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St. Kitts artist Kate Spencer came and went often to the Caribbean isle starting in 1977, sucked in by its sultry tropical aura of romance. She returned after an eight year absence in the 1980s, and what happened next was the kind of thing that would keep her from ever leaving again.

Eight years, she'd been gone. Climbing into the cab after her plane landed, the cab driver smiled and held her gaze in the rearview.

"Well," he said. "We haven't seen you for a while."

Coincidence, happenstance, or Caribbean magic?

It's an easy question to answer, if you've ever been there. Once in a while, in this business, you are lucky enough to see a place you know will be talked about with glowing superlatives 20 years from now. Unknown to most Americans, St. Kitts is the kind of place you first see and can't believe you haven't heard of.

So many tropical destinations pitch themselves as paradise, but in truth have only a few elements of it, or the elements are there but scattered all over the country. Or there's just far too many people. Like St. Lucia, and parts of Hawaii, St. Kitts actually does have it all. The clear blue water, the beaches, the volcanos, the lush rain forests, the un-Baja-like birds and flowers and island culture. There is great golf, big game fishing, and even surf, in the winter. All close together. Even the air feels soft and luxuriant.

And above all, it possesses that unquantifiable something-something. Asked to sum up the island's aura, Spencer laughs.

"Sex! Scandal! Sugar! Oh, but we're respectable now," she says coyly. "I've always felt it was an incredibly romantic place."

Now it's more "Scenery, Seclusion and Serenity." There is just one stoplight here, one "modern" store downtown, and one hotel, a grand, sprawling, three-year-old Marriott. Long the most fertile, strategic, and resource-rich island in the Caribbean, the French and English battled fiercely for centuries over St. Kitts, the fortified Gibraltar of the Caribbean. Then St. Kitts was forgotten, except by drug traffickers, and those hiding wealth. It was only dropped from the international money laundering list in 2002, and idled its over-subsidized sugar industry in 2005. Now waving fields of wild sugar cane portend a sweet future in tourism and real estate.

Cruise ships have replaced battleships, and the fierce fort atop Brimstone Hill is just a pleasant lookout from which you can see St. Barts, St. Eustacius, Anguilla and Barbuda on a clear day. The former slave market downtown is now a celebration plaza called Independence Square, and there is much to celebrate. As if islanders need an excuse.

"This is a big time for St. Kitts, and it's fun to be involved," says Kaline Kennard, with Newfound Developers International. A young Londoner, she is in love with the island, hooked on falling asleep to the sound of waves, hiking the cloud-shrouded volcano (Mt. Liamuiga) or hopping over to Nevis or another tropical isle to grab lunch. Her company is building Ocean's Edge, a hillside 40-acre vacation home site possessing ocean views on par with Peninsula Papagayo, Costa Rica's famous Four Seasons.

St. Kitts is an 18-mile long chicken drumstick, arid and beachy on the skinny end, with fertile tropical rain forest and mountains on the meaty end. A horse track and four new golf courses will soon join the splendid Royal St. Kitts course, but developers are pushing the less-is-more approach.

"They want 3,500 rooms, not 10,000," says Kennard. "We'll have golf courses and a deepwater marina, but no high-rises along the beach."

She drives me along the "round-island-road", stopping at Romney Manor, a nature preserve and batik shop called the "prettiest little factory in the world", where indigo hummingbirds zip around giant flowers and ancient trees. We lunch at Ottley's Plantation, an elegant ocean-view inn with a huge stone veranda by a pool, ive plants growing from the walls, and fantastic coconut-crusted chicken and fried plantain.

Little has been developed on this end of the island, but a 2,500 Auberge resort (St. Kitts Peninsula) is planned to offer beachfront suites, over-the-water bungalows, marina-side condos, and 10 miles of coast. A 300-berth marina is planned, along with an 18-hole Rees Jones golf and a Mandarin Oriental hotel. Kittitian Heights, another resort community, is a 390acre site coming soon on the side of the volcano, billing views of distant islands and an 18-hole Ian Woosnan course.

"St. Kitts is the mother colony of the Caribbean," explains native Brian Kassab, a long-time realtor here. "It was the first island settled, with good soil, perfect climate and fertile, always England's richest assett. Many of the other islands are flat and hot. They had no water or soil, just beaches, and were forced to tourism much sooner."

Now, the dry southern end of the island is a developer's dream. Kassab has brokered 2,300 acres there, a big push from investors fleeing now-flat U.S. and U.K. markets.

"They see this as emerging, happening. One man came in and bought a house, a villa, two condos and a dozen lots," he said. "Golf may set us apart. Golfers don't want to play the same course every day, and we will have four or five."

The government hopes to keep St. Kitts in the high end demographic to create less demand on infrastructure and keep the island natural and beautiful.

That night, with our feet in the sand, just 20 feet from the water, we are eating fresh lobster from the trap just offshore at the Shiggidy Shack, a Corona-commercial stretch of beach with pumping reggae. I listen to a client of Kaline's who just paid over a $1 million for a hillside lot impuning her to get something for herself because St. Kitts is badly undervalued. His lot is about half of what it would cost anywhere else, "and you make six or seven hundred thousand right off the bat," he says.

The next day, at the same spot, I snorkel out amid purple moray eels, stingrays, mackeral, bonita and a swirling blizzard of minnows as pelicans crashed all around. A seaside round of golf at Royal St. Kitts Golf Course is next. The back nine is one long, sublime, turquoise water hazard: the ocean. It is impossible to be in a bad mood. It is a dream trip, but for those buying in, it will be a life.

St. Lucia, 27 miles long and 14 wide, is also bucking for a name in golf, and has the same pulsing verdant beauty as St. Kitts--maybe even moreso. Many feel it is the single most beautiful island not just in the West Indies but in the entire Caribbean. One of the Windward Islands of the Westward Antilles, it is often described as having been plucked from the South Pacific and plunked in the Caribbean. Just 27 miles of paradise, kissed on one side by the Caribbean and the other by the Atlantic. It's famed pitons are dramatic coastal peaks that jut 2,000 feet into the sky from sea level.

St. Lucia is about to receive a Jack Nicklaus golf course, too. Leading the buzz is a planned golf community by American Dennis Nardoni, soon to be carved from a paradisical setting close to the St. Lucia Golf & Country Club's challenging course.

Also in the works on St. Lucia is Le Paradis, a 600-acre residential resort on Praslin Bay, stretching from mountain to beach. Greg Norman is collaborating with Troon Golf, with ocean views on almost every hole.

In addition to rainforest filled with tropical birds to explore and boundless sailing and diving adventure, St. Lucia is home to Soufriere volcano, the world's only drive-in volcanic crater.

St. Martin is the schizophrenic isle of the group, half Dutch (St. Maarten) and half French (St. Martin), and to this day the smallest split nation in the world. Long-ago developed for its 38 postcard-perfect beaches (in 37 square miles of country!), it has many ready-to-buy homes says Walter Kessel, owner of Tendal Real Estate. He's been selling St. Martin for 35 years, and the beaches, the food and the shopping remain the largest draws.

"It is the gourmet island of the Caribbean, with great restaurants on both sides and plenty of night life," he says. "We have a new deep water cruise ship port, a new air terminal, and we are the megayacht center of the Caribbean, with several high-end marinas."

In addition to Ocean's Edge on St. Kitts, Kaline's company is planning a much larger project on St. Kitts sister island, Nevis, home of a Four Seasons. The Four Seasons is closed until Feb. 10 due to effects from hurricane Omar.

A transparent government has renewed confidence for both builders and locals, who are well aware of how special their home is. "We have been through colonization and through independence; it's very much in the conversation that we must not be re-colonized," said Hans Mallalieu, a St. Kitts native, also with Newfound.

Kate Spencer paints away in her spacious studio atop a grassy hill. The romantic warmth of St. Kitts kept her here, and the landscape seems born of it. The world's largest flower is a tree that grows here on St. Kitts, blooms after decades of dormancy, then dies. Residents adore old love songs, and Caribbean charm pervades in so many details. Like the hurricane warnings on the radio (Trim back ya coconut trees so dey don't hit da house!) and gems of colloquial wisdom pasted on passing cabs and vans (You Got Dat! and Dat Jealousy Gone Kill Ya!)

The lifestyle is the best of land and sea. On blue water big game trip, we are hardly offshore when schools of flying fish shatter the ocean surface as mahi-mahi blast into them. The tournament season heats up in November, with ultimate angling species such as yellowfin tuna, marlin and wahoo. Meanwhile, Spencer's husband, Phillip Walwyn, is finishing the sleek 12m racing yacht he's been building, and Kate invites us to a party to help pour the lead keel-the boat is about to be christened.

Islands get crowded. But for now, at least, this one is perfect.

The island has stolen Kaline's heart, ever since a dove started singing at her window every morning at dawn. She moved shortly after, and weeks later, was awakened by that familiar cooing. The bird had found her, and has returned every sunrise since to sing to her.

Coincidence, or Caribbean magic? The soul of some sailor lost at sea?

It's a matter of what you choose to believe. You'll just have to go and decide out for yourself.