Beautiful houses, Sams plantation ruins, oak island, pat Conroy literary center, Hemingway’s bistro, old bull tavern – Dataw Island and Beaufort S,C.

Our friends gave us a tour of their new island home, a gated community on the lowcountry sea island of Dataw that has 800 homes, two golf courses, a marina, restaurant, pub, health club, indoor and outdoor pools, croquet lawns, tennis courts and residents zipping along on golf carts. Alligators glide through the ponds. A copper head Snake slithered across the road. Herons and egrets slink through the marshes. Dolphins rise up in the river water.

The island also includes the ruins of the old Sams plantation, with walls made of tabby (a mixture of cement and shell) plus a small history center and old cemetery and a wooded nature preserve that leads to a bridge to the marsh called Oak Island.

Nearby, in the pretty old town of Beaufort, we walked down quiet residential streets lined with old white mansions with long porches and live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. The writer Pat Conroy lived and wrote here. He left behind a literary center, which Serves as a shrine him but also supports other local writers, which we learned during a short tour. We also passed the lovely mansion where the movie The Big Chill was filmed. We stopped for drinks at Hemingways Bistro near the waterfront and had dinner at the Old Bull Tavern.