'A Joy forever'
ST. JOHN | Mostly national park, this U.S. Virgin Island is an unspoiled gem
ST. JOHN, U.S. Virgin Islands -- It's hot. I'm thirsty. And I'm stranded on an island -- at least for a couple of hours.
I'm stuck on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Thomas, waiting for the ferry that's supposed to whisk me to Caneel Bay Resort on St. Tom's smaller and less populated counterpart, St. John.
(Lori Rackl/Sun-Times)
TIP: Visitors to St. John shouldn't miss the wonderfully laid-back watering hole called Skinny Legs in Coral Bay. Wash down a juicy burger with a rum and Coke at what's become a Caribbean institution. Esquire magazine has dubbed it one of the best bars in the country; www.skinnylegs.com.
I should have been on an earlier ferry but -- surprise, surprise -- my flight was delayed. So, instead of sipping rum punch at Caneel Bay, I'm killing time walking past an endless string of overly air-conditioned jewelry shops on St. Thomas and wondering how long-locked Rastafarians can wear knit stocking caps in this heat.
When the floating chariot for Caneel Bay's guests finally arrives, I'm the first to hop on. As we pull away from the dock, the region's famous trade winds quickly cool me off. So does the rum punch some nice woman just handed me.
Half an hour later, the ferry drops me off at a place that looks very different from the one I just left. There's no hillside covered in building facades. No airport. No cruise ship terminal to field the 1.9 million passengers that visited the U.S. Virgin Islands last year. Heck, there isn't even a high school.
But there are mountains packed with uninterrupted trees, like big heads of broccoli sprouting from the turquoise sea. And there's a shore lined with powdery beaches, populated by more palm fronds than people.
St. John looks like the Land That Real Estate Developers Forgot, and that's no accident. Two-thirds of this U.S. Virgin Island is a national park (read: paws off, Donald Trump). We have conservation-minded philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller to thank for that.
More than half a century ago, Rockefeller "discovered" Caneel Bay while sailing around the Caribbean, as bazillionaires are wont to do. Only 400 people lived on the island back then; 85 percent of the topography was jungle.
Knowing an unspoiled gem when he saw one, Rockefeller bought a small resort on St. John and developed the island's infrastructure to provide it with electricity, fresh water and roads. He donated the property to a Rockefeller family-supported foundation, which went on to buy 5,000 surrounding acres. The land was given to the U.S. government a few years later so, as Rockefeller put it, "this thing of beauty will be a joy forever."
Like Rockefeller envisioned, vacationers on both ends of the tax bracket can stay in the park, whether it be on a rustic campsite for $30 a night at Cinnamon Bay or $8,000 a night for Caneel Bay's luxurious Cottage No. 7, where Brangelina and their brood rang in the New Year in 2007.
I'm surprised Brangie's stay in this honeymoon hot spot didn't result in another little Pitt. The romantic resort claims to know of three sets of previous guests who now have babies named Caneel.
Cottage No. 7 is just a small piece of this sprawling, 170-acre former sugar plantation, where fearless donkeys and deer roam the remains of an 18th century sugar mill.
"Caneel" is the Dutch word for cinnamon, but sugar was the big moneymaker here for years.
Way back when, the Danes -- who once owned St. John -- just about covered the island in sugar cane. The end of slavery in what was then the Danish West Indies in 1848 wasn't exactly good for the sugar business. St. John's last sugar mill shut down in 1919, just a couple years after the United States snapped up what would become the U.S. Virgin Islands for $25 million -- or about twice as much as Kenny Chesney was asking for his mountaintop home on St. John during my June visit.
Caneel Bay's sugar mill ruins are an ideal place to linger over an intimate torchlight dinner -- a treat that'll cost you an extra $85 for the sweet surroundings. The resort also has several restaurants, not to mention 11 stellar courts that led Tennis Resorts Online to rank Caneel Bay No. 1 this year in the Caribbean and No. 5 overall.
The resort's wellness center has everything from yoga classes and astrology consultations to "sound lifts," where tiny musical tuning forks and different-colored lights are used on various parts of the face to release tension and boost energy. (Yeah, I don't buy it either. But it sure sounds nice.)
Some 166 hotel rooms -- all free of TVs and phones -- are scattered around six of Caneel Bay's seven beaches. That's right: One resort, seven beaches.
The quantity and quality of these beaches help set Caneel Bay apart from other high-end Caribbean resorts. Each of these pristine patches of sand is special in its own way. Hawksnest Beach has the best sunrise; Scott Beach, the best sunset. Want to see both? All you have to do is walk -- barefoot if you like -- across a short peninsula.
Paradise Beach gets the award for best backdrop for nearly naked models. It graced the controversial cover of this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Poor Marisa Miller apparently not only lost her bikini top; I was told she got stung by a jellyfish, scraped her thigh on coral and stepped on a thorny sea urchin. Who says modeling is easy?
My experience in the water wasn't nearly as traumatic as Marisa's. In fact, it was fantastic. About 400 types of fish loiter in these waters, and I spent plenty of time spying on them from my snorkel mask. One spot was so full of starfish it looked like an underwater Hollywood Walk of Fame. A hundred feet from my hotel room on Hawksnest Beach, I swam past a stingray as big as a patio umbrella.
I soaked up every last second on that beach, giving myself just enough time to sprint across the narrow peninsula and down the long pier to the ferry that would take me back to St. Thomas.
Unlike airplanes, ferries departing from Caribbean resorts are almost never delayed. But if they were, this is one island I wouldn't mind being stranded on.