Barbados and Grenada, islands on the move

St George's Bay, Grenada Barbados is the ultimate blue-chip holiday destination: a reliable investment. It's a brand name in its own right, and in many ways it just gets better and better. Every year seems to bring some new international festival, some new restaurant opening, some new celebrity property-owner for the paparazzi to stalk.
Very few tropical islands have come so far so fast. Not all that long ago, the little enclave of Holetown on the west coast was as run-down and unprepossessing as the name suggests. Paunchy holidaymakers wandered the streets in flip-flops, looking for souvenirs on the cheap-and-cheerful market stalls before repairing to the beach for a little light sunbathing and a few chapters of John Grisham. Not any more.
In the spanking new Lime Grove development, built at a cost of US$50 million (Dh184m), some of the most illustrious names in retail have set up shop. Cartier, Bulgari, Burberry, Louis Vuitton ... It could be Dubai or Monte Carlo, there is so much cash splashing about. The flip-flops are diamond-encrusted - and not all the diamonds are fakes.
Leisure opportunities in Barbados have expanded exponentially. The sort of high-end golfers who had to choose between Sandy Lane and the Royal Westmoreland, where sports stars like Ian Woosnam, Rio Ferdinand and Andrew Flintoff own villas, now have another option, equally beguiling: the prestigious Ape's Hill Club, on the crown of the island, with sea views in every direction.
The club hosts polo events as well as golf tournaments, and there are photographs of the Queen and Prince Charles on the clubhouse wall. No island in the Caribbean is more unashamedly Anglophile than Barbados, which is both a strength and a weakness. As Home Counties accents ring across the beach, a certain romantic charm does get lost. Seekers of that charm could do worse than train their sights farther afield and check out some of the less well-known islands in the region.
Grenada, closer to the South American mainland, is a prime example. There may be fewer direct international flights to Grenada than Barbados, but if that is an inconvenience, it is an inconvenience with compensations. Within minutes of landing, you find yourself in a raw, untamed environment redolent of Pirates of the Caribbean. The roads are good, but the surrounding fauna and flora have a quirky, unpredictable quality.
Trees lean at odd angles. Creepers sway hither and thither in the wind. Hibiscus and bougainvillaea run riot around the shacks and bungalows. Driving around the island is a continuous adventure, an assault on the senses.
Scrawny hens peck their way across the road. Vervet monkeys come scuttling out of the trees when you least expect them. In the little cemetery beside the beach, goats wander unchecked among the gravestones, as if they own the place. There is a stiff sea breeze and a smell of jasmine and rotting vegetables.
Grenada is known as the Spice Island and is a major exporter of cinnamon and nutmeg. Most of the northern half of the island is rainforest, ravishingly beautiful, punctuated by muddy banana plantations and other crops such as breadfruit. Plump, purple cocoa pods drip with condensation. Calabashes the size of footballs dangle from the trees. A farmer with grey dreadlocks plods down a dirt track, machete in hand.
At the highest point of the forest, the trees are shrouded in mist, giving the landscape an eerie quality. A waterfall hisses in the distance. Something rustles in the undergrowth. Birds screech overhead. Then we round a corner and come across a mountain pool, calm and clear, with children swimming in it. Signs of habitation are few and far between. Deep in the forest, we come across a rickety old plantation house that looks as if it was abandoned years ago. The roof has caved in, bats flutter through the upstairs bedrooms and the veranda is overrun with foliage. "Notice pigs no allow" reads a handwritten sign above the doorway. Have we got stuck in a time warp?