short crescent beaches on quiet bays; the white of schooner sails and of the Great Houses on old plantations; gray stone towers of old windmills and forts; red-tiled roofs of colonial harbor towns. Islands so remote and quiet, it is as if they had been discovered and then lost again.

Discovery by air

It is the airplane (and this only in the last, few years) that has found the West Indies again for us. Widespread air service in the Caribbean is still new — as new as the airfields built during and after t he war. Air travel is simple; one ticket, allowing many stopovers, makes available the connecting services of four major airlines. Even the man with but two or three weeks can take his choice of islands; frequent air service connects whole strings of them that until recently knew only the trading schooner or the occasional freighter.

Pan American sends over a hundred regular flights a week through the Caribbean, its big planes offering service on tourist-class flights that one would call first-class on domestic runs. From New York all the way down to Trinidad and back (with Innumerable stopovers) costs $283. Time, one-way, about nine hours. British West Indian Airways, covering fifteen islands, opens up further possibilities. Distances between the islands are very short, averaging a half hour’s flying time from one to another. BWTA flies a large variety of circular island-hopping trips — for instance, there is one from New York to Bermuda, San Juan, St. Thomas, Antigua, Martinique, Barbados, and back to New York for $270.

Time and money allowing, it is a simple matter to fly down through the islands to Trinidad and Curaçao and return home by way of Guatemala and Mexico. It is possible to see a half-dozen or more islands in two weeks by air.

But this can be a violation of the delicate beauty and mood of the islands; better to pick two or three and to work slowly in and around them by car, horse, schooner, chartered yacht, sailboat, or motor vessel.

Winter travel

Warning: The traveler who will go to the West Indies this winter must move fast (and he must be flexible and adaptable). All facilities are limited; not only plane and hotel space but chartered yacht, fishing cruiser, and self-drive hired car should be spoken for now. The airlines and the hotel managers are perhaps more knowledgeable than the average American travel agent in the less wellknown islands, and can be of real help in these arrangements.

The man who wants something more than the standard diet of hotel on a beach, drive through the island, glass-bottom boat, and shopping spree (all in a crowd) must study the map (the intimate geography of the West Indies will surprise him), pick an area full of strange names, and be prepared to attempt the unusual and, possibly, to sacrifice some comfort for the sake of the most beautiful, unspoiled, unfrequented islands. But to begin with he must know the secret of the islands. It lies in two words: Go south. Anywhere south of the American Virgin Islands — and the further south the better.

Improvisation of an air itinerary from island to island is sometimes possible in this winter peak season, especially if the traveler is willing to go to the airports and take his chance as a stand-by passenger. Poor interisland radio contact makes the unexpected seat on the supposedly full incoming plane a commonplace.

In any case, local flights are easier to find space on than long-distance ones; local flights out of Trinidad by BWIA are a better bet than those that are southbound. But at the start, make firm air reservations over the whole itinerary (or at least to major stops) and improvise from there when it becomes possible.

January and February are the peak months; up to about December 20 things are somewhat easier, both for transportation and for hotels. Christmas to New Year’s is very chancy. From about January 5 to 21 there is some slacking off, especially in the Trinidad-Tobago-Barbados-Grenada area.

Hotels

In a generally tight situation the saving grace is this: there are whole islands, and facilities in other islands

— out-of-the-way hotels and guesthouses (an honorable name in the islands),government guesthouses, interisland schooners, unpublicized yacht and boat chartering outfits — that are not known to most travelers or travel agents, and are therefore more likely to be available to the enterprising man who will dig them out.

A good example is the new hotel in Fort-de-France, Martinique, that makes for a sharp increase in available space in a fascinating island whose great handicap has been too few hotels. Another find is the littleknown La Pergola, four miles out of Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, whose patron disdains the impersonal arrangements of travel agents, preferring the direct approach of the traveler who will appreciate his neat bungalows, superb French cooking, and wines. It is situated on a hill overlooking its own beach and has one of the best views in the Caribbean. Two other similar possibilities are the new hotel due to open soon on St. Martin and the very livable Ave Maria on Carriacou ($7, single, with meals) reached by local schooner in five hours from Grenada. There are seven or eight small British islands — known mainly to yachtsmen and a few adventurous Englishmen — with adequate accommodation: Anguilla, Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Bequia, Carriacou, among others.

Except in Barbados, hotels are small and too few. They are not — in these purer islands south of the American Virgins — de luxe, nor are they, for the most part, resorts. Usually they are reasonably comfortable, oldfashioned, informal, inexpensive; and they offer meals that are fair to good — a major requirement in the choice of a hotel, since the general lack of restaurants and the prevalence of the American Plan make the guest dependent on his hotel’s cooking. One eats well in the Dutch and French islands, of course (and finds wines like Châteauneuf-du-Pape at about $2 a bottle), and in the British islands that have a French heritage, the Windwards particularly. Trinidad and Barbados, too, offer some good food, especially if one makes a point of asking for the local specialties.

Hotels which ask one price for all rooms are usually rather intimate arrangements, often with a genial host and a house-party atmosphere. A good idea is to seek out those places which have been converted from old West Indian mansions, manor houses, plantation Great Houses; these are richly built to fit the nature of the place, and give the visitor a sense of casually absorbing the local ambiance.

Some examples are Shaw Park in Jamaica, Kensington in Antigua, Bretton Hall in Trinidad, Sam Lord’s Castle in Barbados, the Villa in St. Lucia, Mon Rêve in Port-au-Prince.

Their disadvantage is that usually they are not on a beach; but in most cases the hotel provides transportation to the sea, often to its own beach. This might be taken as the best of both worlds, since the beach hotel is bound to lack the more intriguing atmosphere of the town, with its harbor, sailing ships, market, and engaging local population. (The most, appealing towns, visually, are Willemstad, St. George, Basseterre, Fort-deFranee, Bridgetown, Christiansted.)

Because hotels are small, one can usually count on the management for a considerable amount of guidance and organization in the hiring of cars, sailboats, horses, fishing craft, guides, and for introductions to local clubs for tennis, golf, yachting, or plain sociability. If there is nothing to be found, ask for the government guesthouse; they are prevalent and good. In the end, the airline or the local Tourist Board will almost always turn something up, often with a private family.

About $20 a day for a good double room and meals is a fair average for these more southerly islands (rates like $10—$12, double, are common), as compared with something like $30—$40 for similar accommodations further north.

Under sail

But the best accommodation — for those who want to take the islands as they were meant to be taken — is not the hotel. It is the chartered yacht. This is not as expensive as it may sound; at about $150-$200 per person a week (provided a boat is selected to match the size of the party), the cost is comparable to that of a mediumpriced hotel plus island-to-island transportation, with savings in cabs, bar bills, and other items. With their close knowledge of the islands the experienced skippers and crews will find the one you are looking for, and will make all arrangements and act as guides ashore.

Most of the ships carry deep-sea fishing gear and are luxuriously fitted and equipped: radio-telephone, refrigeration, teak paneling, and so on. Organization is near perfect; one has only to hoard and set sail. Passengers are usually welcome to help run the ship, but if time is short the skipper will run from island to island during the night. Auxiliary yachts of from 10 to 100 feet (two to six passengers) are the most common.

Approach by water

Slipping along before the trade winds through the finest cruising grounds in the world, one makes the incomparable approach by water to cach of perhaps twenty islands, including those beautiful and remote ones, like the Grenadines, where accommodation is primitive or nonexistent .

Antigua is an ideal base point; the winds here are right for a cruise down through the Leeward and Windward Islands to Trinidad and back, stopping at some of the best of the islands: Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Grenada, and Tobago.

It is easy to combine the cruise with deer and duck hunting on Barbuda, underwater exploration in the marvelous Tobago Cays and at Buccoo Reef off Tobago (the most alluring submarine gardens in the whole Caribbean), a mountain climb in St. Vincent or St. Lucia, and golf at St. Andrews in Trinidad — the best in the islands, of championship standard.

Major sources of charter yachts are Commander Nicholson, R.N. (Ret.), at Nelson’s Dockyard. Antigua six auxiliary yachts; Fran Chalifoux, Yacht Haven, St. Thomas; Bert Unwin, 39 Sundown Road, Goodwood Park, Port of Spain, Trinidad; Sir Anthony Jenkinson, Morgan’s Harbor, Kingston, Jamaica; the yacht Lame, a racing yawl accommodating four to six, with a French skipper and cooking — very inexpensive at $10 a day per person — c/o the Yacht Club, Fort-de-Franee, Martinique. Other possibilities, on a more personal basis, are the yacht clubs in Barbados and Guadeloupe.

For the inexperienced sailor, November and December (or May and June) are the best months, but there is good sailing from November through June. Demand is heavy, early reservation a necessity; yachts are easiest to come by in November, early December, May, and June.

The inter-island trading schooners are not luxurious; often they are not even comfortable. Sometimes they carry only sail, and may be becalmed outside a beckoning harbor for hours. But for a real slice of the island life, in its own true rhythm, there is nothing like them. These allow a short run from, say, Antigua to Barbuda by the local mail sloop in five or six hours: or there is the longer trip by the sailing schooner that connects Curasao, Aruba, and Bonaire (a very enjoyable Dutch complex) once a week. The sailing schooner Blue Peter sails twice weekly from St. Kitts to Sint Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius — the strangely attractive and out-ofthe-way Dutch Windwards, with good government guesthouses, endless lobster dinners, fishing, and the incredible capital of Saba, called The Bottom, a delightful Dutch garden village that lies inside the top of the volcano that is Saba. This voyage can also be made once a month by the 600-ton motorship Antilia, operating from Curaçao to all the Dutch West Indian islands.

Then there are the regular government sailing boats (with auxiliary power) from Barbados, Trinidad, and Grenada, and, if you want to save time, the motor vessels fortnightly from Aruba, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia. Reliable government boats serve all the British Windward and Leeward Islands.

Another good possibility is the Schooner Owners Association on Bridgetown Wharf, Barbados, where One can pick up a schooner at almost any time to St. Vincent, St. Lucia, the Grenadines, Trinidad, and British Guiana — or make the 1½-hour sail to Speightstown down the coast and return by bus. A notable excursion can be made by motor launch or sloop from Guadeloupe to the lovely untouristed minor French islands: Lcs Saintes (10 miles), Désirade, INIaricGalante, St. Barthélemy, and St. Martin (the farthest, 112 miles).

A sailing schooner or chartered yacht from the American Virgins or British Leewards to the small, attractive British Virgins (eleven inhabited out of thirty-six, guesthouse accommodation on Tortola) will take one as far away from it all as it is possible to get.

Island-hopping

If time is very limited, try the surprisingly complete network of local air services that now extends to many islands that up to recent years knew only the trading schooner. (Some of these can be included as stopovers on the long-distance flights.) Even the big intercontinental services of PAA make regular stops throughout the islands. From Trinidad, BWIA has frequent short flights to Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Martinique. KLM connects the Dutch islands, and Air France has an interesting run from San Juan to Paramaribo, Surinam.

But the enterprising traveler will also want to look into the services of lesser-known lines. The St. Vincent Government Air Service goes to spectacularly beautiful Dominica (a French island, British-sowned, with good accommodation, few tourists, and the last Carib Indian settlement in the Caribbean) and four other islands twice weekly, and will call at Carriacou on request. This service is also available on a charter basis — six passengers for $40 to Barbados and Trinidad. The new Leeward Islands Air Transport (a subsidiary of BWIA) is still unknown to most travelers, thus creating an interesting opportunity; it connects San Juan with Montserrat, St. Kitts, Anguilla, and Antigua, and is also available for charter service. British Guiana Airways and the reliable charter service out of St. Thomas are other helpful airlines. Small-plane services make for a travel rarity, the excitingly scenic flight — such as that between St. Thomas and Antigua.

Varying moods

Go south, then. Or if the sound of Jamaica is irresistible, begin there. (Cuba is nondescript, too much like Florida.) Jamaica is genteel-fashionable in its hybrid English and Palm Beach style, very crowded, overbuilt at Montego Bay, stuffy in Kingston. Try Discovery Bay or Port Antonio or the modest places in the fine Blue Mountains, or the 300-mile charter yacht cruise around the island from Morgan’s Harbor.

Haiti is jaunty, carefree (the colored man at last truly free, here as nowhere else), with a substantial life of its own — the most welcoming place on earth.

The Dominican Republic is a kind of Spanish-island Switzerland: clean, neat, with luxury hotels, good roads, four mountain ranges: its people hospitable but somehow lifeless. Sec old Santiago, the best of it (a new hotel there).

Puerto Rico, like the American Virgins, is getting to look too much like home; apple pie and ice cream sodas, of interest to the sociologyminded. For something different, try a coffee plantation resort in the mountains (or the small mountain resort town of Barranquitas). Good deepsea fishing.

The British Leeward Islands — Antigua, St. Kitts, and their satellites — are invitingly small, very pretty in the English style, and notable for their beaches and yachting facilities. Lord Nelson’s Dockyard in Antigua should be seen.

For two wreeks of quiet comfort, on one of the least touched and loveliest of islands, with wonderful beaches, there is nothing like Tobago, that rare blend of unpretentious comfort and serene island remoteness, though it lies only 20 miles from busy, cosmopolitan, flamboyant Trinidad. The music, the wild mixture of nationalities, the festivities, the agreeable British core of Trinidad, make it incomparable; a people of wit, fervor, and a strong creative impulse. Barbados is highly livable, unspectacular, altogether English. It has all the amenities of Jamaica, a much more attractive local life, and much lower prices.

The Windwards

But for the man who would see and live the islands intensively, there are only the Windward Islands. Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica — it is hard to say which is the most beautiful. (The Grenadines, the scatter of isles between Grenada and St. Vincent, have been called the world’s most beautiful small islands.)

The Windwards have very little tourist machinery, some very attractive small hotels and guesthouses, and are the least expensive islands in the West Indies. A four-bedroom house on Grenada can be rented for about $20 a week, or a three-bedroom bungalow for $55 a month (both completely furnished). Cars rent for about $35 a week. There are guesthouses at $3 a day with meals.

The Hotel Santa Maria in Grenada, overlooking picturesque St. Georges and its harbor, is the best-sited hotel in all the islands. Or try the view from Fort Charlotte in St. Vincent: the harbor, the strait, then Bequia and the rest of the Grenadines stretch away toward the mountains of Grenada. (You can go whale-fishing with the good-natured natives of Barrouallie in St. Vincent.) Take the government boat or a sailing schooner from St. Vincent to the superb beaches of Bequia, and then on through the Grenadines. Dominica, which now has a very presentable hotel, has good deep-sea fishing; and there are two French restaurants in Castries, St. Lucia, worth inquiring about. See the vivid Saturday morning market — sailing craft and canoes arriving from all over — in Kingstown, St. Vincent, the most carefree of the Windwards.

Shopping and cars

Island shopping has been oversold. There are a fair number of European luxury items to be had on a free-port, tax-free basis in some of the islands. There is some good basketry and woodworking — otherwise the handicrafts are not outstanding. Buy perfume in Martinique or Guadeloupe (prices lower than in Paris, and one third those in the U.S.) and let the rest wait until Curaçao, which was made for shopping.

Car hire: Roads are winding, narrow, often unmarked. Drive at 30 m.p.h., use the horn on every curve. Better still, hire a chauffeur (for $2$3 a day) with the car. Car hire is very inexpensive: $20 a week in Barbados, $24 in Trinidad. Almost every island has self-drive cars for hire, and chauffeurs.

Information

Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Barbados, the Dutch and the French islands, have representatives in New York. Others: The Caribbean Tourist Association, 475 Fifth Avenue, New York 17; Office of the Governor of the Leeward Islands, St. John’s, Antigua; Office of the Governor of the Windward Islands, St. Georg’s, Grenada.

Books: Paul Blanshard’s Democracy and Empire in the Caribbean, Marlin’s Standard Guide to Mexico and the Caribbean, Patrick Ellam’s Sportsman’s Guide to the Caribbean. This last is new and highly detailed, from golf to treasure hunting. Esso offers (free) an unusually good road-andtopographical map that includes all the principal islands. It shows all major airline and shipping routes and flying times. From Esso Touring Service, 15 West 51 Street, New York City. Well worth careful study.

Festivities

Trinidad, especially, loves a fete and knows how to make one. The carnival (March 4—5) is spontaneous and original, surpassed only by that of Rio. In January the calypso tents go up and the steel bands begin to be released from official restraints (they can be very unrestrained); from then until the feverish end, nothing else matters. Pre-carnival masquerades and other festivities are numerous. Hotel space at carnival time is a real problem, but the Tourist Board works hard to assist. The carnivals in Haiti and the French islands are almost as exuberant as that of Trinidad. Also in St. Vincent and Curaçao.

Not to be missed are the race meetings held three or four times a year in Trinidad (Christmas, Easter, September), Tobago, Barbados, and other British islands. These are epic events — steel bands, calypso, and all — in the old spirit of noncommercialized horse racing. In Trinidad the important Moslem festival, Hosein, usually takes place in late February. Any large soccer match in Haiti is worth seeing for the crowd alone, as are the cockfights in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti.

Surinam

A strange and exciting addition to a Caribbean journey is the Surinam jungle cruise on dark serpentine rivers, by Alcoa’sair-condit ioned bauxite ships from Trinidad. This is the truly primitive world of the Bush Negro villages, and includes a call al Paramaribo, a fascinating DutchNegro-Javanese city. One-week return trip from Port of Spain costs about $100. Arrangements arc best made before leaving the United States.

MITCHELL GOODMAN