Sand Wars

You'd think that if there was one thing that Caribbean islands would have a lot of, it is sand. Not true: sand is costantly being added, removed and moved by wave action and storms. For example, I just got back from a stay at the Young Island Resort in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where the beach used to be in front of the hotel restaurant until high surf generated by a storm hundreds of miles away swept through and moved the strand behind a string of private villas -- a spot less accessible by hotel guests.

There's a dark side to the story of the Caribbean's shifting sands, too, and I don't mean a black-sand beach, either. As the Associated Press recently reported, thieves have been stripping sand off the beaches of Vieques, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and north-coast towns in Grenada to supply construction projects, which need sand to make concrete. In Jamaica this week, a developer has files suit against Riu Hotels & Resorts and the Fiesta Hotel Group, claiming that sand found at two Spanish-owned hotels was stolen from another beachfront property, shutting down construction of a $105 million resort at Coral Spring beach on Jamaica's north coast.

The irony is that the concrete being used to build tourist hotels may be helping to diminish the beauty of the very beaches promote in resort brochures. Thieves in Jamaica hauled away 500 truckloads of sand from the Coral Spring beach, formerly 1,300 feet of white sand.