By John Carter, Daily Mail 7th October 2012
The afternoon sun beat down from a cloudless sky upon the canopies shielding the tables outside the Jamestown waterfront coffee shop. I was glad of their shade, and the protection of a generous coating of factor 15.
It may have been February 25, but it was definitely a day for sun cream, dark glasses, a polo shirt and shorts.
At a nearby table, a group of English twentysomething dancers from a cruise ship moored offshore were trying to get a signal on their mobiles. They stared in disbelief when I told them mobiles don’t work on the island. ‘What sort of weird place is this?’ one of the girls inquired.
I should have told her it is the kind of ‘weird’ place where everyone speaks English, and drives on the proper side of the road. Where the time is the same as at home, the banknotes and coins are virtually identical and on a par with Sterling.
And where mobile phones don’t work. So, what’s not to like about the sub-tropical island of St. Helena? Yes, St. Helena. Most people aren’t sure where it is - I had to look it up before my trip - but they probably know it as the island where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled and died. It also happens to be about the most isolated place on the planet, but that is about to change. Which is why I was there.
St. Helena is a lump of British territory a little larger than Guernsey, sitting in the South Atlantic south of the Equator, 1,945 miles north-west of Cape Town, from where the Royal Mail Ship St. Helena sails. At present, she is the only way to get to the island.
However, St. Helena island is going to have an airport. Work has already started and the 6,000ft runway and terminal building on Prosperous Bay Plain is due to receive its first flight by the end of 2015.
To say the 4,000 ‘Saints’ - as the locals are known - have mixed feelings about this is an understatement. Some can’t wait to get into the 21st Century, while others fear for the environment and wildlife (some of which is unique to St. Helena) and how the development of tourism will affect the island’s easy-going lifestyle.
There is good reason to be cautious - look what happened to the Portuguese Algarve following the opening of Faro airport in the Sixties - but St. Helena is a gem that deserves to be seen and enjoyed. And an increase in visitors will certainly boost a flagging economy - you don’t get rich exporting coffee and tuna.
St. Helena’s volcanic origin means that many of its 47 square miles are pretty steep. The roads are narrow and little can be done to make them easier for visiting drivers.
The island attracts mainly older South Africans and Britons, who enjoy walking and exploring its dramatic landscape, and there are several fine rambling routes.
There is excellent game fishing and unlike most Caribbean islands, you don’t have to travel out a dozen miles or more before casting your lines for tuna or marlin. I took a trip and saw not only dolphin by the score, but magnificent whale sharks, some of which swam right beneath our keel. In season, humpback whales come to a calving ground off the island.
There’s snorkelling and scuba-diving too, with 18th Century wrecks a little way offshore.
Don’t expect a beach holiday - Sandy Bay, the island’s sole beach, is made of black volcanic sand, and one cannot swim off it because of a fierce undertow.
And then there is the Napoleon connection. Four months after his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon arrived on St. Helena and stayed at a property called The Briars from October 1815 until December, when he moved to Longwood, a larger house. He died there in May 1821 and was buried on the island. In 1840 his remains were returned to France, but you can still visit the site of his tomb.
The Briars and Longwood are owned by the French government (there is a French consul), open to visitors and worth seeing.
I stayed at Farm Lodge, at Rosemary Plain, some distance from Jamestown, the island’s capital. Built in about 1690 as a planter’s house, it is now owned and run as a boutique hotel by Steve Biggs and Maureen Jonas and is absolutely first-class. I also stayed at the Wellington House Hotel in Jamestown. I had a comfortable room and excellent meals, but there were no en suite facilities.
I have some very special memories of my visit. Lunch with His Excellency the Governor is joint top of the list - along with meeting Jonathan, the tortoise in the garden of his official residence, who is reckoned to be about 200 years old and, according to the vet, still ‘at it’ with two other venerable tortoises.
I also enjoyed a visit to the island’s distillery, whose owner Paul Hickling told me about Tungi, a local drink made from prickly pear cactus.
In St James’s Church - ‘the oldest Anglican Church in the Southern Hemisphere’ - I made a note of memorial tablets to a two-year old orphan who died at sea ‘of a lingering and wasting sickness which yielded to no human remedy’, and to George Singer, a ‘worthy and good servant’ who met his end by being ‘accidentally precipitated from off Egg Island’. Egg is off the coast of St. Helena.
Then it was time to sail to Cape Town. Which brings me back to RMS St. Helena. Launched in 1989, she is a fine vessel, taking just 128 passengers, and one of the last mail ships in service. The six-day voyage is run like a minicruise with quiz evenings, deck games and a cricket match between crew and passengers for the South Atlantic Curry Cup, which the crew always win.
When the airport opens, the mail ship will lose her Government subsidy and her future is uncertain. I hope she will be replaced, as for plenty of people the sea trip is a vital part of the superb St. Helena experience.
Apart from the airport - costing £200 million - the largest project is a £50 million plan for a 63 bedroom, five-star hotel and an 18-hole golf course.
At present, the island is a part-time tourist destination. But if the decision-makers keep a tight rein on development, the Saints are on to a winner. Especially if they fix it so mobiles still don’t work.
Travel facts
A 22-day package to St. Helena costs from £2,521 per person. The Explorer Tour package includes two nights in Cape Town (pre- and post-voyage), a voyage aboard RMS St. Helena in a T2H Cabin on A Deck, and eight nights in St. Helena. International flights to Cape Town and accommodation there are not included.
Rates at Farm Lodge Country House Hotel cost from £65pp per night, based on two sharing. Half-board costs from £93pp per night.
Rates at the Wellington House Hotel start from £33.50pp per night on a bed-andbreakfast basis, based on two sharing. Rooms are not en suite.
For more information on the island and on RMS St. Helena, call 020 7575 6480 or visit rms-st-helena.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment