If you've lived in Florida as long as I have, you sure get fussy about the Caribbean. We've got great beaches here, plus wonderful restaurants (which you won't get sick from) and more than enough to do. Why go to San Juan and fight that horrible traffic? Why go to St. Thomas and fight those thousands of tourists just off the cruise ships? No, if some place in the Caribbean is going to attract my attention it's got to be pretty special.

Like Nevis. Nevis is one of those little tiny islands in the Caribbean that celebrities are always running off to for complete relaxation and total privacy. Princess Diana, Oprah, Janet Jackson . they've all been here. (Of course, what they don't realize is that the minute they leave the locals start telling stories about them. This means that one of the side effects of your trip to Nevis will be a large and fascinating dose of celebrity gossip.)

Nevis is located smack in the middle of the Caribbean, right where the Leeward Islands meet the Windward. It is indeed tiny, barely 36 square miles. Physically it has a Bali Hai kind of air, with a giant and hopefully dormant volcano at its center, usually wreathed in clouds. The entire island descends from the volcano. It looms up everywhere, right behind your back. Sometimes it looks peaceful, sometimes mysterious, but always it's there. One tourist went hiking on the mountain and got lost for 10 days. (Why didn't he just walk downhill? I asked. It turned out he was stuck in a ravine.)

The population of Nevis is 10,000-a small town, really, where everybody knows everybody else and is constantly waving at them and calling out greetings. Most of the population is black, the descendants of the slaves who worked the sugar plantations. Over and over you encounter the same last names-Pinney, Hudgins, Nisbett-which were also the names of the big plantation owners. There was an election going on while I was there and it was terribly exciting. The whole place was election-mad; posters everywhere; and I was kept awake one night by an election rally in a bar just down the hill.

Any Caribbean island can be pretty. But Nevis has something else. Its dramatic past is everywhere, so close you can touch it. Many buildings date from the 1600 and 1700s and are still in use. Ruins of sugar plantations dot the landscape. Archaeologists in increasing numbers are visiting to research the period before the American Revolution, when Nevis was "Queen of the Antilles" with economic and social ties that spread out over the world. This is where Alexander Hamilton was born (Thomas Jefferson's grandfather was raised on neighboring St. Kitts) and this is where a young and dashing Lord Nelson married the daughter of a wealthy planter, under a tree that still stands.

Of course not all of the sugar plantations are in ruins. Many of them have been turned into inns. The "plantations inns," as they are known, give Nevis its own special personality as far as accommodations go. I stayed at a place called the Hermitage. It has cute little cottages in the Nevisian vernacular style (lots of gingerbread and bright colors) and its Great House is thought to be the oldest wooden structure in the Caribbean.

I loved my cottage. The first thing I noticed as I walked in was the mosquito net draped over the bed. Believe me, there is nothing to transport you back into the past like a mosquito net. It raises all sorts of interesting questions, like "How badly am I going to need this thing?" and "Does this mean there's no air conditioning?" I studied it very carefully before I climbed in that night. It seemed to me that a really smart mosquito could find his way in. That is indeed what happened. That's when I discovered the drawback to mosquito nets. The mosquitoes are smart enough to get in but not smart enough to get out.

But I am not one to let a little mosquito spoil my fun. There is a lot to see on Nevis in a low-key sort of way-old churches with great old cemeteries, a couple of folksy and charming historical museums, a botanical garden. There is no shopping to speak of and nary a fast food restaurant, and you don't miss them one bit. My favorite thing to do was visit the other plantation inns to see how they compared. My runner-up favorite was the Golden Rock Plantation, which is a little more casual than the Hermitage and has a sensational view-spread out before you in the deep blue Caribbean are St. Kitts, St. Eustacius and poor Montserrat, with its volcano spewing smoke and ash into the sky, just far away enough to be picturesque rather than scary.