One of the most recent acquisitions by ritzy Texan outfit Rosewood Hotels and Resorts is Jumby Bay Resort, a high class hotel and villa rental operation leased to Rosewood by the land owners, who happen to be a collective of the location's villa owners.
Jumby Bay is not simply a tropical cove though but a circuitous string of beaches, ranging from the platinum blond to muscovado sugar - for Jumby Bay is in fact a private island just off the coast of Antigua.
While small for an island - at 300 acres - its history is as predictably chequered as the rest of the Carribean. Discovered in 1493 by Christopher Columbus, a sugar plantation by the 1700's, a period of desertion and decrepitude followed by the arrival and swift departure of a series of madly optimistic (some might say bonkers) entrepreneurs and their failed plans for things like casinos and railways.
And thank the lord for that; Jumby Bay may not be the virgin territory that Columbus discovered back in the 15th century but it is still a favourite haunt of critically endangered Hawksbill Turtles, who crawl up its remote Pasture Beach to lay eggs - a sight that guests of the resort are invited to observe, guided by two researchers from the University of Georgia.
Access to the island is by launch from mainland Antigua - and after a long flight from London the ice cold rum punch that is served to you as you clamber aboard is most welcome, as is the island, though I'm not so sure about the refinery adjacent to the Antigua-side dock. On arrival on Jumby Bay it turns out this particular eyesore is in clear view of private villas worth several million US dollars, making them amongst the most expensive real estate in a region peppered with unsullied views.
What home-owners pay a premium for though, according to American Don Tate, resident and Jumby Bay realtor for twenty years, is not only the paradisiacal location but security. It seems what these high rollers are terrified of, having acquired palatial expressions of their material wealth in a materially deprived region, are the locals. To quote Tate this island's USP is "no indigenous population", apart from the turtles that is.
But while home-owners, at least according to Tate, might be wary of Antiguans, the Resort is always inundated with job applications. Rates are high starting at $700 per night for an Ocean View Room in Summer rising to $15,000 per night for a six bedroom villa at Christmas, which means that tips are correspondingly high too.
My husband absolutely loved our stay in the hotel there, ensconced as we were in a one-bedroom suite (there are approximately 40 rooms and suites in total plus 11 villas), housed in a two-suite bungalow in convenient proximity to the main hotel building and its restaurants. Our not-so-little nook came complete with a view, through the lush gardens (expertly maintained by Navis, the Head Gardener) to a white powder beach and crystalline blue sea.
Suite furnishings are rich but subtle with an Asian flavour - dark polished wood and bamboo - with a good, solid fourposter bed and, one of my favourite features, an outdoor bathroom (as well as indoor shower) - with free standing bath and shower deck. This kind of generous, not to mention, sensual luxury even extends to the toiletries, where bath salts come in proper sized glass bottles, as does bubble bath and soap in large cakes instead of the irritating size of a silver dollar. Such exotic trends have not quite reached the main hotel building though - housing reception, the real estate office, the shop, The Verandah Bar and the breakfast and lunch restaurant - which still glories in a more tourist traditional palette of pastel pinks and turquoises plus a rather cool cast concrete wave-shaped canopy constructed I guess by one of the island's 'entrepreneurs back in the 60's. Dining takes place in the genuinely charming old Estate House where the food is very good and the gardens are Midsummer's Night Dream magical. Interestingly this high class resort does not yet have a spa but it does have skilled technicians who will visit your room. Environmental sustainability is an increasing preoccupation when it comes to the way us humans live and most particularly in a tropical location like the Caribbean. Reassuringly issues such as water and waste management and sustainable energy generation seem to be relatively well considered on Jumby Bay, though the Jumby Bay Island Company Ltd. cannot legislate for big hitters coming in and demolishing relatively new 10,000ft2 houses that are not to their taste to completely rebuild, which is sadly what happens occasionally.
Maybe the mythical "jumbies", mischievous spirits who leap into the bodies of passers-by, after which the island is named, are still at work?
Nevertheless Jumby Bay's power to evoke the romantic adventures of the Swiss Family Robinson, albeit a rather luxurious version thereof is irresistible - a whole island to yourself and no cars! Now that's what I call getting away from it all.
Words by Naomi Cleaver
