We know you ae crazy about the Caribbean -every month our mailbox is filled with letters seeking advice.
Here , you will find a report about Harbour Island.


Harbour Island the next St. Bart's, though you won't hear that from the island's residents. Brilanders are eager to tell you that it isn't an easy place to reach. You must fly to Florida or Nassau, change planes and fly to North Eleuthera, where you catch a taxi, then a speedboat, and then another taxi before getting to your room on an island that has no golf courses, no gambling, little shopping, electricity that switches off for hours at a time, and so few good hotels and restaurants you can count them on your fingers—leaving a few fingers free to pilot those golf carts, the preferred method of transport.


This balance, brought into being by the island's unique history, is tenuous at best. Inevitably, newcomers become atavistic, wishing the door could be locked behind them, worrying about each enhancement. "Every time you get something, you lose something," says one boldfaced Brilander, who demanded anonymity in order to avoid hastening the very process that attracted him to the place. Already he sees signs of decline, most notably inappropriate "improvements" unsuited to the island's essential identity. And he's not alone.

Co-owner and figurehead of the chic Landing hotel, India Hicks attracts attention because she's a daughter of the decorator David Hicks and granddaughter of the late Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was Queen Victoria's great-grandson. A bridesmaid to Diana, Princess of Wales, a former fashion model, and a distant heir to the British throne, Hicks tripped alarms not long ago when she issued an ominous prediction to London's society glossy Tatler: "As soon as Harbour Island becomes St. Bart's, we'll move on."

Many Sip-Sippers wondered aloud how she could say that when the recent increase of attention paid to the island has been in large part her doing.

Appropriately enough, Harbour Island's earliest visitors were also aristo-Brits. In the 17th century, the first white settlers arrived from Nassau. In the next century, British loyalistsfrom America followed, escaping the Revolution;the fourth earl of Dunmore built a summer house and planned Dunmore Town, the capital of Harbour Island. The town's neat grid of shady lanes is still lined with the Colonial-era clapboard houses that inspired someone to dub the island the Nantucket of the Caribbean (even though it's in the Atlantic).