A comfortable truth

By Bob Friel

updated 5:58 p.m. ET June 6, 2007

On unspoiled Andros Island in the Bahamas, one little resort has been tranquilly cruising far ahead of the wave of environmentally friendly theory and practice and has created a model for the future of low-impact Caribbean tourism – all without a single guest having to bathe in a bucket. ...

“I hate the term ‘eco-resort.’”

This statement blows me away, coming as it does from Mike Hartman, who owns Tiamo Resort, one of the world’s most successful … uh … something-or-other-kind of hotels that’s exactly what I’ve always considered an eco-resort.

“In many people’s minds,” he says, “‘eco-resort’ implies sleeping on a cot, bathing in a bucket, reading by flashlight and eating twigs and berries.”

We, however, are lounging on cozy wicker couches set beneath ceiling fans, sipping icy cocktails in the bar of Tiamo’s main lodge. And about 50 yards down the sugary white-sand beach, tucked just behind a screen of sea grapes, is my roomy bungalow equipped with an Olympic-sized bed, steaming hot shower and full-zap electricity.

Mike, 38, has a puckish smile and often jumps behind the bar to invent new drinks for guests and serves as funk-master DJ at staff celebrations. But he’s also very thoughtful and deliberate, especially when his Hoosier twang gets going about anything eco. His particular experience of creating and running Tiamo has made him much in demand as a speaker and consultant on sustainable tourism, a topic that is suddenly getting a lot more attention as the entire world focuses on pressing environmental issues.

It wasn’t the global problems, though, that led Mike and his wife Petagay to come up with the concept for Tiamo in 1996. “We simply wanted to build a little hotel in a beautiful place,” says Petagay, 41, who was born and raised on Jamaica. Mike, a Midwestern farm boy who’d gone into publishing, wound up at the wild and wacky end of Florida, Key West, on a sabbatical that he figured was his last gasp of freedom before fast-tracking it in New York. However, when he met the free-spirited Petagay, who was working tourism jobs in Key West after spending a couple of years doing marketing for SuperClubs back in Jamaica, Mike realized that maybe he could find something more interesting to do with his life.

Bob Friel The Hartmans at Tiamo

The couple decided early on that they’d have to look around to find the right spot for their hotel. “The Keys were out,” says Mike. “Water quality and reef quality had already been devastated by poor land-use planning, overdevelopment and disasters like septic systems that leaked into the ocean and Florida Bay.” Not far away, though, across the cleansing waters of the Gulf Stream, lay islands that were like the Florida Keys sent back in time. The Hartmans did six months of scouting trips to the Bahamas’ Out Islands, concentrating on Andros, the largest yet least developed and populated. “We were searching for a place that hadn’t been impacted yet,” says Mike. “And there are areas of Andros that still, to this day, haven’t been explored.”

The spot they finally found was tucked inside South Bight, one of the tidal “creeks” that slice through the 2,300-square-mile island. A tiny settlement called North Quarter was just a few crumbling ruins surrounded by miles of uninhabited coppice and sun-baked limestone, inaccessible except by boat or seaplane. It stood behind a stunning stretch of beach that was forgotten by everyone except a few locals who came to dive conch and go ashore for the occasional picnic. Navigating the Byzantine backwaters of Bahamian land ownership, Mike and Petagay discovered a small plot of privately owned land along that beach. They’d found their beautiful place.

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