With spacious rooms and suites and comfortable furnishings (especially the oversized beds and baths), Curtain Bluff is the kind of resort anyone's parents would love -- and that's the point. "It's a family business," said Hulford, seated behind a massive desk crammed with memorabilia and aviation literature. He takes great pride in what he says is an unprecedented return rate of 70 percent, including guests who've been coming for 40 years, whose grown children now bring the grandkids. This staying power is attributed to keeping good staff (an average of 23 years, he says) and a policy of constantly inviting suggestions for improvements. There's also a fine, gentle beach and lots to do at no extra charge -- serious tennis, deep-sea fishing, and snorkeling and diving on the reef. The $2 million wine cellar is stacked with 30,000 bottles of 500 labels. If Curtain Bluff feels exactly like a Connecticut beach club gone tropical (tennis whites are de rigueur and there's a putting green next to the dining patio), well, that's just how Hulford likes it. "I lucked out," he said. "It's been a great life." He's on top of his own little piece of the world, looking back.

Gordon Campbell Gray isn't looking back -- except perhaps in derision. The man who's been called the "London hotelier to the fashion and Hollywood set" said the Caribbean "had gone off the European agenda. When you've been to the Seychelles and Maldives and Bali, and stayed at all the Amans, you can't go to a room with tropical birds on the bedspreads and matching curtains. Why would you?"

Gray is not only this man's last name, it's his favorite color, so the décor is a monochromatic medley accessorized with slate-colored river stones, Asian sliding screens and Indonesian day beds. The highly graphic close-up nature photography (shells, plants) hanging on the walls was shot on the grounds, in black-and-white, of course. While the spa could best be described as clinical, the furnishings and amenities in the rooms are so tasteful and of such high quality (including espresso machines) that there's no hint of drabness or severity; ubiquitous orchids throw dramatic splashes of purple and magenta into the mix. Then there are the gardens bursting their borders, the beach, the sea and sky. "All the color is outside," said Campbell Gray.

Despite their competitive stances, there are two points on which Hulford and Campbell Gray are in complete accord. One is the quality of their local Antiguan personnel. The other is the experience of dining at Harmony Hall, where each hotelier happily sends guests on luncheon outings. On an island whose axis of tourism run from northwest (St. John's) to southeast (English Harbour), Harmony Hall is off by itself on Antigua's eastern peninsula. The half-hour to 45-minute drive is like taking a day trip to Tuscany-by-the-Sea via the rural West Indies.

Tables are arranged al fresco under cream-colored canvas tents and umbrellas, around an 18th-century stone sugar mill (a sure sign of a steady breeze) overlooking Nonsuch Bay. The two-tired Selezione di antipasti misti (mixed appetizers for two) would have made a fine meal by itself, with double tastings of 10 delicacies (including home-smoked tuna, octopus terrine and snapper tempura), but this is no place to stop at the first course. A selection of homemade pastas and a seafood-heavy selection of main courses round out the menu, and it's the kind of place where you want to luxuriate, even if the wind blows neem blossoms onto your fazzoletti or cappellotti, and a tropical shower sends you running for a sheltered place to take your dessert, coffee and complimentary digestivo.

But all good lunches must come to an end, so it's convenient that Harmony Hall is near Half Moon Bay. On an island spoiled with good beaches, this is the one pictured in the guidebooks. When I dropped by, there were fewer than 10 people along the kilometer-long, perfectly symmetrical semicircle of sand.

My next stop was Betty's Hope, the island's first sugar estate, founded around 1650. I was able to explore the grounds in privacy, which, along with a dramatic late-afternoon sky, added to its poignance. King Sugar's ghost was a palpable presence in this partially restored ruin; the plantation could process 12 tons in a week. This monolithic mill was the ultimate economic engine for colonialism. A plaque described an African-style daub-and-wattle slave village with a population of more than 300, whose lot was not significantly improved by emancipation in 1834.

Antigua's only 10 by 13 miles, but it's just big enough and the roads just sketchy enough that you wouldn't want to be criss-crossing it all the time, especially after dark. In order to take in the attractions of St. John's and its environs, I moved from Curtain Bluff to Galley Bay, an all-inclusive resort on Five Islands Peninsula not far from the capital. I'd been hearing an awful lot of talk about Antiguans' talent in the hospitality department, but so far I'd been hosted mainly by foreigners. At Galley Bay, which is under Antiguan management, I experienced some of the nicest guest relations I've ever seen anywhere. Not only was the dining room maitre d' Mike Matthew a superstar -- it was like having Harry Belafonte himself treat you like a swell regular at the first seating -- but even behind-the-scenes personnel like house- and groundskeepers met you with sincere smiles and warm greetings.

The next day I nosed around St. John's, a remarkably clean little city with well-preserved bones of colonial-era architecture and lots to do. I stopped into the cricket ground, where South Africa was walloping the West Indies; across the street there was a kickoff concert for carnival season -- still two and a half months off, but it's never too early to crank up the pan and calypso bands.

From there it was a short walk down to Redcliffe Quay, a cluster of boutiques and small eating and drinking establishments housed in a restored dockside warehouse district. Again I found myself in a place where colonial-era architectural remains had been repurposed as vital, tasteful businesses aimed at a discerning class of client, resident and tourist alike. At C&C's Wine Bar, I quaffed a South African varietal, which is the only kind they sell -- not because either owner is from there (one is Antiguan, the other Belgian), but because they like it. Yachty English Harbour is not Antigua's sole cosmopolitan precinct.

With the end of my visit drawing near, it occurred to me that while I'd eaten very well in Antigua, I'd had hardly anything that could be called Antiguan or even Caribbean. I had allowed to go unchallenged Catherine Ricard's comment that "they just don't know how to cook." So I perked up when I heard about Home, in a residential neighborhood of St. John's.

Chef Carl Thomas grew up in the house that's now Home, then lived for many years in New York where he sold diamonds and met his wife Rita, who is German. When he retired, it was time to go back to Antigua and pursue his passion. "I saw a need for upscale Caribbean cuisine in a retro setting," said Thomas.

Ceiling fans distributed an air of general good feeling throughout the dining room, whose pastel peach walls were decorated with Afro-Caribbean masks, its seats occupied by a handsome assortment of Antiguans, Brits and North Americans. The feeling only intensified as I worked through Thomas' turtle gumbo, which would be a big hit in New Orleans, and the blackened jackfish in chili-garlic sauce. Caribbean bread pudding with whiskey sauce took the edge off all those savory flavors.

"I've tried to take old Caribbean food from our peasant, agricultural past and make it new by lightening it with an infusion from all the colonial powers that dominated this part of the world," Thomas said.

To me that sounded like more than the esthetic underpinning of a cuisine; it sounded like a metaphor for the Antigua I met, a proud place that's well able to satisfy sophisticated international appetites. But no metaphor ever tasted so damn good as that dinner.