THE NATURALS : Two resorts singled out for blending in : ON ST. JOHN, A HOTEL DEVELOPMENT BUILT FROM RECYCLABLES

Splashes of bougainvillea in neon pink and purple, and trails of bright red hibiscus crowd the pavement’s edge on Centerline Road. But I hardly have time to notice. Since leaving the sleepy pastel village of Cruz Bay, my little Jeep and I have shared 13 miles of tortuous mountain road with four donkeys, two piglets, a small herd of cows and 12 goats. It’s clear who is in control: Nature is.

I’m on the island of St. John, the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, an amoeba-shaped tropical green speck in the Caribbean, where “Just Limin’ ” (pronounced LIME-in) is the most popular local expression and roughly translates to “Just hanging out”--a good indicator of the pace and style of life. St. John’s unhurried ambience is due largely to the fact that two-thirds of the island is parkland, most of it donated to the National Park Service by Laurance Rockefeller in 1956. So it’s fitting that some of the accommodations have a strong back-to-nature theme. One of them is my destination for the night.

By the time I turn onto a potholed dirt road and finally reach the Harmony hotel on the sheltered north shore of the island, I know I am not only off the beaten track, but off the grid as well. The power grid, that is. I check in and head to my lodging, one of a new generation of super studio apartments perched like treehouses amid the tropical shrubbery of a steep hillside overlooking Maho Bay.

I step inside the door and insert my power key in the wall switch to turn on the electricity. Quickly the lights glow on and the ceiling fans begin to spin. I step over to the wall to check the LED numeric readout for my power level status, since all the electricity I will be using is generated by roof-top solar panels that also heat water for the modern bathroom and kitchen. There is a solar refrigerator and, on the apartment deck, a solar oven in which to bake my own food. It comes with a cookbook, “Cooking With the Sun,” but I make a beeline for the computer. Each unit has one, with programs that tell you everything about the self-contained unit in which you are staying, including how much power and water you are consuming (each unit has a cistern with a filter), the wind speed outside, even how much time you can safely spend in the sun, depending on your skin type and sunscreen strength.

The hotel development, Harmony, is a series of box-like modern studio apartments with expansive balconies and sloping roofs hanging from a steep hillside and connected by wood boardwalks. It is built entirely of recycled materials, right down to the nails. The ceiling is tiled with 100% recycled newspaper and insulated with recycled milk jugs. The contemporary floor tiles were once parts of lightbulbs. The patio tiles were car tires in a former life, and the counter tops are made from waste glass. The management isn’t shy about touting the virtuous nature of the place and all of this is explained in literature in the room, including the history of the development and all of its eco-features. The Harmony structures are so sturdily built they all survived last September’s Hurricane Marilyn with no damage and provided the staff with shelter and the only electricity and running water on the island.

Harmony is the latest brainchild of a New York developer with an environmental vision, Stanley Selengut, who opened the then-revolutionary Maho Bay Camps in St. John in 1976, when few people had even given a thought to the concept of eco-tourism.

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Maho Bay is a complex of 114 tented platforms, each 16 feet square, on wood boardwalks and stairways zigzagging up a hillside just below the 12 Harmony studio apartments. Bathhouses are nearby, and there’s a restaurant in a huge gazebo overlooking the bay, if you don’t feel like cooking in your own small kitchen. A giant solar oven is used for baking breads and cookies for the restaurant--it can bake up to 50 loaves of bread a day without fuel. There is even a solar ice maker. St. John is the perfect place to check out the latest in eco-accommodations. The island has little of the razzle-dazzle of duty-free shopping, cruise ships and traffic-clogged roads, which it prefers to leave to its bigger sister island of St. Thomas. In St. John, the pace comes to a screeching halt the moment you step off the 20-minute ferry ride from St. Thomas in Cruz Bay.

Although the U.S. Virgin Islands took a battering from Hurricane Marilyn, St. John was essentially spared. Even on St. Thomas, things were pretty well back to business as usual when I was there in January, although a few sailboats were scattered like children’s toys on beaches and some damaged homes offered a glimpse of Marilyn’s massive forces.

But these days almost all hotels and restaurants are up and running as before. St. John was lucky to escape the worst of the winds and shows no sign of hurricane damage at all.

On the southern side of St. John, another of Selengut’s projects--Estate Concordia, which includes nine studio apartments and the latest in eco-tents--has taken the Maho Bay tent theme a step further. My Concordia eco-tent was one of five completely self-sufficient tent cottages. These are no simple tarp shelters plopped under a tree; they are high-tech habitats with solar panels providing electricity and environmentally safe flush composting toilets.

Perched on a steep slope overlooking Salt Pond Bay, the eco-tents were built to demonstrate that environmental tourism can be viable while comfortably accommodating even budget travelers.

Built of wood and weather-resistant translucent fabric, they are set on a network of wooden boardwalks raised on stilts above the jungle floor. All the construction materials were carried to the site by hand to preserve the ground cover; no heavy equipment was used in the construction, and tree removal was kept to a minimum, leaving the natural ecology of the tropical hillside intact and ensuring there would be no runoff from construction into the pristine seashore below. Even the swimming pool stands above ground, with a deep end on the downhill side of the slope to take advantage of the topography.

In each eco-tent there is a bedroom with futons, a sleeping loft, a kitchen with running water from a rainwater cistern and a two-burner propane stove. I also have my own bathroom and shower. A wonderful tropical breeze blows through the tent when I roll up the flaps of the screened living room windows and, from the porch, there’s a stunning tree-top view of half the island. The five-gallon water sack that has heated on the boardwalk in the sun all day is ready for my hot shower; cold beer is stashed in the solar-powered refrigerator. This is my idea of roughing it.

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Looking over the railing of my balcony I spot dozens of hermit crabs, some the size of grapefruits, scampering through the underbrush.

“We encourage our guests to toss their organic scraps over the side. The crabs are nature’s garbage disposal and they reduce the amount of trash that goes to the landfill,” Concordia manager Julia Caudill cheerfully tells me. “They especially love coffee grounds.” Concordia also maintains a “termite cafe” off in the jungle, where cardboard is left in a corral and devoured almost overnight by the insects. (The boardwalk complex is immune since all that wood is treated.)

Selengut plans to expand Concordia within the next couple of years until there are 120 eco-tents, and he is working closely in the development with his next-door neighbor, Virgin Islands National Park. Concordia was built on private land within the national park.

The national park also runs a campground and cottages at Cinnamon Bay and there is even a restaurant on the premises. As with all north shore beaches such as Maho Bay, bring plenty of insect repellent against pesky sand flies that attack at dusk.

In addition to lounging on the north shore beaches that fringe the national park--some of the best in the world, according to National Geographic--there are plenty of other, nature-oriented, outdoor activities on St. John. Hiking trails crisscross the park (pick up maps at the park office on the main street in Cruz Bay across from the Mongoose Junction shopping complex). One of the most popular is the Reef Bay Trail leading to Indian petroglyphs and the ruins of an old sugar mill at Annaberg Plantation. Scuba diving is popular, as is snorkeling--there’s an underwater trail at Trunk Bay. Low Key Watersports in Cruz Bay offers a three-hour ocean kayak tour from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. that includes a stop for snorkeling.

Even Cruz Bay--known on the island simply as “town”--has retained a feeling that it is in tune with the history and nature of the island. Wharfside Village is a warren of boutiques--some featuring local artists’ works--in pastel-painted Caribbean clapboard. A new shopping complex tucked beneath a canopy of tropical trees, Mongoose Junction’s stone block construction is reminiscent of the island’s sugar mills and old plantation houses from the days when St. John was a Danish colony. Alongside is a small restaurant in cool mint-greens that serves up delicious natural foods on its patio. The Garden of Luscious Licks is run by Canadian Bonny Corbeil and has a vegetarian menu.

Nearby, resident Kim Lyon refurbished her great-grandfather’s old dry goods store a year ago into a popular bar and restaurant called the Purple Door. Three nights a week she features the live music of local musicians for lively sets of drumming, jazz or traditional island tunes.

On my last night I took a seat in the intimate little establishment listening to a spirited local jazz singer. Suddenly the lights went out--just another St. John power failure--but the singer never missed a beat and the electronic keyboard player smoothly switched to his saxophone to carry the tune to its finish by the glow of candlelight.

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GUIDEBOOK: Caribbean Comfort

Getting there: American, Delta and USAir offer connecting service, with one change of planes, to St. Thomas. Lowest round-trip fares start at about $740.

Catch the ferry to St. John at Red Hook Dock on the east end of St. Thomas; $3 one way; 20 minutes; runs hourly during the day.

Where to stay: Estate Concordia cottages and eco tents, 17 E. 73rd St., New York, NY 10021-3578; tel. (800) 392-9004. Double occupancy rates: studio apartments, $135-$190; eco tents, $95, extra person $25. No credit cards or personal checks.

Maho Bay Camps and Harmony, 17 E. 73rd St., New York, NY 10021-3578; tel. (800) 392-9004. Double occupancy rates: Harmony cottages, $150-$180; camps, $95, extra person $15. No credit cards or personal checks.

Maho Bay Camps and the Concordia eco tents are not recommended for children under 4.

Cinnamon Bay Campground, Virgin Islands National Park, P.O. Box 720, Cruz Bay, St. John, USVI 00831-0720; tel. (800) 539-9998. Double occupancy rates to April 30: Cottages start at $90; tents are $70; bare sites, $15; meal plan at Tree Lizards Restaurant, $20.50 per day per person for full breakfast and dinner. Credit cards accepted.

Where to eat: Fish Trap at Raintree Inn, specializes in seafood, casual patio dining; dinner for two without wine $30-$40; local telephone 693-8590.

Garden of Luscious Licks, near Mongoose Junction, terrific vegetarian food; lunch for two $15-$20; tel. 693-8400.

Miss Lucy’s, traditional West Indian cuisine at Coral Bay; dinner for two $40-$50; tel. 779-4404.

Purple Door, in downtown Cruz Bay, dinner for two without wine about $30; jazz, drumming or local musicians entertain three nights weekly in an intimate restaurant/bar; tel. 693-8940.

Where to rent scuba equipment: Low Key Watersports, P.O. Box 431, Cruz Bay, St. John, USVI 00831; tel. (800) 835-7718. Two-tank dive, $75 including equipment. Wreck dives start at $75. Three-hour ocean kayak tours (includes snorkeling), $40.

For more information: U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism, 3460 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 412, Los Angeles 90010; tel. (213) 739-0138, fax (213) 739-2005.

--M.P.