Summer 2007 Alumnae Quarterly Web Extra

Reflections on the “Gardens of the Caribbean” Tour

By Christina Tree ’65

“Like broken pieces of a rainbow” is the way our resident horticulturalist Anna Pavord described hummingbirds at Papillote, a wilderness retreat high in the lush hills of Dominica. Bright and fleeting, this image describes many experiences shared by MHC alumnae sailing this winter aboard Sea Cloud II.

The nine-day, nine-island cruise was titled “Gardens of the Caribbean” and we toured a number of exotic gardens, some public, most private. With Dorothy Mosby, assistant professor of Spanish, we also explored the prose and poetry of the islands, listening to voices few Caribbean visitors hear.

We sailed from Barbados, first south to Tobago and Trinidad, then north through the Lesser Antilles to Antigua, slipping into small harbors off-bounds to larger ships. We swam and sunned, feasted on superb cuisine, and watched spellbound as agile seamen set the soaring sails on our four-masted bark, a genuine tall ship.

Traveling Companions

Fellow passengers included W. Rochelle Calhoun ’83, executive director of the Alumnae Association of Mount Holyoke College. An enthusiastic advocate of educational travel, she has broadened the college’s travel options to include an annual service trip open to both students and alumnae. A percentage of the proceeds from luxurious trips such as ours helps to subsidize these service-geared efforts.

Of the seventy-six passengers aboard the Sea Cloud II, just eighteen were MHC alumnae but assorted relatives and friends brought our group to thirty-four. The majority of remaining shipmates were members of the Royal Oak Foundation, an affiliate of Britain's National Trust. The shipboard joke was that we were all trees, some holier or more royal than others. We mixed well.

The MHC contingent included one member of the class of ’81, Phoebe Barr Hotz, who brought along not only her husband but also a sister and her parents; there were no ’70s, but the ’50s and ’60s were well represented. Tish Woodward Bartlett of Colorado, Virginia Perris Cochrane of Arizona, and Belle Hart Traver of Maine were all ’48. 

“It was all better than I expected it would be,” Belle Traver told us, despite her lack of luggage throughout the cruise (American Airlines finally delivered it as we debarked in Antigua). The trip was an eightieth birthday present from Belle’s husband, who hadn’t come along “because he has no interest in gardens.”

Lots to See and Hear

“Actually I liked the literary lectures more than the gardens,” Belle related. “The plants weren’t anything I can grow in Maine but I loved the lectures, every one of them.

As we neared Tobago on our first morning under sail, British journalist and noted author Anna Pavord (www.annapavord.com) lectured lyrically on “Plants and Gardens of the Caribbean.” Most plantings in these islands, she explained, are imported. Beginning in the sixteenth century, colonists planted for survival and next came cash crops, to make money. The wonder is that as early as 1750 they began gardening for beauty, establishing the first botanical gardens before the end of the eighteenth century.

In Trinidad we visited the Botanical Garden on the Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain, dating from 1818. We also headed into the interior of the island to visit two private small gardens and by the end of the day could tell heliconia from ginger lilies and a eucalyptus from tamarind trees.

For Anne Succop Covert ’60, the two private gardens on Grenada, the following day, were a highlight, less because of the brilliant flowers and foliage than the glimpses they afforded into the lifestyles of the island’s long-established British families. We visited Tower Plantation House, a vintage 1913 English-style stone manse and Sunnyside, a less formal but with an equally gracious home and hostess.

“The Empire Writes Back”, a series of lectures presented by Mount Holyoke professor Dorothy Mosby, projected starkly different views of life on islands shaped under colonial rule.

Our pre-trip reading list included novels by Trinidad’s V.S. Naipaul and Martinique’s Patrick Chamoiseau. On board we received selections from works by Antigua-born Jamaica Kincaid, Dominica-born Jean Rhys, and a number of poems, my favorites by St. Lucia-born Derek Walcott. Professor Mosby introduced us to these readings. Many images were harsh, some of the voices, strident. They rang true.

Each island is different and generalizations are dangerous but, as a travel writer visiting these islands regularly over forty years, I’ve watched tourism replace previous economies, and it’s easy to see that most local residents are no better off than a few decades ago, when most of this literature was penned. The proliferation of self-contained resorts and large cruise ships have nurtured neither local economies or cultures.

For Sally Bonner, a resident of DC through the civil rights struggles, the literature helped explain a familiar feel and a noticeable shabbiness in the former (now independent) British islands. She remarked that both Martinique and tiny Terre d’ Haut in Isles de Saintes, part of a subsidized “department” within France itself, were noticeably more prosperous.

On most of the islands we witnessed the resilience of both people and nature in the wake of repeated hurricanes, droughts, and volcanoes. In the Botanical Garden outside Roseau on Dominica a school bus crushed under the weight of a giant baobab tree has been preserved as a monument to a 1979 storm, “a talking point,” as the curator explained.

The other striking phenomena shared by most islands were frantic preparations for the impending world championship cricket matches, to be played in newly completed stadiums built by the People’s Republic of China.

 

Shipboard Life

Aboard ship, we gathered for early morning coffee and for exquisite meals, to dance or walk the decks under the stars, and for sublime concerts by internationally recognized pianist Mordecai Shehori. We discussed what we heard and what we saw. For Ken Briers, Sally’s husband, a veteran of two previous Mount Holyoke-sponsored, small ship cruises, the aspect of traveling with people “who know where they are going and what they are seeing” was a reason for coming.

Admittedly, for most male—and many female—passengers, the ship itself was the prime draw. While there are a number of multi-masted sail-cruise ships out there, the sails on all but two are set by computers and are primarily for show. By contrast, Sea Cloud II is a genuine steel-hulled, 384-foot bark, with sails set by set by hand at dizzying heights by agile crew members climbing its masts and out onto its spars. She motors into port and to cover a required distance but when Sea Cloud II sails she really sails, skimming along at up to eleven knots.

Sea Cloud II is just six years old, with luxurious public spaces and state rooms patterned on her sister ship, the only other passenger vessel of this size using real sail power. The original Sea Cloud (www.seacloud.com) was the world’s largest sailing yacht when it was built in 1931 by Wall Street magnate E.F. Hutton, as a birthday present for his wife, heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Sea Cloud’s story reads like a novel with chapters that include service (sans masts and bowsprit) as a Coast Guard weather ship during World War II, and a stint as the Dominican Republic’s President Trujillo’s ship of state. In 1978 it was salvaged and restored by a group of German businessmen, and relaunched as a luxury cruise liner, proving successful enough to merit the construction of the slightly larger (still just forty-five cabins) Sea Cloud II.

Several of our fellow passengers confessed an addiction to both vessels. Rosalind Gallie Tufts ’52 and her husband Nate of Northfield, Mass., are veterans of a number of Caribbean trips aboard Sea Cloud II and one, from Malta to Venice, on the original Sea Cloud. This was their second of back-to-back cruises, having brought a fifteen-year-old grandson along the previous week.

“The ships themselves are beautiful sailing vessels, superbly manned by officers and crew, the cuisine is uniformly excellent, elegantly served…and extremely varied,” Ros writes. “There are always very special day trips … invariably we have made friends on each trip, perhaps with one of the carefully chosen lecturers, who bring ports of call to life … We’ve never been disappointed.”

What drew June Spencer ’65 to this trip, after forty years of ignoring MHC travel brochures, was the combination of “sailing, really sailing” and the lure of tropical gardens in these particular islands deep in the Caribbean.

 

Small Is Better

The advantages of a small over a large ship in this area cannot be over-stated.

In Tobago we moored in Man O’ War Bay off the sleepy fishing village of Charlotteville, at the opposite end of the island from the busy cruise port of Scarborough. Vans whisked us over the hill to a small hotel with a private beach with a view of Little Tobago. Oh, that first delicious swim in warm water! We snorkeled and viewed coral and tropical fish in glass-bottomed boats.

Trinidad is a very different island, the Caribbean’s most populous, and arguably the wealthiest (thanks to petroleum reserves). It’s less than ten miles off the coast of Venezuela. Luckily our drive (in small vans) to inland gardens was against the traffic flow, a long bumper-to-bumper backup of cars commuting along narrow roads into the capital, Port-of-Spain.

In Grenada (pronounced “Gre-NAY-duh”), we docked in the inner harbor of the picturesque port, St. George’s. This is a gloriously beautiful “spice island” with a high green spine, a rainforest laced with walking trails and one of the Caribbean’s longest beaches, Grand Anse. It was badly damaged two years ago by a hurricane but the gardens we toured had certainly recovered.

In Bequia, a favorite port for yachtsmen sailing in the Grenadines (hence offering an excellent bookstore), we anchored out in Admiralty Bay, an easy ride by tender both to the small village of Port Elizabeth and the inviting sands and shade of Princess Margaret Beach.

 In Martinique we docked in downtown Fort de France, boarding vans for a ride up and up into green hills to the spectacular Balata Gardens, returning in good time to take advantage of shopping that includes European-styled clothing and French perfumes as well as local souvenirs and spices.

 “Dominica is probably the only island that Christopher Columbus would still recognize,” Anna Pavord noted in a lecture, adding there is “an extraordinary soul beating away in that place.” We were not disappointed. Our guide was a native Caribe Indian (this is the only island on which these Caribbean precolonial residents survive) and Papillote Wilderness Retreat (www.papillote.dm), high in the rainforest with its waterfalls, hot springs, and access to hiking as well as gardens, is a place many vowed to return.

Iles des Saintes is a grouping of small islands just south of Guadeloupe. We anchored at Terre de Haut, debarking before the first wave of day-trippers to take full advantage of a splendid beach.

Antigua Shortly after docking here at St. John’s, Sea Cloud eased up beside us, a rare meeting of the sister ships. A few hours remained before our flight and rather than sitting them out at the airport, [we were transported] across the island to English Harbor. Our final memory is of sweeping views from these fortified heights and of a pleasant lunch as well as the museum and shops at Nelson’s Dockyard.

 

Other Trip Possibilities

“I tell people that we sampled each island, just tasted enough—like a Whitman’s Sampler—to get a sense and realize that each is quite different,” says June Spencer. For June, who has taught English as a second language in the U.S. and Latin countries, the trip was “worth it, but a real splurge” after acting as caregiver for her son, whose cancer is now in remission. “I can live and volunteer in Honduras for two summers with the amount of money I spent on the cruise,” she notes. A second-generation MHC student (her mother was Virginia Spencer Ehrlicher ’40), June had never attended a class reunion and found getting to know MHC staff and fellow alumnae a real plus. She would be interested in joining another, mere moderately priced, College-sponsored trip, one that permitted exploring a small area in depth, connecting with the culture and perhaps local women’s groups.

Several alumnae with whom we spoke would like to see the College offer a few more moderately priced trips, something between the service and luxury options. Ann Covert suggested walking trips, staying in small pensions that reflect the local culture.

As a longtime travel writer, I’ve come to equate the travel industry with fire. In places it has ravaged fragile destinations, but in others it puts food on the table. Personally, I would love to see the College offer an occasional, moderately priced trip geared to helping a local economy and, ideally, local women. I think Mary Lyon would approve.

“The educational travel program is a way of staying connected to the intellectual life of the campus,” comments Rochelle Calhoun, who, in her three years as executive director of the Alumnae Association, has come along on one trip per year. “I enjoy the vitality, the comradeship,” she reflects. “Everyone brings a different lens to an experience like our cruise. They come for different reasons and they see and remember it differently, but in educational travel the pieces come together.”

Please don’t hesitate to contact Rochelle with any of your own reflections on past trips and suggestions for future MHC-sponsored educational travel. [She can be reached at 413-538-2300, rcalhoun@mtholyoke.edu, or Alumnae Association, 50 College St., S. Hadley, MA 01075.]