Crowds in the Sun

Sweeping in from Lake Erie, a northern blizzard dumped 21 in. of snow on Buffalo, N.Y. Chicago was snowbound with 20 in., and in Atlanta the kiddies tried out their water skis on the real stuff. Even Florida's weather (38DEG in Miami) was "bracing." At New York's Idlewild Airport, a woman grimly tried to wangle a reservation to somewhere in the sun. "Young man." she muttered, "I'm going to get out of here if I have to ride a bicycle.''

Maybe not by bicycle, but by boat and by plane, so many U.S. vacationers were heading south to the Caribbean's balmy isles that the forecast is for a record year --more than 1,000,000 tourists, who will spend perhaps $300 million before they return home sunburned all over and thin ner in the pocketbook. Last week twelve cruise ships departed the East Coast southward bound. Another 117 cruises are scheduled by April 1. including the first Caribbean cruise by the S.S. United States, the world's fastest (35 knots) ocean liner and until now assigned to transatlantic runs. So heavy is the airline traffic that Eastern Airlines has added three jets daily to its flights serving Puerto Rico. Pan Am and BOAC both report their Caribbean business up as much as 25% over last season.

That Welcome Rustle. Last winter, with recession at home and Castro for a neighbor, many resorts had an off year. In 1962, Castro is not gone but seems less omnipresent. The recession is over, and everyone hears the welcome rustle of tourist dollars. In the Bahamas, where the season is barely a month old, business is already 10% to 15% ahead of last year. Jamaica is jammed with a heavier-than-usual influx of sun seekers. Doing best of all is bustling Puerto Rico, which expects 425,000 visitors (v. 385,000 last season) and hardly knows where to put them all.

With three new hotels just opened, Puerto Rico's island commonwealth has nine more, worth $35.4 million, abuilding. Most interesting addition, to be inaugurated this month: the $3,000,000. 107-room El Convento in Old San Juan. Financed mainly by Dime-Store Heir Robert Frederick Woolworth, the hotel was built from the shell of an abandoned 315-year-old Roman Catholic convent, combines modern conveniences (air conditioning, a swimming pool) with colonial charm (tapestried rugs, four-poster beds). And since it qualifies under Puerto Rico's "Operation Serenity," with which Governor Luis Munoz Marin hopes to match his "Operation Bootstrap" economic development with cultural preservation, the builders stand to get a ten-year tax forgiveness for helping to keep the island's historic atmosphere.

Like Puerto Rico, virtually every Caribbean sunspot is caught up in the rush to build new hotels and guest cottages (see map). In the Bahamas, the Sunshine Inn. a $500,000-plus hotel built by Florida's Mackey Airlines, greeted its first guests last month on South Bimini Island. Two more hotels opened their glass doors last month in Jamaica. Even the British flyspeck of Montserrat (37 sq. mi.) has a new $1,000,000 hostelry. Trinidad has a pair of new hotels, and the $12 million "upsidedown" Trinidad Hilton (built on a hillside, with the entrance on an upper floor) opens this year.

Broil in Private. In all the cement pouring din, what of the well-to-do few who once had huge hunks of the Caribbean to themselves? They are still there, but in a new kind of resort away from the crowds where they can crawl off to their own undisturbed beach and broil in private peace. They frequently join in cooperatives, started either by a millionaire real estate developer or by a group of friends who pool their money for property on which to build a cottage colony. And since the co-ops are strictly screened, the members can be as selective as they wish.

Prototype of the co-ops is the Mill Reef Club on isolated Antigua in the Leeward Islands. Opened in 1948 by U.S. Millionaire Robertson Ward, the club sprawls over 1.300 landscaped acres, has twelve sandy beaches, an 18-hole golf course. Membership (now closed) is rigidly screened to guarantee that openings do not go to just any old millionaire. Sixty-six members (among them: Francis du Pont) own winter homes on club property. With annual expenditures of $500,000. the club is impoverished Antigua's biggest single source of income.

In the Bahamas (no personal property tax; no real estate tax; no income tax). dedicated golfers cluster around Eleuthera's sprawling Cotton Bay Club, where Pan American Airways President Juan Trippe and friends have a magnificent seaside golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones. Fishing buffs who yearn after marlin and giant tuna congregate at Cat Cay, which Ad Tycoon Louis R. Wasey has turned into a fishing paradise for himself. 15 fellow estatesmen, and up to 36 approved paying guests. On a 4,000-acre islet called Lyford Cay in Nassau harbor, Canadian Financier Edward Plunket Taylor has spent $17 million providing a fitting setting for the homes of such notables as Henry Ford II and the Earl of Dudley.

Bullshot & Zebra Skins. The biggest center of cooperative seclusion is Jamaica's north shore, which has half a dozen new subdivisions where the clink of cocktail glasses is heard from morning bullshot to evening brandy. At the Tryall estates, west of Montego Bay. an American couple who figure in the international set, Arthur W. Little Jr. and his wife Harriet, last year built a $200,000 home that features a patio made of 100-year-old bricks. Peter Arno nudes in the master bathroom, and zebra skins from an African safari.

At Frenchman's Cove, on the other end of the island, Canadian Cookie Millionaire

Grainger Weston has opened a homey variation on the prevailing theme: a cottage colony for the two-week visitor who has not yet made up his mind to build. Once he is accepted and has agreed to the bill (minimum: $2,000 per couple), the guest's wish is Weston's command. "Weekend visits to other hotels, sightseeing by private plane, deep-sea fishing, champagne for breakfast--anything he wants is on the house." promises Weston, adding expectantly, "and his neighbor may be Prime Minister Macmillan." Or not.

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