Going to the opera, having a picnic on the sidelines of a polo match or attending a garden party at Llaro Court (the home of the prime minister) are not the usual Caribbean fare–unless you’ve chosen Barbados in the winter months.
Long known to British royalty and their pals as an ideal escape from North Sea winters, this 166-square-mile (roughly three-quarters the size of Chicago), pear-shaped island has been a fashionable retreat, at least since the 18th Century.
Sir Anthony Eden wintered here; famed stage designers (and royal relatives) have renovated historic buildings–and created pace-setting tropical hideaways. At the turn of the last century, well-heeled folks from England–and New England–spent weeks cruising to these shores. They came with steamer trunks to set the social season’s fashion.
These days it’s carry-on and Concorde that speed the cream of the crop to Barbados, leading a pack that includes people on slower planes and, from southern U.S. ports, the cruise ships. No longer making a single-focused push for planeloads of Canadians and others on low-cost charters, Barbados’ tourism interests are eyeing the top of the line–and offering comforts, quality and classy resorts to lure them.
British magnates with megabucks are building vast mansions on West Coast land where they’ve bulldozed smaller houses to create their castles for the 21st Century. And shops and restaurants serve them.
Elegance on a less pretentious scale is also offered. Claudette Colbert has lived in her Northwest Coast home for several decades. President Reagan visited on official business in 1982; George Washington stayed with his brother, Lawrence, for 49 days in 1751. (Reagan swam; Washington caught smallpox.)
With Bridgetown, the capital, buttoned onto a Southwest Coastal curve, and most of the population fanning out from it, the East Coast and the northeast sector are virtually “undiscovered.”
Elegant homes–and a few hotels providing understated luxury–began to rise along the West Coast in the 1950s, bordered by a ribbon of butterscotch-colored sand as buffer from the sea. Most of the early tourist facilities were on the South Coast, east of the capital.
Although the size and shape of the island have not changed, almost everything else has. The West Coast beaches have been gobbled by occasional sea swells and reaction to manmade groins; a parade of beach vendors provides endless entertainment (although they have been controlled somewhat of late); and the modern scourge of petty thievery makes local headlines.
But all-in-all, life is good–for residents (the island’s population is slightly more than 250,000) and visitors alike. In the last three years, a mid-island swath of former cane fields has been manicured at the direction of Robert Trent-Jones, architect of a 27-hole golf course. Sensational sea views and a remarkable “quarry corner” (five of the first nine holes of the course) are striking features.
With the first nine holes ready for play since December ’94, Royal Westmoreland, as it is called, has now come into its own. But it’s not the only golf course–Sandy Lane resort has one and there’s another on the South Coast. This one, however, sets a new standard, with a spacious country club for dining and the requisite palatial homes and condominiums, designed by Barbadian architect Larry Warren.
Barbados allows for a lifestyle that can be as indolent as lounging in a beach chair or floating in an aquamarine sea, or as active as scuba diving over a West Coast wreck, hiking and walking around the naturally rugged limestone cliffs on the windswept East Coast, sailing or windsurfing in seas that have created champions, watching (or playing in) a cricket match, betting at the horse races or touring the houses that are shown during the January-to-April Open Houses Tour, planned and administered by (and for) the very active Barbados National Trust.
Charged with preserving the heritage of the island, the trust was established about 30 years ago by Sir Ronald Tree (whose wife, Boston-born Marietta, served a stint as the United States’ delegate to the UN’s Commission on Human Rights some years ago). It was the Trees who created Sandy Lane Resort, now owned by the British Forte chain but still making a strong statement for class and quality.
Among the National Trust projects is a gathering of historic sites, from windmills to once-private homes, open to the public as lifestyle museums. But the trust has also taken an active role with environmental concerns for conservation and zoning.
And members of the trust lead early Sunday morning walking tours, offered to anyone who can wake in the dark of morn and find the starting point. (In addition to asking in advance, the local newspapers–the Barbados Advocate or the Nation–are sources for this and other events.)
Barbados can be both elegant and exclusive. But it also offers Bajan fun. It has its share of all-inclusive resorts, with two Almond resorts (a Barbadian incarnation of the concept), plus condominiums and chain hotels (Marriott, Hilton and others) as well as inns, guest houses and other properties.
But no island–with the possible exception of Jamaica–offers more luxurious hillside and/or beachside villas, with resident staff as your caretakers. The team at Alleyne, Aguilar & Altman, a local real estate and land management firm, is the leader with the list. They make it possible for you to have a home of your own, even for only a week.
The riffraff may have discovered the South Coast, where the shoreline has been cluttered in their honor, and even the tony West Coast suffers from over-building, but–in a “chin up” manner familiar in the mother country (Britain)–the good life thrives in pockets around the island.
Settled by the British in the 1620s, after being claimed for King James in 1605, Barbados is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean–and it is the playground, for leisure sport and for the still-active flying fish fleets that set out from the East Coast at Tent Bay and from the south at Oistins.
And it’s that very same flying fish–a little fish that skims the water’s surface on its fins–that is one of the specialities on many restaurant menus. Helped along by a flock of accomplished chefs from famous European and U.S. restaurants (in places where the climate can’t compare), Barbadian restaurants now include several of the Caribbean’s best.
During winter months, reservations are required at places such as Olive’s Bar & Bistro, on the West Coast at Holetown, where Chef Larry Rogers and Michelle, his wife, serve remarkable recipes in the courtyard and main house, or Carambola, hanging over the sea at Derricks (on the West Coast), where the romantic setting is a perfect complement to imaginative recipes attractively served.
But Barbados provides more than 100 places for meals, including the East Coast’s Atlantis Hotel, where the Barbadian Sunday buffet has been a longtime legend.
With a strong democratic government, and a usually dependable communications network, Barbados has earned international respect as an ideal Caribbean headquarters for banks, businesses and government agencies. Although tourism is the most important source for hard currency and employment, it is not all this island has. Not given to puffery, Barbados earns its place in the sun.
