Where to Eat, Drink, and Stay in Beautiful Bequia

After a decades-long absence, a writer returns to the tiny Caribbean island that inspired love and healing in her family.

I have been to Paradise. Today, I’ll find out if it’s still there.

I’m standing on the quayside in Kingstown, the capital of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, shading my eyes against the blinding sunshine to look across the harbor at the foreboding green mountain rising out of the Caribbean Sea nine miles away. The last time I stood in this spot was nearly 50 years ago, waiting with my mother to board the mail boat to Bequia, the island refuge that changed our lives forever.

If anyone had told me then that it would take so long to return, I would never have believed them. Bequia was our home away from home for three years, the first place in my young life where I had ever felt truly safe. Now, I’m finally going to set foot on it again, arriving in its picture-perfect harbor on one of two ferries that make the one-hour crossing several times a day. I imagine flinging myself to the ground when I step off the boat to kiss the soft, white sand, crooning, “Bequia, my Bequia, I am here again.”

I also fear that I won’t recognize it — and that it will not recognize me.

Today’s pre-dawn journey began much as it did back in 1972, when my mother bundled me into a taxi outside our Greenwich Village apartment, eager to escape the New York winter and her ex-husband, my father. Emotionally abusive and physically unpredictable, he frequently caused chaos both in private and in public. I was wary of him by the age of 5.

My mother had an affinity for the Caribbean, having visited St. Croix many times before I was born, and was captivated by a tiny island she’d heard about called Bequia: seven square miles of tropical vegetation surrounded by clear turquoise water, 385 nautical miles north of Venezuela. She wasn’t sure how to get there until she happened upon an article with the necessary details: a plane to Barbados followed by a smaller one to St. Vincent, and then that mail boat to Bequia. It was also astonishingly affordable, even for a single mom with a modest salary, a son in college, and a little girl in day care.

Now, decades later, I am seeing Bequia through my mother’s eyes. The side of the island facing St. Vincent is densely forested and uninhabited, even a little foreboding. It’s only at the last minute, when the ferry finally turns into Admiralty Bay, the water dotted with boats bobbing at anchor and ringed by small, colorful buildings, that you realize you haven’t made a huge mistake. Indeed, it’s as if the gently curving shoreline is reaching out to new arrivals, ready to wrap them in its warm embrace.

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For a little girl from Manhattan, Bequia was a marvelous, magical adventure. The moment we alighted, the world transformed from black and white to Technicolor, as if we had stepped inside The Wizard of Oz. That first night, staying at the Sunny Caribbee Hotel just down the beach from the landing at Port Elizabeth, my mother and I stood on the lawn, hand in hand, the sky so heavy with stars that I found myself trying to reach out and touch them, as if I were wearing 3-D glasses.

The Sunny Caribbee is now called the Bequia Plantation Hotel, and it looks exactly like my childhood memories: a large central guesthouse surrounded by a wide veranda, with several small cottages to one side flanked by a grove of mango trees. When I was a child, Bequia had only been electrified for a few years, and the accommodations were comfortable but simple; today, the modernized rooms have tropical style, while each cottage’s bougainvillea-draped wraparound porch offers a perfect spot to unwind. Armed with a glass of icy rum punch, I cross the same lawn to where the crystal-clear waters lap gently at the small beach as the trade winds ruffle through the once-straight rows of palms planted by the original owner long before I was born. They are taller now and bent every which way, untroubled by the effects of time. I breathe in the air. It feels right.

Familiarity continues at breakfast. The hotel’s guests are mostly British and Caribbean, enjoying food influenced by both cultures on the island, where a full English assortment of sausages, eggs, and beans is accompanied by pineapple, papaya, and mango. The freshly baked pastries remind me of the lady in Port Elizabeth who used to bake bread in ovens fashioned from large oil drums and who would occasionally treat all of the local kids — probably just to get us to go away — with hunks of warm brioche redolent with coconut.

In the half-mile walk from the Bequia Plantation Hotel to the harbor, there are a few new villas and scuba shops nestled next to restaurants like Laura’s, locally famous for paella and fresh pasta, and Mac’s Pizza and Kitchen, featuring dozens of fresh toppings, including lobster. I sit on the dock at the Frangipani, the guesthouse where my mother and I spent two summers, next door to the Whaleboner restaurant, its entrance framed by a whale’s bleached jawbones. Stopping at The Fig Tree for lunch, I sip on a cold Hairoun, the local Vincy beer, while waiting for a plate of crispy fried breadfruit, another childhood favorite. When Cheryl Johnson, the owner, delivers my order, she smiles and says, “I brought you fried and raw — it just seemed like that’s what you’d like.”

I wonder to myself how she knew. Is there something about me that says I still belong?

Over the next few days, I crisscross the island, visiting the town of Paget Farm on the south side, careening along roads high above dazzlingly beautiful Friendship Bay in the backs of taxi trucks, and hiking from Princess Margaret Beach to Lower Bay, making new friends along the way and getting snippets about old friends we left behind. I marvel at the 1,000-year-old Amerindian pottery collection at the Bequia Heritage Museum, chronicling the ancient history of Bequia’s evolution and its troubled colonial past. An 18th-century sugar plantation, meticulously restored by the Grenadine Wild Sea Salt company, which captures wild sea salt from the island’s own waters, still serves as a reminder of the enslaved people who once totaled 85% of the population 200 years ago.

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At Toko’s Step Down Bar, a watering hole where I’m treated like a long-lost local, I share with Toko, the chef and owner, and the regulars the story of how my mother and I ended up on Bequia and, during our final summer, befriended a 26-year-old sailor. How he and my mom fell in love and eloped a few months later, and he became my stepdad. How later our family built a boat and planned on sailing back to Bequia, but life happened, and we never made that trip. How I video-called the two of them as I sat by the water that first evening and showed them the view, and we all got misty because this was where our family was born.

Toko taps a glass of rum against mine and says, “Come back sooner next time. We’ll be here.”

Getting there

American Airlines flies directly from Miami to St. Vincent several times a week, and Caribbean Airlines flies directly from JFK. Take a taxi from the St. Vincent airport to the wharf in Kingstown to catch the ferry to Port Elizabeth, Bequia; ferry services leave several times a day (bequiaexpress.com or admiralty-transport.com). You can also charter a speedboat service like Island Fever Tours SVG for transportation to and from Bequia, which includes airport pickup and drop-off.

Taxis (mostly converted pickup trucks) are an affordable way to traverse the island. Most drivers will give you their WhatsApp contact information — the preferred method of communication for many Bequia businesses — so you can arrange a return ride.

Where to stay

Bequia Plantation Hotel

Situated within a 10-minute walk of Port Elizabeth’s shopping and dining, it has accommodations ranging from bright guest rooms in the main house to private villas; there’s also a full-service restaurant by the beach and lush gardens. Rooms from $198

The Liming

Its motto is “the art of doing nothing,” and that’s exactly what makes this resort, tucked away on Bequia’s windward side, a true retreat. Guest villas feature private infinity pools, while the open-air dining pavilion provides unobstructed Atlantic Ocean views — perfect to enjoy while sipping signature passion fruit and rum cocktails. Rooms from $385

Where to eat and drink

Provision

Modern fine dining with the freshest catch of the day and Caribbean-inspired flavors, from salads dressed with passion fruit vinaigrette to crispy tofu served in a coconut curry broth.

The Fig Tree

Grilled lobster, Creole salted codfish and banana, and curried conch are classics, while the crispy fried breadfruit is a must-have.

Toko’s Step Down Bar & Restaurant

Settle in with a glass of Sparrow’s, the local St. Vincent rum, and if you’re hungry, eat whatever Toko is cooking up, from barracuda to shark.

De Reef

The tuna salad alone — with chunks of fresh-from-the-sea tuna and crisp veggies dressed in mayonnaise — will win you over at this beachside hangout.

Grenadine Wild Sea Salt

Get the true flavor of the local terroir with a private tasting at this wild sea salt farm, built inside the restored ruins of an 18th-century sugar plantation with spectacular hilltop views.

Jack’s Beach Bar

Head to Princess Margaret Beach for swimming, snorkeling, and Jack’s refreshing SVG & Tonic, a ginger-and-grapefruit variation on the classic G&T.

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