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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¢ a foot per day, $9.80 a foot per year.
¶ 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.
¶ 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.