Traveling to and staying in Bequia

I am writing this the first week of June, 2020 and Illinois is “opening up” after our COVID-19 quarantine. Socially distancing is still a thing and we ate out at a restaurant for the first time in two months this weekend for our anniversary (al fresco- the best way to dine anyway!) As of this time, all flights to St Vincent and the Grenadines (Bequia is one of the Grenadine islands) have been suspended until June 4, 2020. There have been 26 confirmed cases of COVID-19. Visitors are expected to quarantine for two weeks upon arrival.

Planning our winter 2020 vacation, I started off with looking for a small island that would give us that quaint, old-world Caribbean feel. I wanted an island that we could journey to from an accessible-by-frequent-flyer-miles larger island. An island where I wouldn’t feel an urge to travel around to “see” everything and we could just relax. We had stopped off at Bequia during a Windstar cruise years ago and found it to be a friendly small island that still had enough restaurants to have offer decent dining. What sealed the deal was discovering the hotel called Tropical Hideaway.

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Tropical Hideaway consists of 5 boutique cottages and suites, centered around a gorgeous infinity pool perched above Princess Margaret Beach. Martin and Julie Mansfield are the welcoming proprietors. They sailed the Caribbean for two years prior to deciding to settle in Bequia and develop Tropical Hideaway into a true hideaway. There are so many thoughtful touches, like a pre-stocked kitchen, a small shop on property that sells kitchen staples and friendly help to arrange excursions. Tropical Hideaway is frequently sold out so it was a serendipitous find that Palm Cottage was available for the week we could travel. Hibiscus Cottage is probably the most popular cottage due to its privacy. With only 5 cottages and so few people occupying the resort, the pool was never crowded. We usually enjoyed the pool by ourselves or shared with one other couple. It truly was the perfect spot to float about and cool off in the afternoon after beach time.

One of the benefits of Tropical Hideaway was the gorgeous panoramic view of Admiralty Bay but it did come with one handicap: to get to beach level we had to hike down a stairway cut through jungle, pass through a door in a stone wall and continue downhill along the road to the beach.

And at the end of the day we would hike back up. When it was hot. Several times I commented on just taking a taxi, but it was the only exercise we got so I stuck it out.

Bequia is special enough that getting to it is difficult. The airport runway is teeny-weeny and can’t accommodate large planes. So its necessary to fly to a nearby island (Barbados, Grenada or St. Lucia) and then switch to a commuter plane to Bequia or fly to St. Vincent and then ferry to Bequia. We started out with frequent flyer tickets to Barbados, so we just needed to get to Bequia from there. We looked at flights on to St Vincent and then ferry, but we would have had to overnight one night on St Vincent. We chose instead to preserve vacation time by flying directly from Barbados to Bequia on SVG Air. Flying on SVG Air allowed us to bypass customs in transit through Barbados and go directly to our waiting plane. The plane had only 20 seats and had to take off before sunset as it wasn’t rated for night landing. I was initially worried about making the 45 minute connection, but we ended up waiting in a sweaty, crowded side terminal for an hour for the plane to board. There were passengers who had tickets for SVG air but with a different flight number who boarded the plane with us and continued on to different islands.

If we went again, I would look for a flight that flies from the US to St. Vincent in order to skip the cost of an additional flight and then take the ferry from St. Vincent to Bequia. But the travel hassle was all worth it in the end- we loved Tropical Hideaways and Bequia!!

I want to give a quick shout-out to Liz Nelson for inspiring me to work on my blog again!

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