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gets in the swing
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EXCLUSIVE
INTERVIEW: Brad Beaty - Raffles Canouan
Wednesday, March 02 2005 @ 12:37 PM GMT
Read below a write up
of the Island from a customer.
SEEING HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES can be a chastening
experience. I was propping up the poolside bar, chatting
to a middle-aged woman from Florida, when we were
joined by a young man in a white tuxedo. ‘This is
Raoul,’ said the woman, ‘My hairdresser.’ I nearly
choked on my dry Martini.
‘I have a wedding on Saturday,’ she continued. ‘Raoul
is the only one I trust. He really knows about roots.’
And this time I did choke on my Martini, spilling
nearly 20 dollars’ worth down my chinos.
These playgrounds of the super-rich can play hell
with your trousers. Even in a region rich in such
playgrounds, the new Raffles resort on Canouan Island
in the Grenadines is a Rolls-Royce destination.
We had to share the resort with 80-odd New Yorkers,
getting ready for the said wedding, and the whiff
of Manhattan money quite overpowered the hibiscus.
I have never seen so many thin Americans before. It
was standing room only in the gym as they went through
their pre-nuptial tone-ups.
The resort is very new. The palm trees beside the
pool still needed wooden struts to support them. And
the imported sand on the beach was so pristine that,
if you saw a footstep on it, you would recoil in amazement
like Robinson Crusoe. But the place is also hugely
impressive, a Caribbean star in the making.
Simply getting to Canouan was a romantic experience.
Our little six-seater plane took off from Barbados
and headed west into the setting sun. An eyeful of
dark-blue sea, a glimpse of Mustique to our right,
and we began our long graceful decent into Canouan.
The runway was no longer than a football pitch. The
terminal building was just a thatched hut, with a
lone immigration official who looked irritated that
we had disturbed his sleep. Then a 10-minute taxi
ride – past a rum shop, past a rickety church, past
a few smiling villagers, past a cemetery overrun with
goats – and we were there.
Mild eccentricity
First impressions were of mild eccentricity. There
were all the usual things you would expect in an upmarket
beach resort – a swimming pool, a golf course, a scattering
of villas, a row of luxury boutiques – plus, centre
stage, a 19th-century church. It dominated the whole
place and had, we were told, been shipped stone by
stone from Canterbury in the Victorian era. Weird.
But beyond the eccentricity, there was something else:
real, unostentatious luxury.
The brainchild of a Swiss-Italian millionaire, who
has teamed up with the Raffles organisation, in what
is their first resort development in the western hemisphere,
Canouan abounds in those little touches that make
even non-millionaires feel as if they own the world.
My villa, perched on a hillside overlooking the sea,
was so large and luxuriously appointed that I could
have hosted a wedding reception in it.
Every detail was spot-on, from the super-soft sheets
to the Italian tiles in the bathroom. An English newspaper
was waiting on my doorstep every morning. Guests had
their own golf carts in which to drive around the
resort. No nonsense about risking a hernia by walking.
1 The spa at Raffles Canouan Island
2 Canouan Island from the air
3 Fine dining at Raffles
The service was some of the best I have enjoyed anywhere.
Every time I drained my glass someone raced forward
to replenish it. Every time a bead of sweat appeared
on my forehead, I was handed a cool towel.
Mosquitoes? There were no mosquitoes. Armies of sprayers
and swatters and insect-control wallahs had sent them
packing.
For food we were spoilt for choice. One night, it
was Champagne and foie gras in the French restaurant
next to the casino; another night, it was beer and
lobster on the beach; a third night, it was the best
Thai food I have eaten outside Thailand. High standards
have been set, and other Caribbean resorts where food
is taken seriously are going to have to look to their
laurels.
Luxury his & her resort
Perhaps what most convinces me that Canouan will prove
a big success is that it possesses, in spades, the
two prerequisites of a luxury his-and hers resort:
a top-notch spa and a top-notch golf course.
The spa premises – individual thatch-covered suites
on the side of a cliff – were the most seductive I
had ever seen. The golf course was a terrific test
of a player’s ability, with cunningly designed fairways
leading to immaculately kept greens.
I have played on five continents, but never found
a course to match Canouan for physical beauty. Lizards
snaked across the fairways. Butterflies floated above
the bunkers. Speckled turtles popped their heads out
of the bushes. I took five putts on one green, but
could not have cared less. The sense of playing golf
in paradise, a tropical Eden that had been around
longer than the Royal and Ancient, was overwhelming.
On our last afternoon, we took a catamaran across
to the Tobago Cays, had a picnic lunch, did a little
post-prandial snorkelling. Phil, the boat-owner, turned
out to be the biggest eccentric yet. A south Londoner,
with a risqué line in small-talk, he did not actually
say ‘I had that Pierce Brosnan in the back of my boat
once’ but he came within a whisker of it.
The afternoon dwindled into a happy haze of rum punches
and spicy chicken and celebrity gossip.
How long before luxury has been tainted by over-familiarity?
It does not bear thinking about. So go there while
it is still new and fresh and comparatively unspoilt.
New Information will be posted as it is released.
Please also visit our Press Page for more past articles
relating to Canouan Island.
