Carib Song

Going south in the winter once meant Florida. But more and more, the fast-multiplying North American species, the Winter Vacationist, is migrating to the vast scattering of islands in the sun known loosely as the Caribbean.

Every year the migration is heavier, and for obvious reasons: Florida is more crowded than it used to be; the farther south the more certain the weather; and the jet plane has brought the islands within easy reach. The winter vacation, once a plutocrat's privilege, has become a fringe benefit for Everyman, who is discovering that there is nothing quite so soul-satisfying as toasting in the sunshine while one's friends and relations are shivering in the sleet.

The rush has left the islands' hotelkeepers, restaurateurs and developers in a slightly dazed state of euphoria. In 1950 some 32,000 tourists visited Nassau; in 1962 there were 438,000. In the same period, visitors to Jamaica jumped from about 74,000 to 223,000. The Virgin Islands' share rose from 15,000 in 1949 to 300,000 last year, Puerto Rico's from 65,000 to about 500,000. Looking to the future, Caribbean developers note with gratification that the average age of the winterized tourist is decreasing. Only five years ago, most tourists were in the 40-to 60-year-old group and from high-income levels. Both age and income level have been coming down steadily.

Time was when finding a warm place to go to with adequate eating and sleeping accommodations was something of an achievement; it was par for the course if the beach turned out to be ten miles from the nearest hotel and the sand flies seemed insatiable. But today, with the increasing sophistication of the U.S. vacationist and the enterprise of the developers, the Caribbean offers something for everybody. In the bigger centers, new hotels provide the best in air-conditioned comfort and sophisticated food for those who want cocktail-lounge luxury, the dim-lit excitement of a gambling casino, and the best floor shows east of Las Vegas. For those who yearn for nothing more than roughing it in total isolation, there are still remote, palm-fringed beaches. Or the middle-minded may want (and can get) a little of both, with some quaint native life and a steel band thrown in. Today the roster of places to go and the bill of particulars on each is so widely known that anybody can plot in advance whether to sacrifice the snorkeling for the schnapps, the fleshpots for the fishing.

A sampling (see color pages) both of the newly opulent and the still remote West Indian showpieces:

P: THE BAHAMAS. Grand Bahama Island, 65 miles east of Palm Beach, is attracting more and more of a spillover from the Florida coast with an air-conditioned, many-splendored thing called the Grand Bahama Hotel, where the swimming pool is so large that the lifeguards use a rowboat. Farther south, the so-called Out Islands are becoming more popular with the kind of people for whom Nassau is beginning to seem far too much like a honky-tonk meld of El Morocco, Smalls' Paradise and Fort Lauderdale. Eleuthera has acquired four new hotels, and Harbour Island, a tiny island off Eleuthera's northern tip, has for years attracted socialites from the U.S. as a place for a quiet vacation in the well-managed cluster of cottages called Pink Sands Lodge.

In Nassau itself, the vacationer with a well-lined wallet can get away from teeming tourists, beach bums, surly service and bad food for $60 to $70 per couple per day at Huntington Hartford's somewhat Hollywoodish Ocean Club on Paradise Island (long called by a less idyllic name: Hog Island) or at Lyford Cay (pronounced key). Lyford Cay is a club, founded five years ago, where a couple (if found acceptable) may rent one of the 50 guest bedrooms ($56 a day) in the clubhouse or a two-bedroom cottage ($140 a day) like those occupied by President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan during the recent Nassau Conference. Members--who include the A. Watson Armours of Lake Forest, Ill., the Henry Fords of Grosse Pointe, Mich., the Arthur E. Pews of Philadelphia and (honorarily) the Duke and Duchess of Windsor--pay an initiation fee of $560, annual dues of $280, and may buy a lot for $70,000 or more on which to build a cottage among the hibiscus, bougainvillea, passion flowers and night-blooming jasmine. The golf course is excellent, and the dockage for the family yacht is 14-c- a foot per day, $9.80 a foot per year.

P: PUERTO Rico. Air fare to San Juan is one of the world's greatest travel bargains -- $57-75 for the 1>605 miles from New York City, $116 for the 2,225 rniles from Chicago--and the island's 3,435 sq. mi. offer something for everybody. The Miami-minded may wear their mink stoles in the air-conditioned lobbies of the razzle-dazzle hotels on the Condado strip, or lounge cheek by jowl beside the enormous swimming pools of the Caribe Hilton. They may gamble at La Concha and catch the Vegas-style girlie show at the Americana. They may even visit such tourist attractions as a rum distillery or the rain forest.

Outside San Juan are hotels for people less likely to panic when out of earshot of a calypso singer or a steel band. El Conquistador, now in its first season, perches atop a cliff on the northeastern tip of the island, uses an aerial tramway to ferry guests to and from the white-sand beach below. Villa Parguera, on the southwest shore, specializes in deep-sea fishing; El Barranquitas in the mountainous interior has a spectacular view and an excellent cuisine. Puerto Rico's finest hotel is the Dorado Beach, 20 miles west of San Juan, built by Laurance Rockefeller and spread out over 1,200 acres, which include a private airport and a championship golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones.

P: VIRGIN ISLANDS. Many of the 1,500,000 passengers that stream through Puerto Rico's airport each year are bound to and from the Virgins, a cluster of tiny islands, the three largest of which were bought by the U.S. from Denmark in 1917. Principal Virgin is St. Thomas, whose harbor, Charlotte Amalie, is a free port, and hence the most popular stop for cruise ships in the Caribbean (tourists returning to the U.S. from the Virgins may also bring in $200 worth of purchases duty-free, instead of the regular $100 limit). St. Thomas has some spectacular, if sometimes remote, beaches; Herman Wouk lives there and Labor Leader Michael Quill has a house there; it is otherwise chiefly notable for vacations on the cheap--11,000 college students from the U.S. turned up there last Christmas.

Biggest U.S. Virgin is St. Croix, where the fishing is good and the living is easy. The living is even easier at St. John, where Laurance Rockefeller bought 9,500 acres and turned it over to the U.S. Government as a national park. Nerve center of St. John is Rockefeller's famed resort named Cancel Bay Plantation, and its more recent sister developments at Turtle Bay and Trunk Bay. Here dignified fugitives from the executive suites in New York and Chicago enjoy quiet vacations with their wives in well-appointed rooms ($40 to $60). There is no golf course, but a variety of unsurpassed beaches lies just at the foot of the cottage steps.

P: LEEWARDS & WINDWARDS. South of the Virgins, where the mounting air fare begins to screen out the junior executives, are the Leeward and Windward Islands. Some of these the chic international jet-setters are currently making "In" by their presence--until the inevitable turning point when the un-chic join them in sufficient numbers to drive them somewhere else, and the word again goes round that "Nobody goes there any more, my dear." One island so In that almost no body knows about it is Barbuda, an 18th century slave-breeding ground 15 miles long by about five wide, with one hotel called Coco Point Lodge, where Britain's Princess Margaret came on her honeymoon to stay two days, and lingered on for five. Ten-room Coco Point is so posh that its staff has a staff, quartered in a separate building, and for $85 a day the management will provide a couple with everything, including riding, hunting, fishing, and diving among the 70 known wrecks around the island.

Barbuda is 28 miles north of Antigua, which has been definitely In for the past few years, mainly because of the presence of the Mill Reef Club at Exchange Bay. Founded by Robertson ("Happy") Ward, a designer of tropical resorts, Mill Reef is spread over 1,440 acres, where 50 proprietary members have houses (there are 250 additional members), and there are 31 rooms for guests. Rates for two people: $50 a day. Non-members may come only once; unless they are invited to become members or visit a member, that's the last they see of Mill Reef. Most of the members' houses are unpretentious, costing from $30,000 to $80,000. An exception: Paul Mellon, who is spending a reputed $2,000,000 on his house, which is still unfinished. Antigua is in the throes of a hotel explosion--nine new ones have opened in the last year and a half, making about 15 first-class hotels with some 500 rooms.

P: BARBADOS. This island, where many British sun worshipers have built winter houses, is the latest focal point of the international set. And the latest focal point of Barbados is Sandy Lane, a hotel built two years ago by English-born Manhattan Socialite Ronald Tree, whose wife, Marietta, is U.S. Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. There is nothing sandy about Sandy Lane; Millionaire Tree, who has built a handsome Palladian house in Barbados, spared no expense in building and furnishing his hotel. Jet-setters have been flocking there; its 100 beds are currently booked through mid-March (at $36 to $57). So are the other leading hotels, such as the Coral Reef Club and Sam Lord's Castle, a West Indies manor house carefully restored at a cost of $750,000.

P: TRINIDAD. In this busy, commercial island off the coast of Venezuela, the brand-new, air-conditioned Trinidad Hilton, completed last summer, can count on traveling businessmen and conventions as well as tourists to keep its 261 rooms filled (rates: $20 to $37). Trinidad might be considered the Salzburg of the Caribbean--being the birthplace of calypso and the ubiquitous steel band. Its other claim to fame: the factory from which Angostura bitters sprays upon the civilized world.

P: CURAC,AO. West and slightly north is the tidy, pastel-shaded Dutch island of Curac,ao, which claims the world's second largest oil refinery. Here the tourists, most of them off cruise ships, bustle through town buying things, then are herded back on board to weigh anchor. Hotels and restaurateurs are hopefully expecting the cruise ships to begin two-and three-day layovers, at which time the food at at least one restaurant will veer from the ratatouille nicoise and peches cardinales to the plain meat and potatoes that are said to be what tourists want.

P: JAMAICA. This, one of the most variegated islands in the Caribbean, and one of the most scenically spectacular in the world, has been an outpost of British culture for some 300 years, and its English tradition has paid off in the political sophistication and orderly ease with which the Jamaicans have taken to their present status as independent members of the British Commonwealth.

A range of resorts is strung along the 135-mile-long northern coastline. To the west, some eight miles from the Montego Bay airport, is famed Round Hill--less of a jet-set fairground than it was five years ago, but still a cosmopolitan cluster of airy shareholder houses around a crescent bathing cove that is carefully combed for spiky sea urchins and other subterranean surprises. If their owners are away, visitors may be able to rent the Henry Tiarkses' capacious "cottage" (British Press Lord Esmond Rothermere is currently in residence), or the William Paleys' swimming-pooled pavilion (where both President Kennedy and Princess Margaret have stayed). Or for $65 a day, a couple may have a spacious double bedroom with a balcony on the bay. Round Hill has the swinging crowd--society and show biz mixed with plainer folk who like going black tie twice a week for their dining and dancing.

The Montego Bay area has also other kinds of sport: fishing off the White House, golf at Tryall, a clublike community like Round Hill; tennis at the Racquet Club, and eating at Sunset Lodge.

At Ocho Rios, midway along the coast, the hotels tend toward a more Miamistyle opulence. And near Port Antonio at the island's eastern end, where the vegetation is lushly tropical from the rainfall trapped by the towering Blue Mountains, is the picturesque San San section, where the Aga Khan's Uncle Sadruddin has pitched a tent, along with Steel Baron Heinrich Thyssen and a collection of Swedish shipping moguls.

Here also is the most luxurious resort in the Caribbean, Frenchman's Cove--a palm-pillared beach surrounded by soaring jungle cliffs, with a crystalline, spring-fed river sneaking into the surf along one side. One look, and Canadian Food Tycoon Garfield Weston bought the beach plus 40 acres, only to find out later that the fine print in the bill of sale had contained a stipulation that he build a hotel on the property. His son, Grainger, took over, and the result was 18 houses sited throughout the property to provide maximum privacy and view. Built for an average $50,000, each provides at least one bedroom, plus living room-dining room, bath-dressing room, and fully equipped kitchen. Each is staffed by a butler and maid, and has its own electric cart for transportation. There is no such thing as an extra charge; guests may demand a private plane or a Rolls-Royce for a drive around the island, order caviar or Dom Perignon any time they want--all is included in the rate: a cool $2,000 for two people for two weeks ($3.000 for a month). "My dream is to give a guest the nearest thing to his own house, to live in just as though he owned it.'' Grainger Weston explains.

Obviously not everyone is sufficiently inner-directed to enjoy such laissez faire; but in all that vast, palm-dotted, turquoise sea below the U.S., there is sun-filled fun for any kind of taste.

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