Travel |

What hurricane? Revisiting Little Palm Island, where Irma is only a memory

I didn’t know what to expect on Little Palm Island, the best place I knew.

Much was sure to be different there since Hurricane Irma took it apart the morning of Sept. 10, 2017. I hadn’t been to the resort off Little Torch Key since February 2015, long before the storm passed through.

Back then, after my wife and I had spent a day and a night there, I wrote this about Little Palm Island:

“We wore ourselves out that day, trying to do everything before the sun set. We’d jump into an ocean kayak and take a few sharp turns into the mysterious mangroves around nearby Big Munson Island, or escape to SpaTerre for an 80-minute massage. We walked the crushed seashell paths around the island, playing the giant chess board, lounging by the pool, sampling Gumby Slumbers (Capt. Morgan spiced rum, Malibu coconut rum, fresh squeezed orange juice, pineapple juice, cranberry juice and rum-soaked coconut), swinging in hammocks, watching the Key deer run, till the sun began to set and we got hungry.

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“Then we followed the footpaths, raked to Zen-garden like perfection (no leaf blowers to disturb our peace here), past the thatch-roof bungalows to the Dining Room. We took a table down on the white-sand beach as the sun began to sizzle into the west. Our own personal Mallory Square (without the fire jugglers).

“We were both worn out by the time we were holding hands again on the launch back to Little Torch Key.”

I was sure about one thing, after my last trip to Little Palm Island. It was the best place I knew.

‘Even the birds were gone’

Since then, Irma had come ashore with wrecking 130 mph winds. And everybody else on Little Palm Island was somewhere else that day.

Inga from the concierge desk was in Pennsylvania. Rolando at the beach cabana was on Florida’s west coast. Sandi at the spa was miles away in Central Florida.

“Everything you see here now was all rebuilt,’’ Inga says, greeting us at the dock for a tour of the 4.5-acre island that used to be five acres before Hurricane Irma. All of it, from the wooden floors of the dining room that buckled under as much as eight feet of seawater to the thatched roofs of the 30 bungalows that blew away in the Cat. 4 force winds.

“The boutique over here used to be on the [other] side of the island,” she says, along with the white-sand beach where we’d had dinner the last time we were here. “The tree that used to overhang the pool is gone now. The bar over there was rebuilt. The piano survived – not even Irma could move that. The giant chess board you remember from your last visit did not – it’s been replaced by a reflection pond. Somehow, the Truman outhouse – built in the 1920s – survived. It survived! They knew how to build stuff back then.”

But almost everywhere else she sweeps her hand, you hear about trees knocked flat, or the Great Room that used to be on the ground floor that’s on top of a new building that houses the dining room now; or about how they found the beloved portraits of Bess and Harry S. Truman standing up to their pastel knees in seawater in the drowned remnants of the library.

“All those old books were washed out to sea,’’ Inga says, moving on to the beach cabana where they keep the ocean kayaks, paddleboards and Boston whalers. “But, as you can see, Irma did not take Rolando – he’s still here.”

“Were you like this, hanging on by your fingernails?” I ask Rolando, in his little cabana pressed between the sea and the pool.

“Oh yeah,” he says, smiling. “Kind of.’’

No, not really. No one was here for that.

“Thank goodness,” I say.

“Thank goodness,’’ he says.

Rolando had thought about staying, but he decided in the last hours to evacuate with everyone else. He waited in Naples until Irma let go of the Keys, then picked his way back through the debris field that was Monroe County.

“I came back two days after the storm,” says Rolando, one of the first employees to return. “It was a wreck. There was no place left with a roof, so I slept under the stars on a couple of porches. I was a couple of years living like that. No power – the undersea line had been cut, and they were afraid to turn the power back on until everything was repaired.”

There were changes everywhere, he says, big and small.

Before the storm, for example, there’d been life all over Little Palm Island. Squadrons of frigate birds riding currents high above the bungalows. Pelicans splashing after fish in the bay. Key deer swimming over from the mangroves of the National Key Deer Refuge – so many they put up signs to remind guests the 30-inch tall animals are protected by law.

“[But] there was no wildlife here after the storm,” Rolando says. “Even the birds were gone.”

It was two months before he even saw anything else alive. Heard it, actually, over the din of the mini dozer clearing debris across the island.

“The first back were the mourning doves,” he says. “You know, that coocooing song, singing every morning, calling for their mates. That was awesome. Life coming back.”

But there were questions whether the resort would be coming back. Whether Little Palm Island had taken too big a hit this time. Whether it was worth rebuilding in this beautiful but vulnerable place.

But it happened, a few weeks after the storm. He was here the day he got the news Noble House Hotels & Resorts and the insurers had resolved to rebuild. “A happy day,” he says.

And he was here the day Little Palm Island reopened, on March 1, 2020, almost two and a half years after Irma. The last resort in the Keys to reopen. “Now, if a storm like Irma happened again, I’d stay,” he says. “That big building [housing the Dining Hall, Monkey Hut bar, Great Room and Boutique], is set forever. The foundation goes 90 feet down in the rock.”

People started coming again almost as soon as it reopened, he says. The way they’d been coming to Little Munson Island since it was a fishing camp in the 1920s; and as a resort since 1988.

“We wanted it to stay the same as they left it,” he says, looking over the calm ocean where Irma had come ashore. “And it happened.”

The best place

A bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne was chilling in the bucket in our bungalow, the last time we stayed on Little Palm Island. This time, a bottle of Nicolas Feuillant.

That was about the only difference.

We wore ourselves out again, trying to do everything before the sun set. We could jump into an ocean kayak and take a few sharp turns into the mangroves around nearby Munson Island, still battered from Irma but still there. We could escape to the rebuilt SpaTerre for an 80-minute deep-tissue massage or 50 minute rose quartz facial with Sandi. We walked around the island, lounging by the new pool, sipping Butterfly Bees (Butterfly pea flower-infused Bombay Sapphire gin, honey, lemon juice and Rocky’s Botanical), swinging in hammocks, watching the frigate birds soar over the thatched roofs and the pelicans dive on fish in the bay, till the sun began to set and we got hungry.

Then we followed the crushed seashell footpaths, raked to Zen-garden like perfection (still no leaf blowers to disturb the peace here), past the rebuilt bungalows to the new dining room. It was too chilly for a table on the white-sand beach, back where it belongs on the Atlantic side of the island; so we took a table on the new deck as the sun began to set. The man at the piano Irma couldn’t budge began to play an old song.

“God bless the child that got his own.”

We were worn out by the time we were holding hands again on the launch to Little Torch Key the next day.

I didn’t know what to expect on Little Palm Island, seven years after the storm. But it’s still the best place I know.

IF YOU GO

Little Palm Island Resort & Spa, 28500 Overseas Highway, Little Torch Key, Fla. 33042, 800-343-8567, littlepalmisland.com.

The ultra-luxe private island resort, where suites start at $2,800 per night, has 30 thatched-roof rooms – with new interiors – for never more than 60 guests at a time set amid ocean views, some with private sundecks with copper soaking tubs; tropical foliage and sandy beaches re-nourished since Hurricane Irma’s devastating winds in 2017. The one time “Munson Island Fishing Camp,” which hosted President and Mrs. Harry S. Truman, also features crushed seashell paths to the pool, new fitness center, docks for watercraft recreation, beach cabana and two-story SpaTerre, Noble House Hotels & Resorts’ signature spa. The resort’s private motor yachts depart to the island hourly (9:30 a.m.- 9:30 p.m.) from a new dock at the Welcome Station, just off U.S. 1 on Little Torch Key. The crossing takes 15-20 minutes, and is especially delightful at sunset with a Gumby Slumber – the island’s signature cocktail – in hand.

About the Key deer

The resort’s long been famous for visits from the endangered Key deer, which swim in from the nearby National Key Deer Refuge and other Keys. The 30-inch-tall animals delight guests with sightings (and, of course, selfies) at the dock, along the beach and foraging among the mangroves. (Many are such regular visitors they’ve been given names.) Feeding the deer, however, is illegal and can result in a $250 fine. Their numbers are still recovering from Irma.

We were not the first to fall under the charms of Little Palm Island

When actor Cliff Robertson came here to make the 1963 film “P.T. 109,” with Little Munson Island and the Keys standing in for the Solomon Islands in President John F. Kennedy’s Pacific wartime biopic, he apparently went a little island happy. He left a publicity still of himself at the helm of the P.T. boat, in full command of his role as President Kennedy, which hung on a wall in the dining room before Hurricane Irma.

“To my good friends of Little Island (Palm),’’ he signed. “Unposed and unclothed. My favorite beachhead.” The record, like the fading ink on the photo, was not clear on what prompted Robertson to write the dedication. Maybe it was the splendid isolation, the sunsets, the starry nights – or the Bacardi 151-spiked Shipwrecks. Sadly, Irma swept away the framed autographed photo. Rolando in the beach cabana, however, salvaged one souvenir: a faded poster from the movie that somehow survived.