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Inconvenience can be a marvellous thing. Many’s the beauty spot that’s been spared the worst excesses of mass tourism by the sheer difficulty of getting there. This doesn’t have to be of the ‘five hours in a dugout canoe, followed by a nine-hour trek’ variety, either. Even the absence of a direct flight can be enough to deter the vast majority of the holidaying hordes.

Not surprisingly, this lack of other people is precisely what appeals to the rich, who have their own planes or can afford to charter one at least, and to the less rich who can’t, but think the end (hanging around somewhere gorgeous with the glitterati) justifies the means (hanging around somewhere ugly waiting for connecting flights). Throw in a few luxurious-but-low-key small hotels and private resorts, somewhere to moor a yacht and, voila, you have something perilously close to the well-heeled recluse’s idea of perfection.

It would be hard to find a better example of this than St Vincent and the Grenadines, which by Caribbean standards is almost willfully undeveloped. The accommodation guide to this cluster of 31 islands wedged between Barbados, St Lucia and Grenada must be the shortest in the region. But what a stylish list it is: Firefly and The Cotton House, both on Mustique; Palm Island Resort; Young Island Resort; Petit St Vincent Resort and now Raffles Canouan, along with a collection of private villas and some small affordable hotels of the kind that travel writers like to keep secret.

Mind you, when it comes to keeping quiet about somewhere special, you can’t do a better job than those canny few who’ve been coming here for years. Alright, so Mustique isn’t exactly undiscovered, but the development is all frightfully tasteful – though I was reminded slightly of a well-manicured country club as I was whisked around the island in its sole taxi to admire the houses of Tommy Hilfiger, Bryan Adams and the rest. You’ve probably heard of artfully rustic Basil’s Bar, too, where you can sip cocktails surrounded by men in white linen and women in haute-boho floaty numbers.

But have you heard of Bequia (pronounced ‘Beck-way’), Mayreau or Baliceaux? Could you point out Union Island on a map? No, neither could I until I spent several happy days recently zipping around the Grenadines in a powerful speedboat, with Earl Habich of Fantasea Tours at the controls and Clint Hazell – whose family have been here for nearly 300 years – taking care of drinks. It’s very much a place for boats, of course, particularly yachts; somewhere for undemanding days of cruising to remote silvery beaches, stopping for a snorkel at the Tobago Cays, docking by a waterside restaurant for simple grilled seafood and a leisurely game of cards, and keeping an eye out for dolphins. For water babies, it’s bliss.

Landlubbers, though, need to head to St Vincent, which is this area’s biggest secret of all – literally, as it’s far larger than any of the Grenadines. It may be home to most of the population, the capital Kingstown and the (non-international) airport, but as far as tourists go it might just as well not exist. Geography has played a part: thanks to volcanic activity the beaches – what there are of them – aren’t as glisteningly white as those of the Grenadines, and some of the coastline is positively rugged. As for the interior, much of it is so mountainous that even modern road builders have been defeated, and there’s hardly anywhere to put a golf course.

Yet that lush interior could be St Vincent’s biggest draw for travellers whose idea of luxury isn’t gold taps but nature at its most unmanicured. To explore takes a certain amount of determination and a decent pair of walking boots. You also need 4x4 transport of some kind and – given the state of the roads – preferably someone else to drive it, so you can concentrate on the views. I was lucky enough to be chauffeured around by Clint Hazell, owner of HazEco Tours, who runs trips all over the island and neighbouring Bequia. Not being a fanatical walker, I was spared the organised hike to the crater of La Soufrière, the still-active volcano in the far north of the island. Instead, I stretched my legs on the Vermont Nature Trail through the tropical rainforest of the Buccament Valley, where rare St Vincent parrots screech overhead at twilight.

Even the man-made landscapes have an appealing lushness. On a tour through St Vincent’s south-east corner, we passed through the steep-sided Marriaqua Valley, often described as St Vincent’s breadbasket – though ‘fruit bowl’ would be more accurate given the profusion of bananas, coconut palms and breadfruit. Most of the fruit ends up in the market in Kingstown, and so did we, before wandering the teeming streets full of stalls selling cheap reggae-mix tapes, T-shirts and drinking coconuts.

For an insight into the island’s troubled past, you need to stop at Fort Charlotte, high above the town. It was built to secure the island for the British, after a period in which it had shuttled back and forth between them and the French. Tellingly, though, the cannon all face inland, towards the impenetrable hills where the last of the Carib Indians held out against the colonisers until the late 18th century.

But it’s the future, not the past, that’s foremost in the minds of those who want to keep St Vincent and the Grenadines as unspoilt as possible. These islands are no longer quite as unknown as they were, certainly not to Hollywood location scouts; witness the shooting of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ films here. There are also grand plans for an international airport by 2007, which – wonderfully eco-friendly, this – will require the levelling of three not-insubstantial hills in the south of St Vincent, not to mention the huge number of gorgeous villas upon them.

It’s probably not quite time to panic. This is, after all, the country where it took two hours from ordering dinner one night until the first mouthful of food appeared – though at least we could be sure it was freshly cooked, I suppose - and where banana pancakes were off the breakfast menu two mornings running because they’d run out of bananas, the island's main crop. All the same, I think you should go there sooner rather than later. Just in case.

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