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to be confused with their Yankee sisters, these 50 islands - or, rather,
the dozen that are inhabited - offer a more restrained, though often
equally plush brand of tourism. Here, you will see nary a golf club
(nor course), but you may spot a pair of honeymooners galloping on
horseback through the surf, or just sipping a surfside cocktail as
the crew of a sixty-foot yawl rows in to join them. Old money and
sailing are the life of the party in these parts, so many an overheard
conversation features the Bermuda Race or Edgartown Regatta, while
numerous resorts (retreats would be a better word) exemplify that
oh-so-patrician approach to vacationing: flawless service and setting,
with luxuries dating back to the 1940s (sometimes the 1840' s). Here,
it is not uncommon for hotel guests to dress for dinner yet retire
after cognac to spartan cottages with entertainment no more high-tech
than a beat-up paperback romance. There are, to be sure, hideaways
with spa-scale amenities, but recreation isn't likely to surpass the
pace of croquet or birdwatching. (Tennis is positively daring.)
Tortola,
the main island, occupies a scant 20 miles yet rises to a stirring
apex of nearly 1,800 feet. Like its siblings, it is a well-preserved
Eden of flowering fruit trees and jungle skirted by a coastline scalloped
with postcard-pretty coves of lustrous white sand. Virgin Gorda, the
next-largest at 8 square miles, features one of the Caribbean's greatest
natural oddities: a shoreline cluster of gigantic boulders called
the Baths, where visitors clamber through tidal crannies and soak
in stone basins of crystalline sea. Most hotels and villas are to
be found on these two islands; beyond their shores, a handful of impish
compatriots - including Peter Island, Jost Van Dyke, Guana and Mosquito
Islands - offer lavish seclusion in a wide array of flavors, from
self-sufficient primitive to four-star deluxe.
The
relative inaccessibility of the BVIs has thus far protected them from
overdevelopment, yet some veteran travelers observe that, political
affiliation aside, they are slowly becoming more American than British.
Nevertheless, teatime is a well-entrenched custom - and one that serves,
perhaps, to exemplify the life-style so popular here: that of the
worldly, well-mannered recluse.
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