January in St Barths: The Dry Season

January falls in Carême, the dry season on St Barths. Météo-France's 1991–2020 averages for Gustavia give days of 28.5°C, nights of 23.5°C and around 53 millimetres of rain for the whole month, less than half what October brings. The humid months run from May to November; by January they are well behind, and the trade winds keep the heat soft.

The shape is simple: seven nights on St Barths, four on Nevis. On St Barths we base members at Airelles Le Guanahani, on a private peninsula between Marigot Bay, Grand Cul-de-Sac and Le Morne, on the quiet side of the island, with two beaches of its own. Members who want a house take a villa in the hills, and we staff it.

Gustavia is why the island feels unlike its neighbours. France ceded St Barths to Sweden in 1784; the port of Le Carénage was renamed for King Gustav III and made a free port, and the island stayed Swedish until France reoccupied it in 1878. The harbour still carries the king's name.

The days run on wind and water. The nature reserve, created in 1996, protects some 1,200 hectares of sea around the islets off Gustavia, Île Fourchue and part of Colombier bay, and a private boat makes a morning of snorkelling it. Colombier can be reached only by boat or on foot, a twenty-minute trail from Petite Anse, which keeps it quiet. The St Barth Music Festival usually runs through the first half of January, with recitals in the churches of Gustavia and Lorient, and we build evenings around it.

Nevis is the counterweight: greener, slower, dominated by its peak. Four Seasons Resort Nevis sits on Pinney's Beach, almost three miles of sand, with a Robert Trent Jones II course climbing behind it past old sugar-mill ruins and views across to St Kitts. In Charlestown, the Museum of Nevis History occupies the house where Alexander Hamilton was born.

Gustaf III on St Barths has a 646-metre runway, no lights and so no flights after dusk, and every pilot needs a special short-take-off-and-landing qualification, which in practice means small turboprops. We bring the jet into St Maarten and move you the last fifteen minutes by turboprop or helicopter. The crossing to Nevis is a private charter of twenty to twenty-five minutes in a Grand Caravan, landing seven minutes from the resort. For the flight home the jet waits on St Kitts, where the resort's jet lounge clears formalities and its own boats cross the channel in fifteen minutes.

Ask your advisor about a villa in the hills, a suite at Le Guanahani, or both across the seven nights; the Caravan crossing to Nevis timed around the morning light, not the schedule; and how early the villas, festival evenings and Gustaf III slots need committing.