A bountiful beauty
A decade ago, the little Caribbean island of Bequia was set to be the next big thing — and it’s mission accomplished
THE turbo-prop banks through pink clouds, revealing the island below: bottle-green hills, thumbnail crescents of sand, jade Caribbean shallows, wooden shacks and homes. And a crinkly coastline.
Bequia, half an hour by air from Barbados, is a prized dot in the archipelago nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines, which includes billionaire hideaway Canouan and celebrity magnet Mustique.
Our plane hits the cricketpitch airstrip with a ‘Whoa!’ from the white-knuckled on board. The winding southcoast road to the hotel is steep and bumpy. People wave from bus stops, waysides are grazed by goats and the air smells of hibiscus.
When I last came, eight or so years ago, Caribbean old hands were already proclaiming Bequia (‘bekwy’) the next big thing in the Windies. So I’m a little nervous. Has it changed? Or is it still unspoilt, unhurried and unassuming?
Thankfully, I am delighted to find the boutique Bequia Beach Hotel, with its sea-view balcony suites and cottages, still convivial and family-run.
Genial Swedish owner Bengt Mortstedt greets arrivals, aided either by his daughter or son and daughter-inlaw. The gardens are busy with palms and paintboxbright flowers, while the guests — mostly happy returnees — are never too old to gyrate to the DJ’s calypso sounds. After a dip in Friendship Bay and a dusk rum punch, I dine on jerk chicken and barbecued amberjack at Bagatelle, the hotel restaurant, overlooking the swell.
Mortstedt pulls up a chair and as the wine flows, so does the chat, from discussion about the island’s precious rainwater reserves to the rise of its super-villas.
Case in point: Grenadine Hills, a trio of brand new palatial piles north along the sands and part of the hotel. With tourmaline-blue private pools, elegant hardwood fittings from St Vincent and alfresco dining, at upwards of €2,100 a night for ten guests, they are worthy of Mustique — and much more affordable.
Mortstedt says Bequia will never be mass-market. ‘There’s the lack of space, water and airlift. I can’t see any money coming to build a longer runway, although they’ve already resurfaced the international airport on St Vincent, which opened six years ago.’
Next morning I visit the capital, Port Elizabeth, using Gideon’s Taxi Service, which obligingly bills your room, picking up and dropping off anywhere. The cab is opensided, the journey breezy and villages whiz by as bright as Dolly Mixtures.
Port Elizabeth is a blast of colour, with a brilliant white and blue Anglican church, St Mary’s, and market stalls of rainbow fruit. There are views over yachts and catamarans, reminders of Bequia’s maritime heritage: sailing, boatbuilding, fishing and even whaling — officially capped at four a year.
It’s a wonderful place to wander. In a backstreet, I discover Threadworks, which makes beautiful sustainable island fashions and oozes initiative.
‘We’re still feeling the repercussions of Covid,’ says Jessica, the store manager. ‘It highlighted the fragility of our economy and the need to diversify our offerings.’
For more local flavour, Jessica steers me to nearby Cheri’s Rooftop Terrace, a current island favourite among expats and locals, with shabby-chic taverna decor and moreish ‘West Indian tapas’, as Cheri calls them.
I eat small plates of guava chicken, conch fritters with mango sour and poached lobster with chutney while Cheri tells me how she built her restaurant on the roof of her house as renting was too pricey.
Gathering rainwater, cultivating food — Bequians are super-resourceful. I also eat well at Jack’s Beach Bar, which is pale and trendy, like something from St Tropez.
As I snack on coconut prawns and conch croquettes, I notice TV chef Matt Tebbutt (Saturday Kitchen) is there.
To find it, follow the atmospheric walkway from Port Elizabeth south along the boardwalk and around the headland to Princess Margaret Beach. It’s named after an apocryphal visit from the royal during her honeymoon — and it’s the best beach on the island, with millpondsmooth waters. Actually I lie: Lower Bay, farther south, is more beautiful still. It’s effortlessly laid-back, tree-shaded and loved by locals and visitors alike.
The new place to meet islanders at Lower Bay is Provision, which works magic with local produce.
I get talking to Chris and Lou, who own a bijou B&B, The Lookout, on a hill above the sea. We share Asian-flavoured treats including irresistible cold noodles with chicken skewers and they insist that I must return for next year’s Bequia Music Fest, which happens during the last week of January.
Bequia doesn’t need to be the next big thing any longer. It is what it is and those who know it return again and again.
TRAVEL FACTS
TURQUOISE Holidays offers seven nights’ B&B in a Beachfront Suite at Bequia Beach Hotel from €2,550, including a 30 per cent accommodation discount, saving up to €1,050 per couple. Prices include flights with BA to Barbados from Heathrow, return flights to Bequia with Bequia Air and transfers. Offer valid for stays between April 1 and June 4, 2023; book by February 28 see turquoise holidays.co.uk.
MILWAUKEE is not the most glamorous place to begin a cruise. It’s an unpretentious, midsize, blue-collar city lying on the west bank of Lake Michigan, some 100 miles north of Chicago.
But as a jumping-off point to explore North America’s Great Lakes, it’s just about perfect.
The night before our voyage my wife and I have a raucous night out in the ‘historic’ Third Ward district (it goes all the way back to the 1850s). We eat excellent fish and chips at the Oyster Bar and sample the product which, according to a memorable slogan and the Jerry Lee Lewis song, ‘made Milwaukee famous’ — beer.
Our ship, the Viking Octantis, is waiting for us next morning at the city’s airport. This once-bustling hub serving America’s Rust Belt is now a slightly lonely place surrounded by freeways and the huge mounds of salt that keep the roads open in the harsh Lakes winter.
It was quite a lot colder 14,000 years ago. Then, the ice sheets of Hudson Bay melted and coursed down through what is now Ontario and into the north-eastern US states. As the meltwater retreated, it left the Great Lakes: five huge splodges on the map filled with 5,439 cubic miles of freshwater, which is 21 per cent of the Earth’s total. The biggest splodge, Superior, is the most northerly.
Two long splodges, Michigan and Huron, flow to Chicago and Detroit. The minor splodges of Ontario and Erie mark the southern boundary — huge bodies of water in themselves but dwarfed by Superior which, with a surface area of more than 30,000 square miles, is the world’s largest body of freshwater.
Our voyage takes us north to Mackinac, where the tips of lakes Michigan and Huron merge. Following an afternoon on that historic island made rich by fur trading and tourism, and the site of a major British victory in the almost-forgotten 1812 war with America, we head east overnight along Huron.
There, we drop anchor (although actual anchors on these modern ships are purely for show) and begin to enjoy off-boat and onshore activities: canoeing, hiking and guided tours by the Octantis experts.
Then it is back west and north through the Soo Locks into the mysteries of Superior itself.
In all, we spend eight days and seven nights on board before reaching Thunder Bay, a workmanlike Canadian city that makes Milwaukee look like Monte Carlo.
The experience could not be more different from those cruises where you hop off and on at one famous port stop after another. If you want shows, shopping and sites, this isn’t for you. Apart from Mackinac, our only land experiences are lunches at two wilderness lodges and the old copper mining settlement of Silver Islet.
It’s about soaking up a landscape that’s newly carved (by those Ice Age glaciers) and dizzyingly old (the Canadian Shield rocks date back more than four billion years in places).
And it’s about using some of the most advanced oceanographic technology around to explore the secrets of the Lakes. Because, for all their importance to the ecology of the world, there’s a lot we don’t know about these majestic, fragile places.
The upmarket Norwegian line Viking decided to take the Great Lakes plunge when looking for a destination where its Antarctic exploration ships could spend the northern summer months. The Lakes are not a major destination for cruises: we didn’t see anything bigger than a fishing boat.
The Octantis, launched early in 2022, is not huge by the standards of modern liners: 665ft long, six decks, 189 staterooms. It has been designed to slip through the narrow channels and locks, as well as combat the polar icefields. It’s luxurious but in a Nordic way. Nothing show-offy.
TO reach our cabin, we pass through the Explorer’s lounge: part bar, part lounge, part library, part gallery. Our ‘stateroom’ has blonde wood, cream leather sofas, woollen throws and a floor-to-ceiling panoramic window. Most of the voyage, the same scene passes by like one of those ‘slow TV’ programmes: gently rippling, deep blue water, a horizon of low wooded hills bounded by ancient rocks.
There are lots of hidden wardrobes and cupboards. Not that you will need them. The passengers, mainly over 60, a large majority North American and all well-off, are past caring about impressing fellow guests with posh togs, whether in the all-day World Cafe or two fine-dining restaurants. My wife and I make
Immerse yourself: Lakes view and, above, a submarine explores the depths. an effort for the captain’s table dinner (an Indian feast). I’m the only one wearing a jacket and Annabel’s are the only high heels on show.
Later, we meet a couple of semi-retired chaps from San Diego who use a part of their tech industry fortunes to take a couple of Viking cruises a year. They tell us they love the discreet vibe, the absence of forced jollity, the terrific (and all-included) food and drink — and, they frankly admit, the nochildren rule.
We see our new friends every day as they take a walk around the observation deck. But the Octantis is designed to stretch minds as well as legs. There are 18 expedition crew on board, including geologists, geophysicists and ornithologists.
As we mill around the lower decks, heading back from an excursion or off to dinner, the experts are on hand with their charts and specimens to explain what we’re seeing.
There are lectures in the evening and the emphasis is on learning. The Octantis is also a Polar Class 6 expedition ship. At water level, there is a science lab and the kind of hangar Q inhabits in James Bond movies. It houses millions of dollars’ worth of gear designed to measure the Lakes water, earth, air and biology. There’s a Special Operations Boat equipped with a three-sector broadband multibeam echo sounder; the sonar maps the bottom of the Great Lakes in great detail. It’s more fun than it sounds, reaching terrific speeds as it bounds through the waves, and we amateur scientists hang on for dear life. The hangar is also where John lives. John is a yellow submarine. There are four others in the Viking fleet — Paul, George and Ringo.
The subs do important work investigating the 1,300ft-deep waters in Lake Superior. Guests get to be submariners for an hour in a much shallower part of Lake Huron.
We squeeze down a ladder and take our seats. It’s even more of a squeeze for the pilot, Aled, a strapping Welsh lad. His frame is huddled over what looks like a videogame control.
He equalises the pressure, activates the thrusters and we descend gently to the bottom. The scene underwater here in the heart of the Great Lakes is not exactly the Great Barrier Reef.
There’s some sediment, a clump or two of seagrass and some minnows flitting about. But, still, for the six of us on board, we have completed our first submarine dive and done our bit for science.
On the last day, we anchor at misty Silver Islet, go ashore and test our land legs. It’s a short cruise to Thunder Bay, where after dinner it’s still light. There’s one last chance to go on deck and drink in the Great Lakes palette: icy blue sky, a tangerine glow on the horizon, the setting sun gilding the decks.
I realise that, unlike other cruises, the water isn’t just the means to transfer you from place to place. These vast, mysterious expanses are the very reason to be here.
TRAVEL FACTS
THE eight-day voyage goes from Milwaukee to Thunder Bay and starts at €6,490 pp including flights from the UK. This includes meals, drinks, excursions, tips and lectures (viking.com).