I've Spent the Past Week in a Caribbean Destination Where the Setting and Atmosphere are Like the Tropics of Old

I've been a bit sporadic in my blogging over the past week, and my explanation (or excuse) is that I've been in the Caribbean, where the combination of a magnificent natural setting, strong sunlight and heat, and the constant sound of tropical music just aren't conducive to effort of any sort. And what's more, I've been in an unusual stretch of the Caribbean -- shuttling among some of the 32 islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines -- whose novelty and unspoiled nature are totally opposed, in my case, to hard work.
 
This is the southeastern Caribbean, about as far down as you can get in these tropical seas before you hit the coast of Venezuela. It's an area that's little known to many Americans, a place where you feel that you've gone back in time by about a century or two, a group of islands so sparsely populated that some of them boast a population of 200 to 300 people apiece. The island where I spent most of my time -- Bequia -- has 5,000 residents, and once you leave its main city of Port Elizabeth, you see very few other residents.
 
St. Vincent and the Grenadines are the usual model for that hoary cliché "the Caribbean as it used to be." It has no high-rise hotels, no international airport, no casinos, no giant modern shopping malls, and is visited by only an occasional cruiseship or two. Its main touristic activities are yachting and deep-sea diving, and to those pastimes you can add long, lazy afternoons on deserted beaches, drinks at makeshift wooden bars erected on an occasional and otherwise-deserted beach, lots of snorkeling, hiking to visit remarkable natural attractions, and an extraordinary turtle sanctuary (on Bequia) where an idealistic former skindiver devotes his life nowadays to protecting the turtle population from extinction.
 
All this may change about two years from now. An international airport capable of receiving large jets is now in construction on the main island of St. Vincent, and is predicted to become operational some time in 2014. That will permit people to fly directly to St. Vincent from major international cities. Currently, you get to St. Vincent (or to the seven other inhabited islands of the "Grenadines" which make up 31 of the total 32 islands) by boarding a small plane from either Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad, Stl Lucia, or a few other places. I flew to St. Vincent from Barbados on one of those small planes, spent a few days on that "big" island (100,000 people), then took a ferry from St. Vincent to Bequia. I could have flown directly from Barbados to several other islands of the Grenadines, like to Union Island, Mustique, and several others.
 
Mustique is perhaps the best known of the Grenadines to readers of U.S. tabloids who follow the antics of the millionaires and billionaires who constitute most of Mustique's tourist crowd (Mustique has a population of 500 people, most of whom serve as servants at the 70-or-so magnificent villas that make up all the accommodations of this ritzy place, other than the 19 rooms of its sole hotel, the Cotton House ($1,500 a night for an average room in high season). Mustique was also the vacation home of the late Princess Margaret of Great Britain, and her presence here was dutifully noted in the world's press. Mustique is truly expensive, and it's a pity that its sky-high costs have stoked the incorrect assumption that the rest of St. Vincent and the Grenadines are just as costly. They aren't, and on both St. Vincent and many of the Grenadines (other than Mustique), you can find inexpensive b&bs and guesthouses, small tourist hotels, and modest villas that can be rented for very reasonable per-person costs if four or more persons occupy a villa.
 
Anyway, if you're looking for a different kind of Caribbean vacation -- one that resembles the Caribbean of old -- you'll want to buy a ticket on American Airlines or Jet Blue to Barbados, and then a ticket on either Liat Airlines or SVG Ailrlines to either St. Vincent or one of the islands of the Grenadines. I can guarantee you it will be a singular experience, and one that will blot out all thoughts of work, just as it did for me his past week.
 
But get there within the next two years. The opening of that international airport on St. Vincent may greatly change the atmosphere here, although everyone in the tourist industry swears it won't. And in fact, even when the first tourists board a standard jet to St. Vincent, rather than a small propeller plane as they now do, it may take a few more years before the real estate developers start planning their high-rises here.
 
I'm grateful I saw St. Vincent and the Grenadines in its present state, and I now return -- refreshed -- to my standard life.