GO ALL OUT FOR ANTIGUA
Welcome to the island’s most expensive resort, with its own yacht and nesting turtles. You’ll never forget it...
HERE’S an alternative catchphrase to sum up Jumby Bay: ‘All-inclusive — and all-exclusive’, rather than ‘a private island paradise’, as it currently describes itself.
The all-inclusive bit is selfexplanatory and an absolute joy: no signing endless little chits every time you order another rum punch, or agonising over what tip to add. No trying to remember your room number — or even your name.
The all-exclusive part isn’t too shabby, either. For starters, getting there is ultraexclusive. From Antigua’s airport, it’s a five-minute drive in a luxury car to a snazzy private dock, then a seven-minute ride aboard the resort’s yacht.
On arrival, a glass of something or other and cool towel is offered, followed by a gentle buggy ride to your suite or villa (no mere rooms here), where you are given a detailed ‘orientation’. Then it’s up to you how you spend your days.
‘I’ve been here a week and hardly seen a soul,’ a guest tells me while we wait for a massage at the spa.
‘Do you come here often?’ I ask.
‘As often as I can, but did you know it’s meant to be the most expensive hotel in the world?’
I’m told the average spend per night is around €2,500.
It’s certainly the most expensive in Antigua. And it appeals especially to those who like to be in the Caribbean without necessarily experiencing much of the Caribbean beyond the weather, swaying palm trees and pristine beaches.
You won’t bump into any locals (except for the delightful staff); and there’s no rasta bar selling cheap Red Stripe lager — although there’s a shuttle boat back and forth to mainland Antigua. Then allow 40 minutes or so in a taxi down to English Harbour.
At sunset, instead, a waiter is stationed in the water with a table in front of him, from where he pours chilled rosé; a DJ stands near by with his computers and speakers to produce electrified versions of reggae favourites.
AT THE other end of the resort, a pro is waiting to hit a few balls on the immaculate tennis court, while in the distance new arrivals are pedalling gently around the 300-acre island on bikes.
There are no cars on Jumby. Your bike awaits outside your suite — or you can be ferried around in a buggy. It’s all terrifically safe, hence its popularity with families, albeit those for whom the cost-of-living crisis isn’t really a crisis at all.
Since 2017, Jumby Bay has been part of the German Oetker Collection (Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in the South of France, Le Bristol in Paris, The Lanesborough in London, et al) and it’s outrageously opulent. Most villas have their own pools (and not just plunge pools), outdoor baths and showers, complimentary mini-bars, four- posters and sumptuous bedlinen.
In addition to the 40 suites and villas, there are 21 private homes, some of which can be rented —Oprah Winfrey is reportedly one such home-owner.
Go for a private house sleeping ten for a week and you’re looking at over €27,000 a night. It’s fully staffed, of course, but you can also wander along to one of the three restaurants, including a fine dining affair in The Estate House.
The whole island is immaculate. Pasture Beach on the north coast is where you’ll spot turtles. Swim here and you’ll run out of superlatives to describe the experience.
But the genius of Jumby Bay is that the atmosphere remains laid-back. Dress up for dinner or go with un-smart casual, no one is bothered.
It’s the readjusting to the real world after a few days here that is the tough challenge — and not just because your wallet will have received such a bashing.
WAVING his wine glass at the Pacific surf thundering in the moonlight, Mike asks: ‘Why don’t more people know about Nicaragua? It’s paradise!’
I was having dinner with Mike and Flo from Cambridgeshire on a magnificent, wild, private beach. After three weeks in the Central American country, I was only non-American tourist they’d come across.
Mike, Flo and I were the sole guests at Morgan’s Rock, an ecolodge set in a 4,000-acre jungle estate. Where else would three tourists have such a place to themselves?
Glorious though it was, it felt almost overwhelming as I felt my way by torchlight back over the swaying hanging bridge to my luxurious hideaway, in the treetops, the ocean thundering below.
To say few of us go to Nicaragua is an understatement. Most know virtually nothing about the country, other than that Bianca Jagger hails from there, that it produces cigars and has a febrile, revolutionary past.
Yet Nicaragua is a revelation. Bordered by Honduras and Costa Rica, its beaches and natural habitat are more than a match for Costa Rica’s, and Nicaragua also has old colonial cities, rich in culture and beauty. Tourists had begun to trickle back some eight years ago following political unrest. But there were more protests in 2018, and then along came Covid.
The country’s history and Left-wing politics are complex but they’re worth reading about, as landing in the capital Managua can feel like arriving in an ailing, experimental utopia, and I wasn’t sure I liked it at first.
After the devastating 1972 earthquake, Managua was almost entirely rebuilt, and the country feels young, hard-won and idealistic, with its political slogans and huge posters of a smiling President Daniel
Ortega.
High above the city looms a silhouette, like a giant Sandeman sherry advertisement, of the guerrilla leader Augusto Sandino in his distinctive hat. It was he who led the successful rebellion against American occupation between 1927 and 1933.
I visited an artificial peninsula, designed for family fun with brightly painted benches and food shacks under palms planted in regimented rows. At the entrance is a billboard bearing a stirring quote from Chilean Marxist President Salvador Allende about striving for a better society. But on a windswept Sunday morning, the shacks were shuttered and it was deserted — dismal as Disneyland in the rain
Granada is Nicaragua’s oldest European-founded city. I found it enchanting, full of brightly painted colonial mansions, churches and a cathedral. On Sundays, joyous clapping and guitar playing drifts from evangelical services and families gather in the main square to eat vigoron — pork crackling with cassava and spicy cabbage.
The city is popular with expats who can be found drinking coffee on the deep, shaded verandah of the elegant, historic Hotel Plaza Colon, where horsedrawn carriages wait for tourists under the dusty fig trees.
Much of Granada’s allure lies in its proximity to Nicaragua Lake and its 365 isletas, tiny islands formed from Mombacho Volcano’s eruption over 20,000 years ago. I took a boat tour around the vast lake and spotted howler monkeys, cormorants, terns, ospreys, egrets, kingfishers and a rare great blue heron, then stayed at Jicaro ecolodge on an isleta.
Jicaro is set in its own tiny jungle, with nine luxury cabins (or casitas) among the trees and beautiful decks overlooking the lake where you can do yoga or just eat dinner as the sun sets.
Volcanoes are integral to Nicaragua and I was there when Nik Wallenda, the American highwire artist, walked 1,800 feet on a steel cable over the active Masaya crater. I watched it on television in the cloister by the gardens of Hotel El Convento in Leon. Cooks ran from the
Exclusive Caribbean: Jumby Bay is as good as it gets. Inset, a suite