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Twenty minutes by air from Saba, St. Barts is administered as part of a French département—and a swinging outpost of Southern France. Often likened to the Saint-Tropez of 20 years ago, the 8-sq.-mi. island boasts 36 restaurants, French bakeries, discos, wind surfing, sailing, a harbor full of yachts, elegant boutiques and enough local eccentrics to fill a Truffaut film. However, St. Barts—named by Columbus for his brother Bartolomeo—is more than a transplanted French beach resort. It is a beautiful, pastoral island, whose inhabitants—95% of the population of 2,800 are white—are mostly of Breton and Norman descent. In villages perched on the hillsides, older women still wear quichenottes, the starched white bonnets of Brittany. Some of the countryfolk have never traveled the dozen miles to Gustavia, the capital and only town. They are fisherfolk, sailors, carpenters and masons; the women weave delicate hats (calèches) and bags from straw.
Food ranges from the haute cuisine of Castelets, an elegant, nine-room hilltop aerie where Bruno Oliver, grandson of the great cook Raymond Oliver, is chef, through the restrained chic of the Marina on the Harbor to beachfront bistros. Chez François boasts such surprises as country-and-western bashes; Mme. Jacqua's Auberge du Fort Oscar cooks up some of the best Creole food in the islands. Jean Bart, the biggest hotel, owned by the French PLM chain, is an efficient, friendly place with 50 rooms. Tourist facilities are not likely to expand greatly on St. Barts, since the islanders have no intention of risking social stability or economic security by importing foreign construction workers.
Montserrat: Smiling Black Irish Eyes.
Say "How are you?" to a Montserratian and the reply will be "Me dey easy" (I'm easy) in an Irish brogue. The teardrop-shaped, 39½-sq.-mi. atoll (pop. 12,000) calls itself the Emerald Isle of the Car ibbean because it was largely settled by Irish Roman Catholic refugees starting in 1632. Montserrat's blacks, now 90% of the population, have owned their land since the early 19th century. They are very much in command of Erin West, and as cheery as their Connemara cousins.
The island was named by Columbus for the great mountaintop monastery in northeastern Spain. Montserrat has a mildly active volcano, Galway Soufriere, which huffs and puffs sulfurous fumes.
Seven other sulfur vents mustardize the air above the village of, hah!, Upper Galway. A two-mile hike leads to the Great Alp Waterfalls, a deafening, 90-ft. pour that barefoot Guide Jim Corbet acknowledges is "plenty strong." Corbet's rates ($6 round trip), like taxi fares, are set by the government. Not much else is regulated except the sale of land; this has been planned so that outsiders who build homes will not find themselves in white ghettos.