ST. KITTS — Belle Mont Farm, a farm-to-table hotel, marks
the first chapter of Kittitian Hill, a sustainable community development in the
foothills of Mount Liamuiga on the northern tip of this island.
On a recent visit, I instantly loved the place, but I also
realized it is not for everyone. For one thing, it’s not on the beach, although
it does have a beachfront outpost in the nearby village, down a rutted dirt
road.
If staying in a cottage minus the flat-screen TV — and with
the loo, shower and clawfoot tub out on the side veranda secluded by only a
privacy hedge of palm fronds — gives you qualms, it’s not the place to spend a
Caribbean vacation.
Inside the style-savvy sanctuary, however, a cinema-size
screen unrolls at the push of a button, and a rear-view projector has been
built discreetly into the wall.
Using the iPad on the writing desk, guests can select from
hundreds of movies and TV shows on Netflix. They also can use the iPad to scan
newspapers, check email and order from Rolling Mango room service. Meals are
delivered in solar-powered golf carts and are cooked on site.
Kittitian Hill info
• Rates through April 9 start at $2,250 per night, double, and cover arrival/departure processing at St. Kitts’ new YU Lounge private jet terminal at the main airport, transfers, all meals with drinks, in-room wine bar and minibar, WiFi, nature hikes, unlimited golf and a daily spa credit of $200 per couple.
• Spring/summer rates through July 31 start at $1,700 per night, double.
• Kittitian Hill is closed from Sept. 1 through Oct. 15.
Belle Mont Farm is outside the envelope. Think dining al
fresco at a 30-foot table out in the field where the after-dinner activity is
lounging around a fire pit listening to West Indian elders spin tales.
Forget menus. You’re handed a list of ingredients just
plucked from the trees, pulled from the ground or hauled from the sea. The
day’s harvest dictates the menu. The wait staff guides you through the list.
My breakfast one morning consisted of a garden eggplant and
pepper frittata with lemongrass tea and thick slices of gluten-free bread smeared
with mammy sapote jam. Beats weak coffee and a bagel.
Instead of motorized watersports on the beach and loud music
by the pool, you are offered the chance to meditate with gentle, Jamaican-born
Nikky.
During a meditation session on a slightly overcast morning,
she told me to focus on a color and one word and to treat each thought that
intruded as a cloud that would drift away.
I picked yellow as my color, sun as my word and as I came
out of my trance, the skies were as clear as my mind.
I foraged with Yahson Tafari, a Rastafarian organic farmer
who walked me through the rows of herbs and vegetables and fruit trees on the
farm. The greens he collected along the way appeared in my salad at lunch.
Green luxury on St. Kitts
Kittitian Hill is all organic. “We don’t use insecticides,”
Tafari said. “Spring water from the mountain irrigates our crops. We handpick
the weeds.”
On the golf course below the tiered rows of crops, he
pointed out several dozen sheep ambling along the fairways, which are former
sugarcane fields.
“We like the sheep,” he said. “They eat the weeds.”
Kittitian Hill is a work in progress, although all exterior
construction, including 15 villas, seven farmhouses and 84 cottages, is
complete.
Val Kempadoo, a Trinidadian entrepreneur and the founder of
the development, put it this way: “Kittitian Hill will constantly evolve. We
are competing on the world stage. This place is not for everyone, but I believe
that a fair amount of people know that they do not have to compromise on
authentic experiences.”
Kittitian Hill was born from Kempadoo’s deep commitment to
sustainable development.
“When I decided 10 years ago to become involved in the
hospitality and resort sector, I was surprised that many hotels were being
developed and operated by way of exploitative business models with little
regard for our social, economic or physical environment,” Kempadoo said.
He decided that a luxury hotel and resort development based
on a different model could serve as an agent of change for a more sustainable
future.
Still to come is the Village component with its 100-room
hotel, featuring lodgings above the 30 or so shops where locals are making
herbal soap, roasting coffee from beans grown on the farm and baking pastries.
A farmers market on the cobblestone plaza in front of the
chapel and town hall will offer farm produce. Narrow back streets behind the
hotel will mimic the Caribbean towns of old.
The Mango Walk Spa, on the highest point of land on the
site, will feature treatment rooms sandwiched between large mango trees.
“We want agents [to come] down here to see for themselves,”
said General Manager Carlos Salazar “Kittitian Hill is off the grid, and you
have to see it to understand it.”
I saw it, I understood it, and I plan to return.