GRACE BAY, TURKS AND CAICOS — Legendary rocker Keith Richards was out of uniform. No dangling cigarette, no wailing guitar, no stormy look. As a matter of fact, he was grinning. And scratching the tummy of a shaggy black munchkin of a dog.
It was late January, and the Rolling Stones icon was chilling on a wooden dock overlooking the turquoise waters surrounding Parrot Cay, a Caribbean islet that bills itself as "the world's most exclusive resort."
The 1,000-acre private island is in Turks and Caicos, a semi-obscure archipelago east of Cuba that has been propelled into the limelight by its rising popularity with the glitterati.
The multimillion-dollar beach house owned by Richards shares the sandy white shoreline with the homes of Bruce Willis, Christie Brinkley and Donna Karan.
The mind boggles just thinking about the neighborhood's holiday parties and summer barbecues.
I spent several days exploring their chichi slice of paradise, snorkeling in electric-blue waters, sinking my toes into sun-bleached sand, breathing the balmy air. OK, so maybe I was out of my league playing on their turf, but I faked it. You don't have to be rich to have fun here.
It wasn't all play, though. I spent three days touring resorts -- very high-end resorts. The kind where you might run into a star, someone like, oh, Conan O'Brien. I saw him hiding under a baseball cap pulled so low over his face that I might not have recognized him but for skin so white it was almost blue. News flash: People with skin that fair should vacation in Seattle, not the tropics.
But tourists like O'Brien have helped make Turks and Caicos Islands, or TCI, a success story. Twenty years ago, these 40-some islands and cays had few paved roads or services. Now this British crown colony has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world; its 33,000 residents share their islands with about 300,000 tourists annually. There are a dozen or so high-end resorts where overnight stays often top $1,000 a night and a booming real estate market that caters to multimillionaires.
The soaring popularity of the tiny West Indian territory, isn't surprising. It's a 75-minute flight southeast from Miami -- close enough to make it an attractive short-holiday destination for the East Coast platinum-card crowd. (New Yorkers can get there in 3 1/2 hours; from L.A., it takes about seven.) Other pluses: The currency is the U.S. dollar, crime is minimal, locals are amiable and everyone speaks English.
