The Sunny Caribbee Hotel

Built in the 1950’s, the Sunny Caribbee Hotel was a gracious wooden building situated on the waterfront in Admiralty Bay, with rooms in the main building as well as several cabanas set amongst fruit trees  and colourful bougainvillea. When I arrived on Bequia in the late 70’s the hotel belonged to a Belgian fellow named Albert Cornelius, and although he came to the Island now and then the hotel had been closed for quite some time.  Mac at one point tried to lease the beach bar from Albert when his “Pie in the Sky” idea was a fledgling thought, but to my relief Albert turned him down.  I didn’t think investing money in someone else’s building was a good idea, especially when the hotel and grounds looked so closed-up and desolate. The Pizzeria would not have worked at that location, and I was happy when Mac’s Uncle Cyril leased him the piece of land beside the Old Fig Tree at Belmont.

There was a bit of Island lore attached to the Sunny Caribbee property, another good reason to avoid leasing the beach bar!  Evidently a whaler, trusting a good friend, sent all the money he earned working on the whaling ships in New England home to Bequia.  He instructed his friend to buy the property at Belmont for him so that when he returned from sea he could build a house. The poor fellow lost a leg while whaling off the east coast of the United States, and returned home crippled.  His friend HAD purchased the property at Belmont, but not in the whaler’s name; he had swindled him by having his own name placed on the deed, making him the legal owner.  He gave the whaler an inferior plot of land high on the hill overlooking the prime land along the waterfront, and kept the rest for himself.  The crippled man evidently put a hearty curse on the property, heaping dire consequences on anyone who attempted to prosper from the land. Sheesh! Whether true or not, the property DID seem to have some serious ups and downs over the years!

Albert eventually sold the hotel to an English company that converted it into a time-share property, and during that period Bequia got its first dive shop. Bob Demmans, a Canadian artist-turned-dive-instructor, operated his dive business out of a little wooden shack near the beach bar. Chester Peters, a large, charismatic Bequian, was put in place as the hotel’s manager. People bought into the time share scheme (mainly Brits), and it was nice to see the place come alive.

The time share company didn’t last very long.  The next round of owners were Italian, two young couples who breathed some fun into the old hotel! They bought out the English people who had purchased time shares from the previous owners, and began making some much-needed renovations on the cabanas. Jimmy Fiori and his beautiful wife Enrica remained on Bequia with their children, Andrea and Martina. Francesco and Pamela Spinella, along with their children Aria and Isabella, lived in England and visited the property often. Vanessa and Rachel became friendly with the hoteliers’ young children, who were of a similar age and spoke excellent English.  Mac and I began to spend many enjoyable afternoons at the hotel with our two girls, playing backgammon and tennis while the children swam in the pool. Vanessa and Rachel’s hair, already quite bleached by the sun, turned green when they played in that pool!

By this time Bob Sachs operated the little dive shop and Bob, along with Jimmy Fiore, took Mac to the cleaners on a regular basis over the backgammon board.  While a good player, Mac was NOT a good gambler, and I winced every time I saw him touch the betting cube.  The men were not playing for pennies, and the I.O.U.’s began to get worrisome. Mac was definitely out of his league, those men were total sharks, merciless sharks!  THEN there was the bar tab; one didn’t buy a SINGLE drink, rather a ROUND of drinks, and the backgammon players liked their booze.  They would sit hunched over the board until dusk, Mac’s face growing more and more somber as his friends beat him soundly game after game after game.

However, the Hotel was a fun place to while away the afternoons during the off-season, and at least Jimmy and Mac didn’t place bets when they played tennis together.  For THAT I was truly thankful!