-[narrator] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise, empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.

-[Josh Deel's voice] As we explored in part one, Nevis is an island shaped by memory, by sugar and slavery, by faith, endurance, and a quiet kind of independence that didn't arrive with fireworks.

That history is still here, in the land, in the ruins, in the way this place understands itself.

But Nevis isn't frozen in the past.

Today, this is an island making deliberate choices about how it lives and how it welcomes the world.

Choices about growth, hospitality, and stewardship on land and at sea.

Change is inevitable.

What isn't inevitable is who gets to decide what that change looks like.

[indistinct live chatter] On an island this small, every decision carries weight.

[♪ ♪ ♪] -I want to know what opportunities we can create locally.

-[Josh] This is Nevis today, balancing history with possibility and inviting the world without losing itself.

And the work is already underway.

[♪ ♪ ♪] They say the place you're from shapes you.

Maybe it defines you.

I've always thought you can't really understand yourself until you understand where you come from.

I'm Josh with PBS Appalachia.

In this series, I'm going from town to town exploring the places people still call home, their hometowns.

From Appalachia to the rest of the country, I've found we share more than we think.

But it's the details, the food, the voices, the pride, and traditions that make us different.

This isn't a story told from New York or LA.

It comes with roots embedded in Southwest Virginia, an often overlooked, misunderstood corner of the map.

That perspective matters because the character of America doesn't just live in its big cities.

It's the small towns, the back roads, the kitchens, and the bars where people gather.

That's the lens I bring to this journey because the character of America isn't written in headlines.

It's lived in neighborhoods, on porches, at kitchen tables.

And this season, we're pushing past borders into communities far from here, into new towns, new kitchens, new homes, searching for what home means here and everywhere.

[♪ ♪ ♪] The story of Nevis doesn't stop at its shoreline.

It never really did.

Long before the island was known for quiet beaches or careful hospitality, it was already tied to the wider world through trade, migration, and ideas that move faster than ships.

Some of those connections are easy to miss.

A plaque on a wall, a footnote in someone else's history.

But they matter because places like Jamestown, Virginia, often framed as the beginning of something uniquely American, were shaped in part by people and power that passed through here.

Nevis wasn't watching history happen; it was part of it.

-[Greg Philip] These two plaques were given to us by Virginia, as it says, the Commonwealth of Virginia.

This one is on the 350th anniversary of the Jamestown settlement, and this one is on the 400th anniversary of Jamestown settlement.

-Okay.

-And as you can see, we're gonna get one every 50 years.

-Okay.

-So make sure you're back in 2057 for the unveiling.

-I'll plan on it.

I'll plan on it, man.

-Let's commemorate something that happened all the way back in 1607.

-[Josh] Wow.

-What does this have to do with Virginia and Nevis?

Well, John Smith, on his way up with his men to settle what became Jamestown in Virginia, they stopped here on Nevis back on 28th of March 1607.

This was one of the places that they stopped to replenish their ships.

So the Commonwealth of Virginia recognizes that, yeah, this was important, and this island was even important to what became their existence.

-That's smart.

-Exactly.

Yes.

-Small world.

The more you travel, the more you just see how interconnected we are.

-Indeed.

-[Josh VO] Greg Phillip has a way of slowing the story down.

Not to make it smaller, but to make it clearer.

He understands that history isn't just about who gets remembered; it's about who gets connected.

And Nevis has been connected to the world for a very long time.

-[Greg Phillip] This plaque is a tribute plaque to Hamilton.

-[Josh] Okay.

-1757.

They're using the year of birth for Hamilton.

But importantly, this plaque was placed here in 1957 on the bicentennial anniversary of Hamilton's birth.

I tell you this because it's clear evidence that we knew about Hamilton before the musical, all the way back in 1957.

-Well, maybe I can run the next plaque down in 50 years, so... -Yes.

Come back in 2057 when it's unveiled.

[♪ ♪ ♪] - My wife and I are both Virginians from various parts.

I grew up in Williamsburg.

She grew up in Great Falls, just outside Washington, DC.

When you come here, they don't say, "Welcome to Nevis," they say, "Welcome home."

That's not just an axiom, right?

It does in fact sort of characterize the experience that you have.

We came, and we absolutely fell in love, and one thing led to another, and we moved our three young kids, and here we are.

Four Seasons is the second largest employer on Nevis, and one of the cool things that we love so much about it.

Nevis is an island of-- they say, just over 13,000 people depending on who's come over from Saint Kitts on the day.

And Four Seasons is the second largest employer in the country and has been for almost three decades.

As you follow Four Seasons around the world, they're known for their service culture, right, at every one of their resorts and hotels around the world.

And here in Nevis, that's sort of uniquely embedded in the hospitality culture of the country.

-[Josh's voice] On Nevis, hospitality didn't arrive as an industry.

It started as a response.

To the land, to the water, to the people passing through.

Long before the Caribbean was branded, Nevis was already practicing the art of receiving strangers.

In the late 1700s, travelers came here for reasons that had nothing to do with escape.

They came to be healed.

The Bath Hotel, built in 1778 near Charlestown, is recognized as the first purpose-built hotel in the Caribbean.

Drawn by natural hot springs, it welcomed visitors who believed this place could restore something they'd lost.

-So we are, I think, the authentic Caribbean.

We are the birthplace of hospitality in the region.

The very first resort in the Caribbean was built in Nevis, the Bath Hotel, which I hope you get an opportunity to visit.

We have Healing Springs here, or so it is said.

I confess it's never healed me of anything, but they say that they're healing properties, so certainly we encourage you, but you have to go to the hot baths here in Nevis if you come, and the hot baths are associated with the Bath Hotel, which was the original resort built in the region.

So when we say that Nevis is the birthplace of hospitality, it's because historically it is in fact true.

-[Josh's voice] Hospitality on Nevis didn't begin with luxury; it began with care.

And over time, that idea evolved away from cures and towards something quieter, more enduring.

The Hermitage Plantation Inn predates most of what we think of as the Caribbean today.

Built between the late 1600s and early 1700s, it's home to the oldest wooden house on the island.

But what makes the Hermitage remarkable isn't its age.

It's the fact that it never tried to become anything else.

For more than 50 years, the owners of the Hermitage have made a deliberate choice not to chase trends, not to compete with the outside world.

Their idea of hospitality is simple.

If you want people to feel at home, you have to live there first.

-In the early 60s, I was newly married and living and working in the city of Philadelphia.

After two or three years, that bank bought a bank in the Caribbean, and they invited me to go to the Caribbean because I was newly married but no children yet.

So I went for that.

And the other reason I went were personal, my wife had been disappointed to be told that she wasn't going to be able to have any children, which is very depressing for them.

Nine months of the day after we arrived in the Caribbean, our first child was born.

We went on to have three more children, all conceived and born in the Caribbean.

So there's something about the Caribbean good for us because we ended up still in the Caribbean now 60 years later.

-[Josh] Yeah.

-[Richard Lupinacci] Yeah.

-So tell me a little bit about that, like, just if you can, a high-level overview that the Hermitage had been here a while, right?

And I read something.

I made a note of it here.

It's Earth Fast House, maybe the only one left in the Caribbean.

Can you just talk to that a little bit?

-It's a type of construction that was done when wood was plentiful in the 16th and 17th century, and they used wood.

But generally, wooden buildings didn't last very long.

They would rot six or seven years after they were built-- -[Josh] Humid, wet here, I guess it is.

-[Richard] Yeah.

-[Josh] Wood would make it.

-[Richard] This has been built before 1670.

We knew from the records.

But what I didn't realize, the frames were made of a wood that was growing in the Nevis called Lignum Vitae .

It doesn't rot, it doesn't burn.

It's called ironwood.

And the frames--and actually it's called Earthfast because the posts, the big heavy posts, go down on the ground about four or five feet.

They've been in the ground over three hundred years, and they don't rot.

The archaeologists have been there in later years; they actually excavated one of those posts.

They went down four feet into the ground, where there was still bark in the ground.

They left the bark-- -That's unbelievable.

-Yeah, that's really extraordinary.

So not many living examples left of those anymore because over the years they were replaced.

-What's interesting about that, to get Lignum Vitae at lengths and pieces to build that way, it's a very slow-growing tree.

It would have taken maybe a thousand years to grow that tree.

-[Josh] Oh wow, so this is truly old growth.

- Oh yeah.

-[Josh] Timber.

-We have 20 foot beams in there.

That tree would have to be a thousand years old.

So slow growing.

-Wow, that's amazing.

That's truly amazing.

-And the house resonates with that energy.

Thing that kept me here, that was the deciding fact was that... one of the jobs I'd had in New York was working for a big fancy hotel.

And I thought, well, to succeed, I'm gonna have to work really hard and make someone else rich.

I'd rather work really hard for my family come what may.

And here we are.

-[Josh] Not a bad place to be when you say, "Here we are.

[laughs] I mean, someone would say it's kinda like paradise.

-[Richard] My mother's no longer with us, but she loved this.

I was starting and running banks, and she just loved to entertain.

And that's what my wife would thrive on.

-[Josh] Yeah.

Oh, wow.

-[Richard] Really, really thrive on.

Yeah.

Always a lifestyle thing.

Yeah.

-[man] She always said the world comes to our door.

-[Richard] Yeah.

-And every evening she said, "It's showtime."

And it is.

You know, there's theater involved in this.

Yeah.

There's a buzz to it as well.

You know, meeting new people, meeting old friends.

It's fun.

Yeah, it's work.

But the reward is the fun.

-[Josh] Your mom said it's showtime.

-[man] Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

-[Josh] It's showtime.

When hospitality isn't forced, it leaves room for something else.

Not spectacle, just the simple pleasure of being here.

[♪ ♪ ♪] -We're gonna go in the water.

[laughter] -[Josh's voice] I once heard that food is political, showing its influence over time.

But I think food tells you a lot about a place, what it values, what it remembers.

Nevisian cooking doesn't try to impress; it feeds people.

Meals here are about gathering, not display.

About flavor that comes from time, not shortcuts.

Joy here is unpretentious.

A drink at the end of the day, a conversation that goes longer than planned.

Nothing fancy, nothing forced.

Joy is a rife, not a reward.

Of course, when you live this close to the land and the sea, enjoyment comes with responsibility.

The sea isn't a backdrop here.

It's a workplace, a food source, a memory keeper.

You don't get to treat it like a fantasy.

You deal with it as it is.

Janice didn't grow up imagining a career underwater.

She claimed one.

She became the first Black female dive master in the Caribbean, not as a symbol, but as a fact of persistence.

In a space that wasn't built with her in mind, she learned the water, earned respect, and made it hers.

Are you one of the first female divemasters in this area?

-Yeah, the first Black female diver.

Ever since I was a kid or can remember, I've been in the water.

-How did you go from Jamaica to here?

Like, what made you-- -What made--alright.

What happened, I met the owner for the company, Winston Perkins.

So then they asked, how would I like to just come on over and give a helping on?

And I was like, “Hey.

Why not?” I'm going on a vacation plus get paid.

I figured it would be a good idea to just come and give a hand and then afterward go back to Jamaica.

I've been here eight years since.

-[Josh] Eight years?

Okay.

-[Janice] Yes.

That's how great it is.

-[Josh] Diving for 25 years, you say?

-[Janice] 25 years.

I've been diving 25 years now.

Yes.

-[Josh] Okay.

-[Janice] This year make 25 years.

-[Josh's voice] In 1970, the sea here took 233 lives.

The Christina tragedy involved an overloaded ferry, and when it sank, it was one of the deadliest maritime disasters in The Caribbean.

[♪ ♪ ♪] The memory is still down there, carried quietly the way island tragedies usually are.

[♪ ♪ ♪] Today, out of tragedy, the wreckage serves as an artificial reef of sorts, providing habitat for a diverse marine ecosystem.

[♪ ♪ ♪] Complementing the conservation efforts of creating an artificial reef to combat the bleaching that now endangers reefs around the world.

-There's reefs all over the place, but the reason why we need the artificial reef, a lot of the reefs are dying because of climate change and over fishing.

A lot of time when you over fish, you remove most of the fish and if there's no fish, the reef dies.

The fish actually stays there to clean the reef and keep the reef going.

But they need both.

The fish need the reef and the reef need the fish.

-[Josh] Symbiotic.

-[Janice] Exactly.

So once we put the artificial one down and put it in no-zone where a person cannot go and fish and remove anything, it strives.

And then when more fish and lobsters start to replenish the reef, then they move away and go other places and then the local fishermen, they can start catching again, but not in that specific area.

It's pretty shallow, -like about 15 to 20 feet.

-[Josh] Okay.

-[Janice] So we build this cage and then we put the conch shell in to make the artificial reef.

Eventually the conch shell will grow barnacles on them and there's lobsters already living there.

The Japanese government, they're the one that actually fund it to the beginning.

[♪ ♪ ♪] There's five cage over there already, and they're all designed into a trail so you can follow.

There's a lot of sergeant majors, snappers, grunts so far, and that reef right there.

Some sprats are over there also, and a lot of lobsters are making the nest there actually right now also.

So a person has to go and maintain it to keep the shells clean, and all the other reefs that we're putting in, the smaller ones.

-So lionfish, I know there's a hunter-- -Oh, the lionfish.

-Are they invasive?

Are they not from here?

-No.

They're not.

It's invasive.

They came in The Caribbean in the late 90s.

Yeah, in the late 90s because I was still in Jamaica diving then.

So I think in the late 90s, they came in and they have no natural predators.

So we as divers or the fishermen, they have to go in and kill them.

A lot of people never-- I mean, like to eat them before because they thought they were poisonous but the only part in them that are poisonous is the fins on the top.

-[Josh] Oh, okay.

-Those little spikes that stand up and underneath the tummy part and the tail part, those part will-- if they prick you, it will hurt bad, but it won't kill you.

-[Josh] I've heard they're pretty tasty.

-[Janice] Oh, yeah.

They're very tasty and yeah.

And they're easy to clean.

They're like butter fish.

They're very meaty, and they will continue eat and breed right around the clock.

They just keep eating and eating.

They eat everything that's smaller than their size.

-Oh, wow.

-Yeah.

They will stay right in the shallow part of the reef and eat, eat, eat, eat.

So that could be super destructive to the reef if unchecked.

-Definitely.

So we do kill them.

We bring the zookeeper with us.

We spare them with the Hawaiian sling.

We bring them back here at the restaurant and the rock and prepare them.

-Really?

Okay, okay.

-Oh, yes.

At no cost.

-Really?

-At no cost.

Once we catch them, take we them back over there and we prepare them at no cost and you have them for lunch or if they want to have them for dinner, it's up to them.

-[Josh's voice] On Nevis, conservation doesn't end with a lecture.

It ends with food, music, and everyone still standing together when the work is done.

Stewardship doesn't stop at the water's edge.

It shapes how Nevis thinks about land, energy, and scale.

There's no room here for abstract growth.

What gets built, who it serves, who it employs, it all counts.

Marvin Chapman builds in solitude, shaping ideas by hand in his own space.

And sometimes that work moves outward.

-But over the years, I've, you know, confidence.

I've gained a lot of confidence within myself and try to just make it happen.

Just do it as Nike said, just do it, you know.

So I'm still learning.

-[Josh's voice] When local vision is trusted, scale doesn't have to erase identity.

It can carry it.

-Actually, was self-taught, I'm actually continuing-- I'm teaching myself.

I learned from other people, seen other people's work.

Even on the Internet, I would, you know, browse and whatever and try to articulate what, you know, and try to transform it into my medium, which is rocks.

It's a part of my lifestyle now.

I mean, you know, everybody call me the Stone Man.

You know, so I just have to accept that, you know?

-[Josh] So Sunshine.

Yeah.

Good to meet you.

-[Sunshine] Pleasure, my friend.

-[Josh] Yeah.

Yeah.

-[Sunshine] Welcome.

Welcome.

-Yeah.

Thank you so much.

The hospitality on this island is truly extraordinary.

-You know, this is the Nevis experience.

You know what I mean, yeah?

Treat people the way you like to be treated.

You know?

-Yeah.

Absolutely.

Are you are you from Nevis?

-Yeah.

I'm an island boy.

One hundred percent.

-Right on, man.

Yeah.

-[laughs] -So I hear you have a reputation, a good reputation just as been the place to-- -We provide a service.

You know, I mean, it's an island.

People expect certain things when they come to an island, you know, and we keep it that way, keep it real, keep it simple.

-Yeah.

-We're friendly people, and you treat people the way you like to be treated, you know.

You know, this is one of the few islands in The Caribbean still have the charm.

You know, we have a Four Season hotel.

We have big names, you know, people like Michael Jordan, Mike Johnson, you know, Oprah.

-Oh, wow.

-Because it's a very easygoing island, you know what I mean?

You don't need a bodyguard.

You know, you mingle with the locals.

You know, you just live, you know.

-Killer bee?

-Thank you.

-Cheers, my friend.

-All right.

Cheers.

-You know, home of the killer bee.

-Killer bee.

-Killer bee.

-I've heard a lot about this.

Is this your special--?

-My grandmother's recipe.

-Yeah?

-My grandmother's recipe.

Yeah.

-That's a good drink.

That's a really good drink.

-It got a punch to it?

-It does.

It does.

-Personally, this is the only job I ever did in my life now.

-Oh, yeah?

-Okay.

I mean, I have worked in the business since 35 years ago.

I started this business here with a $100.

-A $100.

-I bought a case of beer and 10 pound of chicken.

Cheers.

That's how it started out, you know.

And I always tell my workers, you know what I mean?

It's about people, the way you treat people, you know what I mean?

Make people feel at home, make them feel comfortable.

-[Josh's voice] Sunshine didn't start with much.

A $100, a case of beer.

On an island like Nevis, that's something enough if you understand how things actually work here.

-In 1984, that's 41 years ago by my math, Saint Kitts and Nevis came up with this idea of leveraging citizenship for investment.

It was novel at the time.

Since then, it has been duplicated in many places.

We've seen it in Malta.

We've seen it in Cyprus.

We've seen it in Portugal.

We've seen the golden visa program in The UK.

We've seen now even President Trump announces that he's doing a version of it.

But that idea came from here.

We were the ones who originated that idea 41 years ago.

-So over the last few years, geopolitical stability hasn't necessarily been on the top of most people's list across the world.

It certainly is one of the main things that people ask us about when they call us at Sotheby's International Realty.

That tends to be a big driver for people down here as they look at property.

-We must innovate.

We must change.

-What do you envision for that?

-So for me, I think it's an attraction of development.

It's an attraction of investment, both local and foreign.

It's to do certain interesting things, some of which we already embarked upon.

We have, for example, a huge thrust now in renewable energy as we try to explore geothermal energy.

Many do not know that this quiet volcanic island that you see, the scientists tell us that we are the host of significant deposits of geothermal energy.

So you have a huge difference between the amount of energy that we currently use and the amount of energy that is available to us.

And so the question is, what do you do if you can tap into all of that energy?

By moving to geothermal, we're not talking about a mix of energy, we're talking about 100% renewable.

In fact, I tell everybody who I talk to that I already have the headline written, "Nevis: The Greenest Place On Planet Earth."

I'm just waiting for the right publication to publish that headline.

Now what that does for us, it burnishes our reputation internationally.

It means that we're doing our part in the context of climate change.

And it also means, of course, that we're creating an entirely new economy, a new orientation for us, new jobs, and those people that I'm talking about who are now in New York and in London, that they can come home because there are now opportunities here for them.

-[Josh's voice] Nevis knows what happens when other people make your decisions for you.

It's live with the results written into the land, the economy, and the water.

So the future here isn't some grand vision statement.

It's practical, measured, sometimes unglamorous.

This island isn't trying to reinvent itself.

It's trying to make sure that whatever comes next still feels like home.

-So it's not just the view?

-No, it's not the view for me because I can get this kind of view back in Jamaica for sure because it's this Caribbean.

It's the people and the persons that are around you that give you that sense of feeling that, hey, I'm comfortable here.

Whenever time I go to Jamaica for vacation, not for say, oh, I'm going home.

No.

This is home.

-I call me this home.

Yeah.

-This is home?

-And this this place has a heart and soul.

That's why we're here.

Whether it comes from the mountain or the earth, maybe I'm sounding a little bit hokey, but I see how it resonates with other guests.

People that come back year after year.

-Nevis is warm.

People are gonna hear "weather" in that statement, but I don't mean weather, right?

I mean culture and people.

-Nevis is nice.

Nevis is nice, man.

You know what mean?

It's a beautiful place to live.

You can't go wrong here, my friend.

-My advice to our people is come home.

You have a place here.

You have a home.

You have a place where you're from.

We have a beautiful island here that needs development, and we know that to achieve sustainable development, we need people.

-You must visit Nevis.

Piece of the island, piece of Nevis, a piece of the rock.

Actually, this is what you're getting, a piece of the island.

But Michelangelo distinctively said, he saw an angel, an angel in the block of marble or the block of wood.

And it's actually just releasing an idea.

He already saw the angel and he set him free.

-[narrator] Nestled in the heart of Appalachia, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is where students experience unique regional culture and the great outdoors.

UVA Wise, empowering students to learn and lead in their communities and the world.