Nearly Impossible to Leave St. Barths This Weekend: A Tale of Travel Woes | Vanity Fair

Wendi Murdoch could not leave the island. I received a text, pre-coffee on January 3, informing me of this grave news. If Murdoch was unable to get a flight out of St. Barthélemy, no one else was budging either. Back she went to her rooms at Cheval Blanc. Leonardo DiCaprio was stuck too, apparently on someone’s superyacht. He had no choice but to send his regrets to the Palm Springs International Film Awards.

The US raid on Caracas, Venezuela, caused air restrictions on Saturday throughout the Caribbean, regardless of politics, regardless of whether you had to accept a prize, deposit your kid back at school, or shake the sand out of your shoes and get on with life.

With the airspace closed for US-registered aircraft in the Caribbean, nearly all planes—commercial and private—were grounded. Tradewinds and Winair had stopped flights to and from the island, and Netjets told their clients that they couldn’t get them out. The only apparent way to leave? Somehow getting invited on a private plane registered to a European country. A tall order…even for this moneyed crowd.

It wasn’t just billionaires and Academy Award winners. Shep Rose from Bravo’s Southern Charm was grounded. Richie Akiva, the nightlife entrepreneur, was beached. So were various models, influencers, investors, and business titans.

The island’s holiday season between Christmas and New Year’s Eve had come to a close, but the festive spirit was still pulsing, the DJs still spinning, the influencers in their filmy cover-ups still climbing on the tables at Nikki Beach, La Guérite, and Gyp Sea, following in the platformed footsteps of Lauren Sánchez Bezos. It was a far cry from the uncertain new reality facing Venezuelans, who had seen their government upended overnight.

Akiva announced a “Fuck Me! We Can’t Fly” blowout at Barry Rooftop & Club in Gustavia. An AI investor named Tom O’Regan threw a “Stranded in St. Barths” party at a villa. “Castaway Vibes & Tropical Beats!” read the invitation. The dress code was “survivor chic.” It started at sunset and ended when the lights flickered on at around 2:30 a.m. Meanwhile, CEO of BDG Media Bryan Goldberg was busy organizing his own tongue-in-cheek event for “exiled Americans” at La Guérite, like a sort of deranged Rick’s Café Américain. “Diplo will be leading a panel of Burning Man 2023 survivors to inspire us with their advice,” he wrote on Instagram.

Rose was supposed to be settled back in Charleston, deposited there on a private plane owned by a friend. “We left the island on January 2, before the invasion of Nicaragua or whatever,” he tells me. Do you mean Venezuela? “I’m stuck in the Reagan administration, I guess,” he says.

He and his group took the necessary puddle jumper from St. Barths to St. Maarten, where they had every intention of transferring to a private plane home to the US. But, long story short, the flight couldn’t leave and, after knocking on one hotel door after another, his group found a vacancy. The next day, all flights were grounded, and his host decided to return by boat to St. Barths. “I’d rather be stuck in St. Barths than St. Maarten,” Rose says. “No offense to St. Maarten.”

At this point, Rose adds, “You have to just roll with it.” And roll he did, all the way to the castaway vibes and tropical beats. He was joined by “a pretty big-time model.” Ally Mason, if you’re wondering. “I think I annoyed the shit out of her,” says Rose.

At the fully booked hotels, people were also rolling with it. Luc Lanza, the CEO of Le Toiny, a Relais et Châteaux hotel, heard about the grounded flights on the morning of January 3 and started entreating guests to accept a modicum of hardship. He asked those with two villas—“one for the parents and one for the kids”—to cozy up in one with beds set up in the living room to free up space for other guests. “Actually, I was a bit surprised that people took it very easily,” he says. It may have helped that “people drank more than usual. Most of them were pleased with the situation.”

The chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who has a house on the island and heads the Sand Bar restaurant at the Eden Rock hotel, says, “I’m glad I do food and not politics.” He found that no one seemed terribly bothered by the inconvenience, perhaps because the island was still well-stocked. “There’s no shortage of caviar,” he told me when I stopped him on Saline Beach on Sunday.

A group of TikTok influencers from Australia stood next to their six aluminum Rimowa roller bags by the entrance of Eden Rock, waiting for their taxi and clutching a stack of euros. “We’re supposed to leave tomorrow,” one told me. “But I’m hoping we get stuck.”

Additional reporting by Elise Taylor.