Posted by: Editor on Jan 10, 2007 – 10:09 PM
exoticlocations Harbour Island, Bahamas: After rinsing the pale pink sand from her feet and those of her two towheaded toddlers with water from a coconut-shell ladle, the tall tanned blonde in the fluttering ochre pareu and Gucci glasses barely broke stride as she registered the face of one of the world’s most famous rockers, who was sitting on the terrace at Sip Sip restaurant.
Mick Jagger might have been enjoying a lobster quesadilla and a beer out front, but on Harbour Island he’s safe from gawkers and autograph seekers.
Most of the regulars prefer the umbrella-shaded deck of this lime-green cottage, which offers superb views of the Bahamian island’s celebrated pink sand beach through a screen of palm fronds. Then, too, the unspoken code on this most eminently fashionable of island hideaways is that you never, ever approach a well-known face.
As temperatures drop in major American and European cities, the tropical island hunting season begins in earnest, and if this year the buzz is all about Phu Quoc, off the coast of Vietnam, as the next great winter beach destination, Harbour Island languidly awaits the arrival of a global gratin who’ve made this freckle in the sea one of the most chic places in the world to flee the gray of winter.
“Lots of famous people come to Harbour Island, but everyone leaves them alone,” says Julie Lightbourne, a fifth- generation Brilander, as Harbour Island natives are known, and the charming owner of Sip Sip, the best place on the island for lunch. “In spite of its popularity with celebrities, Harbour Island remains a very friendly, laid-back place. I think part of the reason is that there isn’t the huge gap between haves and have-nots that you find on other Caribbean islands. Our mentality is also very democratic when you live on a small island, no one puts on airs.”
The antithesis of bling-draped table- dancing Saint Barts or turbo-charged sea-sex-and-sun Miami Beach, Harbour Island is not only easier to reach than most of the Indian Ocean or Asian islands you fly into the North Eleuthera airport, which has regular service from Miami, and then continue to the island by water taxi but it also doesn’t require health precautions like anti-malaria pills.
Its accessibility and the breezy atmosphere of this tiny little place it’s only five and a half kilometers, or three and a half miles, long and less than a kilometer wide and has a year-round population of 2,000 are a major draw for globe-trotters like the designer Diane Von Furstenberg; the Miller sisters, daughters of the duty-free mogul Robert Miller; the model Elle Macpherson; and the photographer Bruce Weber. But the spectacular pink sand beach, site of several Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoots and a strand regularly ranked as one of the world’s best, is what makes the island irresistible.
Dunmore Town, the only settlement on the island, is just a few streets of coral-block curbstones lined with handsome wooden colonial cottages painted in pastels. It was founded during the 17th century, when the first English settlers arrived on the island from Nassau, and the local architectural idiom arrived with loyalists fleeing East Coast cities after the American Revolution.
The embryonic town took a turn for the elegant when the fourth earl of Dunmore showed up and built a summer house, which began Harbour Island’s first wave of gentrification.
With a mixed population of freed slaves, English aristocrats and expat Yankees, it had by 1900 become the Bahamas’ second city, after Nassau, living off of fishing, shipping, distilling and the sugar cane and pineapple crops grown on the long, narrow island of Eleuthera, just a 10-minute boat ride across a shallow lagoon.
In 1951, this sleepy place made its debut as an elite tourist destination when J. Allen Malcolm opened the island’s first resort, Pink Sands, which promoted itself strictly by word of mouth to a select and very Waspy audience. They instantly fell in love with Harbour Island, often described as a Caribbean version of Nantucket.
The next hotel to open was the Oceanview Club, a preferred hideaway of fashion types to this day. Slowly, word of this tropical hideaway found its way to Park Avenue matrons, Mayfair bankers and Parisian photographers, and buzz over the island quietly grew as it became the location for a growing number of fashion shoots during the 1980s.
Hurricane Andrew flattened the Pink Sands in 1992, but the ruins were quickly bought up by the founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, who rebuilt the hotel in the same fantasy Moorish style it has today. The same year, the Blockbuster Video billionaire Wayne Huizenga paid some $4 million for an estate on the island, and the whispering about this little paradise started to become audible everywhere from Milan to Hollywood.
Enter India Hicks, daughter of the legendary decorator David Hicks, the granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten, and a former Ralph Lauren model. Hicks moved to the island in 1996 with her interior designer partner, David Flint Wood, and the pair were hired by Brenda Barry, a former Miss Bahamas, to create a new look for The Landing. They gave the seven bedrooms in the colonial-style 1800 vintage limestone building a dreamy plantation character, and this fresh take on Caribbean casual chic immediately hit the pages of such trend-driving magazines as Architectural Digest and Vogue.
Almost overnight, an islet that had been a closely guarded secret of the world’s style arbiters was in the spotlight, which caused a lot of hand- wringing among the locals, who feared the island would be ruined.
It wasn’t. Happily, Harbour Island could never suffer Nantucket Syndrome, because it has only a handful of hotels and land is scarce and expensive. Sure, there are more day-trippers than there used to be, but aside from several excellent restaurants notably The Landing and the Rock House anyone arriving on the island today would barely find evidence that it’s one of the chicest places in the world to play Robinson Crusoe.
People scoot around on rented electric golf carts or bicycles, and it remains a blissfully barefoot kind of place.
Days start with a quick trip to Arthur’s, a bakery, for croissants and maybe a quick bit of e-mail on the computer, plus a stop at the fishermen’s dock to order rock lobster or the catch of the day for the next evening’s dinner.
After breakfast and errands, it’s down to the beach, where you can rent umbrellas or send children out on pony rides with a Rastafarian guide. Around 1 p.m., the beach empties and the sip sip, the local word for gossip, begins over bloody marys and cold chardonnay on the terrace at Sip Sip, or over a fresh conch salad at Queen Conch down on the harbor.
Lazy afternoons follow lunch, and around 5 p.m. Dunmore Town gets busy again, with the international set heading for the gourmet deli downtown.
After dinner, island dwellers have a handful of fun and decidedly funky places to dance the night away, including Gusty’s, perched on a hillside with a sand-covered dance floor; Vick-Hum’s, the dive that seems to draw every visiting movie star; and the party-down Sea Grape Night Club, where you might catch a glimpse of Naomi Campbell on the dance floor.
Harbour Island is a wonderful summer destination, too. Spectacular beaches, casual atmosphere and excellent restaurants notwithstanding, it’s the Brilanders who make the island such a movingly unforgettable place.
Most repeat visitors to Harbour Island rent houses, with rates for a two- bedroom house running around $3,000 in high season.
The island’s best hotels are the trendy Pink Sands (www.pinksandsresort.com), the gracious Dunmore Beach Club (www.dunmorebeach.com), The Landing (www.harbourislandlanding.com) and The Rock House (www.rockhousebahamas.com). Two excellent Web sites offer information on rentals and island life: www.harbourislandguide.com and www.myharbourisland.com.
Source: By Alexander Lobrano
The International Herald Tribune
www.iht.com