The Caribbean: Crowds in the Sun

• Share

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 (38° 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.