Nov 29, 2007
If you have any notion of enjoying a winter stay at Maho Bay in the U.S. Virgin Islands, better do it soon
I think it necessary to point out that the continued operation of the remarkable Maho Bay camp of tented bungalows overlooking a breathtaking view of the Caribbean from the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, isn't without terminal limits. On my last stay in Maho Bay, I learned that the resort is on land leased from a commercial operation, and that the lease is approaching its final year. And apparently, the people from whom the land is leased have shown no willingness to date to extend the lease by a single day.When you visit Maho Bay and glimpse its extraordinary location, overlooking a sight -- small islets sticking up out into a vast blue horizon of the Caribbean, as well as a glorious beach -- you realize that luxury developers would pay enormous prices to regain that land. And yet this superb terrain is presently occupied by a hundred-or-so canvas-sided "bungalows" offering the most simple, the most natural, accommodations in all the tropics. And the guests of Maho Bay include low-income tourists ranging from school teachers to graduate students to social workers and other idealistic preservers of the environment (there are a few rich-niks, too).
I had always puzzled as to why the great Stanley Selengut, the founder of Maho Bay, had not tripled or quadrupled its accommodations. It was only when I learned that he is facing the terminal date of his lease, and would probably (I stress probably, there's no certainty a miracle won't occur) lose Maho Bay to the luxury real estate people in just a short while from now, that I realized why he was not continuing to build on Maho Bay but instead developing a new site -- "Estate Concordia" -- elsewhere on the island. I have visited "Estate Concordia," and although it is fascinating in its almost-complete refusal to us energy from fossil fuels (it is surrounded by solar panels, and employs every known device to properly, sensitively and sustainably produce air conditioning and toilet functions), it is no Maho Bay -- at least not yet.
Give some serious thought to scheduling a winter week at Maho Bay. Go to www.maho.org, e-mail mahobay AT maho DOT org, or phone tel. 800/392-9004 or 340/715-0501. You can also read a recent article on Maho Bay published in the Audubon Magazine, including a video interview with founder Stanley Selengut.
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Labels: environment, virgin islands
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