(3 of 5)
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.
¶ 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.
¶ 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.