02 May 2024

St Barts

We offer a wide choice of cheap flights to St Barts together with St Barts hotels, tours and self-drive itineraries.

Other Caribbean Reviews

The most exclusive island of all?

Crime is virtually unheard of. Unlike many of it's celebrity quests. But how affordable is the beautiful Caribbean island of St Bart's for visitors on a more modest budget? Rebecca Fowler packed her most stylish swimsuit and went to find out...

1 St Barts beach 2 Harbour 3 Room Service

FROM THE MOMENT YOU STEP on to the tiny runway of St Bart’s, you can “smell” the diamonds and the Versace.

This has been hailed the most exclusive island in the Caribbean, where the stars of film, fashion and music rub shoulders with the world’s wealthiest honeymooners.

But as the four-seater plane spluttered towards its hair-raising landing and the hills rose up to greet us through a sky filled with rainbows, St Bart’s still looked as it might have done to Columbus when he sailed by for the first time and named it after his brother.

We had barely even heard of St Bart’s when we set off in search of a girls’ winter holiday. My friend Sophie, an actress, had just come to the end of an exhausting run of a play.

I, meanwhile, had turned particularly pale after a nasty cold. The mere mention of sunshine was enough to have us scurrying for our swimming costumes.

Glamourous Wonderland

But we had never anticipated being air-dropped into this glamour wonderland. From Whitney Houston, Tom Hanks and Sly Stallone to Liz Hurley and celebrity photographer Patrick Demarchelier, who owns a £3 million villa, this is the place to be in the winter.

The pretty port of Gustavia, the island’s tiny capital, is full of luxury yachts and cruisers.

One huge yacht belonged to the head of Revlon, Ron “Lord of Lipstick” Perelman, who comes here with his film star wife Ellen Barkin.

So exclusive is the island that Madonna was allegedly turned away from the hotel next to ours, where the manager is flamboyantly choosy.

To our relief we received a delightful welcome at the 48-room Isle de France hotel on the Baie des Flamands. Perched on its own beach, it is both effortlessly stylish and laid-back.

And it is discreetly expensive by St Bart’s standards at about £390 a night for a room and £654 for a suite in high season. In recent years, the manager has been forced to turn away various film stars simply because he had no rooms left.

And then there is the sea. Huge glorious waves that send you flying.

Technicolour Blue Sky

Although the weather was mostly faultless, down to a Technicolor blue sky, there can still be off-shore tropical storms - it was thrilling to dive through warm, blue walls of water that explode into white.

The island manages to mix unadulterated glamour and wealth with a benign innocence.

From the story-book beaches to the lack of crime, it is almost like a lost world.

Locals do not bother with front door keys, the police station closes at weekends and everyone chugs along the winding roads in identical white, toytown-style Jeeps.

There is nowhere else like it in the Caribbean, although exclusivity comes at a cost - and not just to the pocket.

St Bart’s simply does not feel like the West Indies: no reggae, fading shacks, speakeasies, shantytowns and most unnervingly of all, no black faces.

Just as well Columbus named it without even stopping off - it used to be inhabited by cannibals. The island then passed into French hands, was briefly handed over to Sweden in return for a few warehouses, and then ended up back with the French.

It has not set itself deliberately in splendid isolation from the rest of the Caribbean. Because there were never any plantations on St Bart’s, it has remained a white enclave, described as “the best piece of France anywhere” and “Manhattan sur Mer”.

The locals, whose ancestors came from Brittany, still have strong French country accents, and many seem rather bewildered that their once idyllic but modest home has been transformed into one of the most sought after destinations in the world for the rich and famous.

But their Gallic spirit has not been overwhelmed by this ritzy revolution. When the Rockefellers bought a stunning conservatory-style house on Colombier beach, they must have thought they had a piece of perfection. But for 40 years the farmer who owned the house refused to give them access by car. They might be rich, but they would have to walk - and still need his permission for that.

The house now stands empty and the private property signs are rusting.

Liquid Emerald

The walk to the beach at Anse de Colombier is well worth it. After an hour-long scramble along the cliff sides, bending under great rocks, and hopping through butterflies, the bay rose up in front of us. There were barely any other bathers, just a few people swimming off yachts, and the water was like liquid emerald.

That, above all, is what you pay for in St Bart’s. It’s not the swanky designer shops, hidden behind the pretty wooden shop fronts of Gustavia: Cartier, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana, Hermes.

It’s not even the beautifully understated hotels with their private pools and sun-baked patios. It is this haven where you can leave your belongings on an abandoned beach and run into the ocean. This is true exclusivity. For the stars, it also has the added attraction of being virtually paparazzi free.

Undoubtedly, it does not come cheap. The flight alone to St Bart’s from Antigua is almost as expensive as the Atlantic crossing from Heathrow. And once you are on the island, do not expect to count the pennies. We paid £13 for a salad and £6 for an omelette.

But one of the best meals we had, at the tapas bar at the Eden Rock Hotel, accompanied by a bottle of Sancerre, came to a relatively reasonable £70.

And restaurants are plentiful. There are about 60 of them, which equates to roughly one for every 58 islanders.

After sipping our final glass of rose on the patio of the Isle de France, and taking one last plunge into the sea, we prepared to step back on to the tiny plane that had brought us here.

On our departure, as we watched the island melt back into its magical skyline, it felt like stepping back out of the other side of the wardrobe.

0330·100·2220i 0330 calls are included within inclusive minutes package on mobiles, otherwise standard rates apply. X 0330 calls are included within inclusive minutes package on mobiles, otherwise standard rates apply. X