Pleasure Island
Perfect beaches, total tranquillity, 4,000 bottles of wine and one very hungry goat – no wonder Petit St Vincent is my...
AS WE’RE being driven to our cottage, the car stops so we can admire the view. A cloudless sky frames a vista of palm trees and a deep ribbon of golden sand, with intoxicatingly blue water beyond. But I’m taken with the goat in the foreground, which is contentedly nibbling grass while tethered to a tree.
‘It belongs to one of the staff,’ says Matthew, the general manager of Petit St Vincent. ‘They come here to fatten up.’
As staff perks go, being able to bring your goat to work is probably a unique one. But it’s very Petit St Vincent, the private island retreat in the Grenadines where rich, thoughtful people come on holiday in a uniquely Caribbean way.
In terms of personality, PSV (as it’s always known) has a touch of the Bill Murray about it – it’s gentle, eccentric and thoroughly charming. Covering 115 acres, the resort has room for just 22 cottages, a 4,000-bottle wine cellar, customised Mini Mokes and a lot of peace and quiet.
The cottages, designed by Arne Hasselqvist, who was also responsible for the first houses on Mustique, are fitted out luxuriously, with huge beds, French windows, terraces with hammocks and palatial bathrooms but there will not be a television in your cottage. If you’d like one installed for your visit, this probably isn’t the right place for you. And if you want to Instagram your every move, you may want to give PSV a miss.
On the other hand, PSV is the right island for all sorts of people: honeymooners, celebrities who like privacy, and even phone-wielding, tech-obsessed me. If you want to communicate, there are the flagpoles outside each cottage. Raising a yellow flag means you want room service; a red flag means you don’t want to be disturbed.
PSV is a thoughtful hotel and one that requires (a very small amount of) forethought. Don’t feel like going to the restaurant for lunch or dinner? There’s a menu in each cottage – all you have to do is circle the things you want, put it in your pigeon-hole and raise the flag.
For the time-poor or the terminally indecisive, there is actually a walkie-talkie, but that’s not the point of PSV. You’ll find flagpoles by the beaches too, should you desire a snack, lunch or a cocktail without leaving your perfectly positioned sunlounger. A short while later, a Mini Moke will turn up with everything you request, including a bucket of ice and a few snacks staff think you might enjoy.
PSV is a fullboard resort – during lobster season (from September to April), guests can eat lobster for breakfast, lunch and dinner for no extra cost. And some do, picking their preferred crustacean from the pound in the beach restaurant.
Staying here is about switching off and slowing down. This is helped by some fairly draconian measures. There’s only one patch of wi-fi on PSV and it’s outside the manager’s office. At the beginning of my stay, I’d join my fellow addicts there early each morning. There are some comfy sofas and the barman would bring coffee but it was a rather visible place to admit your weakness. Other guests would wander by, chatting, engaging, looking at the birds that flitted about or talking about the scuba sessions they might take (the diving school is run by Jacques Cousteau’s son) and I would be staring at a screen. But as my stay wore on, things changed. There were other things to do: trail walks, yoga, spa sessions and taking trips on the hotel’s very own sloop, which was built on the neighbouring island of Petite Martinique. But mostly it was about relaxing. The beaches are some of the best in the Caribbean, and the water is incredibly clear. I snorkelled. I listened to the sound of the palm trees. I raised a flag for a glass of chilled rosé.
It’s a convivial hotel and the same guests tend to come back year after year; really regular ones leave their suitcases here for their next trip.
One evening I met Judy and JJ, from Washington, who were enjoying their 17th trip. We snacked on
lionfish in tempura – Judy, a keen scuba-diver, had caught the fish that morning.
PSV opened in 1966 and successive owners (there have been only three) have bought into the way of doing things. Nothing is flash but everything’s shipshape. It’s yachty in the best way, and the food is topnotch but not fussy. There isn’t a swimming pool but the cottages have air-conditioning now. The beach restaurant has been poshed up a bit.
THE only sign of activity is the occasional yacht sailing past or a Mini Moke crossing the island. Mini Mokes are more practical than golf carts when it comes to hills, a lot more fun and more in keeping with PSV’s attractive 1960s vibe. The island also has its own waterbottling plant that means that it doesn’t have to deal with plastic.
One morning I woke up with rain splashing outside. In my everyday world, I’d pick up my phone to check on an app how long it was due to last. This time, I settled down with a cup of coffee and a cookie (every cottage has a well-stocked jar) and watched the skies clear, which happened after about 20 minutes. I felt very self-sufficient – apart from the fact that someone brought me a rather nice breakfast halfway through the downpour.
The resort is currently reintroducing once-native tortoises. There’s a nursery for them just by the wi-fi zone, so I spent a fair amount of time observing their slow and mellow progress.
By the end, as I left connectivity and started to connect to PSV, I like to think their influence had rubbed off on me. Some might call it innate laziness but, having found my ideal environment, I think I had learned to adjust to it.