Amenities at Tropical Hideaway

The Infinity Swimming Pool

Tropical Hideaway has an 18m (58) wide, panoramic, Infinity Pool and is often quoted as being one of the top ten private infinity pools in the Caribbean. The entire pool is tiled using natural stone pebbles in pastel shades of greens and blues creating a stunning and natural effect, that blends perfectly with the turquoise colours of the Caribbean Sea.

The Infinity Pool is a stunning feature of Tropical Hideaway and swimming or relaxing in the pool as the sun goes down is absolutely beautiful. For many people this is one of the highlights of their trip and as the evening sun slowly sets and you look out over the Caribbean Sea, you cannot fail to be impressed. Sunsets from here can be amazing, with the elusive Green Flash’ often being seen. The setting is simply perfect and with underwater pool lights and discreet Led lighting enhancing the evening ambiance, the special moment can continue long after the sun has set.

Typically pools in the Caribbean are roughly the same temperature as the outside air. With summers of 30c (86F) the pool water is fine, but with the main season coinciding with the winter months and with typical daytime temperatures of around 24C (75F) many visitors find swimming pools to be too cold and opt for a quick swim as opposed to a relaxing afternoon in the pool. Tropical Hideaway has an environmentally friendly heating system that uses both solar panels and heat absorbing solar pipes and this allows our pool to be enjoyed at all times of the year. Typically our daytime pool temperatures are around 33 deg C in summer and 29 deg C in Winter. That’s an amazing 94 deg F falling to a very inviting 84 deg F in winter. The extra 3 degrees C created by our solar heating can make an enormous difference to your enjoyment of the pool.

The majority of the pool is around 1.3m (52”) deep rising to a maximum depth of around 2.2m (867). Curved and generous steps allow easy access to the water and several raised areas provide an abundance of areas to sit, stand, chat or relax. 9 submerged, natural coral seats surround both the Pool Bar and the Gazebo daybed and with the large cedar tile roof overhangs, shade from the sun can be found in the pool at most times of the day.

The Pool Bar

There is a swim up, sunken pool bar and galley, complete with fridge, ice-maker, blender and sink, a preparation and serving area with a generous supply of acrylic beverage glasses.

Underwater coral seats are conveniently positioned around the submerged bar and this is the perfect place to enjoy a glass of your own personal wine or indulge in your favourite drink or snack. Please use the bar as you wish. Use the fridge, keep your own drinks here, have your favourite bottle of wine in the cooler or your special bottle of spirits in the bar.

Please visit our licensed onsite shop for our extensive range of spirits, wines and beers and all at local shop prices.

For your enjoyment, safety and convenience we have automated ambient lighting around the Gazebo, Pool Bar and garden areas. Underwater pool lights are controlled by timer switches and go off around 10pm.

Licensed Shop

We now have a licensed shop at Tropical Hideaway selling a wide range of quality beers, wines and spirits. These wines have been chosen by us and offer consistent quality, are excellent value for money and are stored at Tropical Hideaway in a chilled environment. Most importantly our prices are based on local shop prices, allowing you to enjoy the convenience of a hotel, but with prices of a local supermarket. Try a bottle of Martin’s very
popular ‘Homemade Rum Punch’. We always keep a bottle or two made up in the fridge, ready for your immediate enjoyment.

Please visit our shop for our extensive range of spirits, wines and beers and all at local shop prices.

The Gazebo

Adjoining the Infinity Pool is the Gazebo complete with a very comfortable daybed (large enough to take 6 people) and the views from here are just incredible. This is the ultimate place to wind down, relax and read a book or take in the stunning panoramic views that will simply take your breath away.

Please note the Gazebo is for the enjoyment of everyone. If there are other guests in residence and you leave the Gazebo, please leave the area tidy and do not leave your towels or personal belongings behind.

The Pool Deck

The Pool Deck is tiled using natural stone coral tiles and this provides a cool and non slip surface to walk on. Please be careful in wet conditions as even our ‘non slip’ coral tiles can become a little slippery if they are very wet. Special care should be taken when using the Pool Bar steps, especially if the steps are wet or if you have had a few Rum punches!

Sun loungers, parasols and various chairs provide ample seating and relaxation areas around the pool. There are plenty of sun loungers and parasols available, so please ask us if you require more. Please do not use the parasols in windy conditions.

The Pool and Pool Deck are west facing and receive the sun for most of the day. A cooling breeze is usually present and the Gazebo and large parasols provide areas of shade for the hottest part of the day. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to get sunburnt here and even in seemingly cloudy conditions, you can get severely burnt. Take it easy for the first few days, cover up, seek shade in the hottest parts of the day and use sunscreen.

Please do not use the sunscreens called P20 as they can seriously damage our towels, bed linen and furnishings. We do sell sunscreen in the shop.

For your own wellbeing we would ask that you observe our pool safety signs. No running and no diving etc. Thank you.

Stargazing at night time can be amazing and you will often see shooting stars and fireflies in the surrounding forest.

The Breakfast Bar

Tropical Hideaway’s breakfast bar has probably the best views and some of the finest breakfasts available on Bequia.

You now have the option of preparing breakfast in your own room or enjoying one of Tropical Hideaway’s amazing breakfasts freshly cooked and served to you at our Breakfast Bar.

Please see your room menu for the full Breakfast and Home Cooked Meal options and prices.

Our staff look forward to cooking you breakfast but please note during quiet times of the year we do ask that you let us know the day before if you would like to have breakfast. This ensures we have the correct staff to offer this service. We do recommend that if you require breakfast that you preorder this when you make your booking. This guarantees that breakfast will always be available for you.

The Barbecue Area

The barbecue area is at the front of the Infinity Pool and can be found on the left hand side as you pass through the stone archway. Here you will find a large charcoal barbecue with complimentary locally produced charcoal. The best way to light the barbecue is to put the charcoal in the grille, light the charcoals with the gas lighter (kept upstairs in the main kitchen area, ask Martin or Julie and please return after use) open a couple of beers and leave the grille for 30 minutes. When you return, it will ready to use and just the right heat.

Alternatively you can ask Marlon our gardener to light the barbecue for you (weekdays only, he leaves around 5pm). All the cooking utensils are at hand. We even have a machete for opening up any lobster shells. (Do not use our kitchen knives for this) There is a barbecue floodlight which can be turned on at the plug socket in the Gazebo on the far side of the bed.

If you turn this floodlight on please remember to turn it off when you have finished.

Whether you are grilling a steak or a freshly caught tuna, a couple of sausages or a burger, the views and ambiance from the barbecue area are amazing and the food tastes so much better having cooked it yourself on an outside charcoal barbecue. Open a beer here and you’ll soon have the company of other people as guests like to meet and have a chat around this communal area.

All these barbecue treats, steaks, fish, sausages and burgers are available from our shop and all at local shop prices. As always you are very welcome to bring your own food to cook on the barbecue.

Tropical Hideaway Woodland Nature Walk

Brand new is our beautiful woodland walk meandering & downhill through mature forest to the main road below.

There is a seating and rest area half way down. It was a huge undertaking and took 1 1/2 years to build.

This lovely stone path and stairway allows you to be down on the main road in less than 5 minutes, to the beach in less than 15 and to a lovely restaurant and bar in a few minutes more.

Our Environment, the Past and the Present..........

The Past

I’ve always been an environmentalist. Even when I was 10 years old I loved and cared for the environment and was passionate about Planet Earth. It’s hard to believe looking back, but by the age of 10, I was fundraising and donating money to the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). At 13, I was growing vegetables in the back garden and by our mid 20s Julie and I were married and living in the remote Black Mountains of Wales on a small 100 acre hill farm. It was a natural paradise. Ancient woodlands, wild flower hay meadows and streams meandering through the hills. The natural world was everywhere. This is where I learnt my respect and love for life. 10 years later we were trekking through the jungles of Papua New Guinea, exploring isolated islands patrolled by thousand’s of sharks and climbing the highest mountains in Borneo. We lived with one of the last truly nomadic tribes in Borneo and filmed and documented their demise as the tropical rainforests were cut down and their way of life and the wildlife was destroyed. 10 years later we were sailing around the World in a 45° sailboat with our 3 young daughters and seeing the ‘bigger picture’ of life………. From tears of joy to absolute fear, we experienced it all.

The Present

Our life is totally different now, but we still live in a pristine part of the World on a beautiful island, working hard as we have always done. Living on a small Caribbean island is a microcosm of life and we try to be as environmentally responsible as we can be. The items listed below may seem insignificant, but we do whatever we can to practice sustainable policies, to support local projects and be as Green’ as we can be.

Energy

We use the latest low energy LED light bulbs, light sensors and timers that automatically turn lights off when not required. Our appliances are rated as high as possible for the most efficient power consumption.

Solar Panels

We have used Solar panels for our hot water and to heat the Infinity Pool for many years now. 2018 will see the first array of solar panels installed using the latest technology battery storage that will power our pool pumps and the evening ambient lights that make Tropical Hideaway so beautiful at night. This is the first phase of what we hope will be several solar installations once we know how well the system works.

Recycling

One of the advantaged of living in Bequia is that we are 30 years behind the rest of the world. We still drink our beers and soft drinks from glass bottles that are returned to the brewery for re-use. The deposit on the bottle guarantees almost zero waste and this is about as environmentally friendly as you can get. We actively encourage this philosophy and always support sustainable businesses and try to avoid single use drink containers wherever possible. The aluminium cans and plastic bottles that Bequia does use can now be recycled thanks to the hard work and facilities that Action Bequia have put in place. As part of our support we are very proud to have just funded the first glass recycling machine on Bequia. This glass crusher will turn glass bottles into sand and aggregate that can be used in the construction of roads and the manufacture of concrete blocks. Bequia is a tourist island, can you imagine the bottles of wine that are consumed here. Well all Crusher those bottles can now be recycled and re-used and equally as important, they won’t end up in the already very full, landfill site. Visit www.actionbequia.org for the latest updates.

Toiletries and Laundry

We use the very best, cruelty free, organic soaps and shampoos in our bathrooms with environmentally friendly hand washes and washing liquids in our kitchens. Our laundry uses the ‘Ecover’ range of products and softeners that are safe for the environment and not tested on animals.

Water

We collect, filter and store all our water at Tropical Hideaway and have storage for around 150,000 gallons. The ‘SKY WATER’ we collect is some of the purest on Earth, having evaporated off the vast Atlantic Ocean into clouds that conveniently produce rain over the Caribbean Islands. We also collect and filter the water from all our concrete area’s, including the road in front of the us. We use this filtered water for the toilet systems, the laundry room and for watering our tropical gardens during the dry season.

Swimming Pool

Our pool uses the latest purification systems, creating an almost chemically free environment. You can spend all day in the pool with no harsh chemicals affecting your hair and your skin.

Gardens, Composting and Charcoal.

We have garden composters for our kitchen waste and this natural fertiliser is used on our vegetable gardens. We grow a wide range of fruit and vegetables ranging from bananas, papayas and limes to tomatoes, lettuce and herbs. Guests are welcome to pick any bananas, papaya, oranges and limes from the gardens. The charcoal for our barbecue is made from thinning’s from our forest next door and this is harvested on a sustainable basis.

Gardens, Birds, Wildlife and Forestry

Much of our land is natural forest and the land we have developed has mature tropical gardens supporting a wide range of birds and small animals from Humming birds and land Tortoises to Iguanas and the local Manicou. We have humming bird feeders on every veranda and support a local population of several bird species running into the hundreds. You often find the simplest things in life are the best and watching Humming birds and Bananaquits drinking from the feeders on your own private veranda is an absolute delight.

Tropical Hideaway Woodland Walk

We have a lovely woodland walk consisting of 226 stone steps with a seating area midway. This walk enables you to be down on the main road in 5 mins and on the most beautiful beach in 15. It also provides an insight into the flora and fauna of Bequia and for a lot of people a welcome bit of excercise to counter the excesses of holiday life.

Honey Bees

There have always been local honey bees at Tropical Hideaway. They were here before we arrived and are still here now. We are purchasing 2 ‘Flow’ hives from Australia and these should be with us mid 2018. These are a newly designed hive concept and without simplifying the process, you just open the tap and the honey flows out. We are surrounded by natural forest which the bees just love and they produce a honey that is delectable and highly sought after. Having 4 1/2 acres of land allows us to position these hives in the forest, away from Tropical Hideaway, but at a distance that is still easy to gain access to, for both us and you, if you are interested to see how the ‘Flow’ hive system works.

Supporting Local Businesses

We actively support and encourage local businesses and wherever possible source our products from them. Our coffee is grown in St Vincent and is harvested and roasted and delivered to us 7 days after placing the order. The aroma of freshly roasted coffee in our shop is wonderful. We now have a cocoa plantation on St Vincent and we sell their wonderful chocolate bars in our shop.

We have locally produced sauces, marinades, herbs and spices and most of the fruits and vegetables are grown on St Vincent. Our fruit and vegetables may not be the perfect shape but ‘WOW? they do taste good.

Our fish is locally caught and we travel to St Vincent to buy the freshest available. We fillet the fish, vacuum pack and seal it ourselves and in the freezer it goes. From Ocean to shop freezer in just a few hours.

Our quality barbecue meats are prepared and packed for us in St Vincent and are available in our shop.

and the Future

Having just purchased 2 1/2 acres of untouched forest we have some exciting times ahead of us. The main reason for purchasing the land was to protect Tropical Hideaway from any unwanted development next door. A long term ambition and dream of mine is to design and build a couple of off the grid, environmentally friendly ‘Eco Lodges’ built into the tree canopy with sunset views looking through the trees and out over the Caribbean Sea. These will be built off the grid using the latest solar, battery storage and ‘green’ technologies available. Surrounded by natural woodland with absolute privacy and some of the finest views on Bequia, you may be staying in one of these luxury ‘Eco Lodges’ if you visit us in a few years time.