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Page 3 of 4 On perpetual siesta By Mike Grudowski 
Mary Nichols/Four Seasons Resort Nevis
All of this gives the place a sort of wonderland, time-warp aura, one that appeals to travelers who could probably afford to go anywhere but keep coming back here—sometimes permanently. “I don’t think I’d ever leave,” Quentin Henderson says to me. He’s an English expat who washed ashore 20 years ago as a volunteer to help establish a beekeeping industry on the island, and he’s now known locally as the Bee Man. We are chatting in the palm-shaded courtyard of the Café des Arts, on the waterfront in Charlestown, the island’s compact Georgian capital. “It’s a very relaxed way of life.” Next door to the café, just beyond a low stone wall, sits a museum built on the site of Alexander Hamilton’s birthplace; the founding-father-to-be lived on Nevis until age five. A few blocks away is a churchyard with gravestones dating to the 1600s. Once one of the British Empire’s richest sugar colonies, Nevis oozes history at every turn, but none of it is cordoned off. You can scamper to the top of a 1700s sugar-mill tower—or you can book a week in one that has been repurposed into a hillside suite. Wooden “chattel houses” that once harbored families of slaves have been converted into resort cottages. A onetime stone cistern at Golden Rock Plantation Inn is now a swimming pool. But the best part of Nevis is its beautiful isolation. There was a moment on the first night my wife and I spent there that I hope I never forget, the kind of sensation that has become all too rare on the planet. It was long past sundown after dinner in a 1778 stone great house at another of those plantations turned resorts, a palm-fringed redoubt called Nisbet Plantation Beach Club. We strolled out to the sand as a breeze rustled the fronds. The only light came from flashes of foam from waves breaking on an offshore reef, and from stars against a black sky. We swayed on a rope hammock and tried halfheartedly to pick out constellations. It felt as if we were watching from a secure post, staring out at the void from the very edge of the universe. ACCESS Connect to Nevis on flights through San Juan, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, or Antigua. Most carriers also fly direct to Nevis’s sister island, St. Kitts, where a quick ferry ride completes the trip. LODGING Establish base camp at Nisbet Plantation Beach Club (doubles from $395; nisbetplantation.com), a onetime sugar and coconut plantation with its own breezy beach. Thirty-six elegant cottages are scattered around the property, each a short stroll from the 1778 great house turned dining room and the new spa. ATTRACTIONS There’s no shortage of activities on Nevis, including beaches, rainforest and Nevis Peak hikes, snorkeling, mountain biking, and, occasionally, horse racing at the Indian Castle track. |
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