A Little Known Jewel of the Caribbean

 

Kenneth Bagnell
January 29, 2011

      Anguilla is a tiny island set in warm waters of the Leeward Islands, east of Puerto Rico and just north of St. Martin. It has many beaches but only six traffic lights, with a temperature usually at 25C or above. All this caught my eye in the chill of last December, so I arranged the four-hour West Jet flight to Anguilla’s neighbouring St. Martin, then caught a 25-minute ferry boat to Anguilla, settling in an apartment hotel called Paradise Cove toward the island’s southwest.

     It’s an immaculate, stylish inn, owned by Sherille and Frank Hughes, a couple with deep Anguillan history: she’s a businessperson, he’s a medical doctor. They constructed the hotel in phases so that it’s now a set of low-rise buildings around a large pool amid a tropical landscape, just a comfortable, recreational walk to the beach. There are 29 large suites, some with two bedrooms.

     Anguilla -  it rhymes with vanilla  isn’t really well known. In part that may be due to a kind of culture of modesty. Anguillans are soft-spoken, slightly shy, perhaps not given to aggressive self-promotion. Moreover, beginning back in the 1820s, they were part of a British arranged alliance with nearby St. Kitts, which meant St. Kitts, population 35,000, compared to Anguilla’s then only 7,000, managed the purse.

     So, for well over a century, Anguilla suffered greatly, its men roaming from the Dominican Republic to Aruba in search of work. In the late 1960s, fed up, they seceded loudly but bloodlessly from the alliance. “But for many years we had virtually nothing, “ says Colville Petty, a local historian, “no electricity, telephones, water system.”      I met Dr. Petty  a former high school teacher and Anguillan parliamentary secretary  at the Heritage Collection Museum where he’s curator. The museum tells painful true stories of Anguilla’s past.

       Today, tourism is Anguilla’s main inustry, employing about two-thirds of a population of about 14,000. But it’s quiet tourism — gracious, and tasteful, not, as on certain islands, where the natural beauty is obscured by oversized yachts and tranquility ruined by intruding noise.So while there’s lots to do and see, Anguilla appeals most for its peaceful character. There are 33 beaches, all free to everyone, one of which, Shoal Bay, is always included among the world’s top 10.    When I visited it, strolling much of three kilometres of powdery sand beside the whisper of clear blue sea, I asked my guide, (Wil Hodge, who runs an efficient service with his motto “where there’s Wil there’s a way) about the quality of beaches. “They are,” he said quietly, “all open to everyone and all safe for everyone.?

     For all that, the island isn’t a dull bore. For example one noonday my wife Barbara and I had lunch at a beach grill, Johnno’s. The tables were full of jazz fans, mostly American. Johnno’s time-worn walls are almost covered by posters: Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.The sun was high and the cafe’s noonday air sweetening with the scent of wine. The people were comforted by old songs: The Sunny Side of the Street, Autumn Winds, and my favourite, There’ll Never be Another You. The music came from a group called Johnno’s Ensemble, all men of a certain age, their songs rendered by Elvin Hodge strolling among the tables, singing with the most genuine of smiles and a casual manner.

     In the middle 1980s, two men from France, Jacques Borderon and Alain Laurent, came with their wives to Anguilla to begin work in its oldest resort’s café, Malliouhana. A year or so ago, they opened Jacala, set among palm trees and evening breezes of Mead’s Bay, near the western tip of the island .It’s renowned, partly because of its setting and natural atmosphere, where as black night descends, twinkles of light warm the small classically informal room and deck. Taken together, Jacala seats under forty, mostly middle aged and lending quiet intimacy. But the other quality is the sense of calm service by Jacques, and preparation by Alain.

     Both of us agreed that the cuisine, with a touch of French and Caribbean fusion, showed creativity and practical fulfilment: especially my terrine of vegetables and goat cheese and the filet of snapper served in a creamy vegetable broth and garnished with grilled asparagus.

    Naturally, we sat at several Anguillan tables that were interesting, imaginative and fully satisfying: Veya’s where we had wonderful grilled shrimp with fresh mint as we looked out to swaying palms; E’s Oven with casual style, youthful efficiency adding up to genuine local feeling; and we won’t ever forget Ancacaona, where one calm evening after a fine buffet we listened to local dancers and singers reminding us in folksong of the truth of the words of their emcee Calvert Carty: “Their ambition from their earliest days was to work hard.”

    One day at noon  near a village on Anguilla’s Rendezvous Bay, we pulled in at CuisinArt, a resort of white Mediterranean style so immaculate it shone in the sun. We’d heard good things about CuisinArt, so arranged for a tour that would include its spa, its unique gardens; we also accepted an invitation for lunch with Chris Richardson of its management team.

CuisinArt is relatively new and renowned for a newly expanded Spa that is large and well appointed (16 treatment rooms, numerous lounges, plus a couple?s relaxation room above the sea). It made understandable the huge investment of many millions in its 2008 renovation.

Just before lunch, a staff person took us to meet an interesting member of CuisinArt?s staff: Canadian horticulturalist, Dr. Howard Resh, once a professor at Vancouver’s UBC, who subsequently has created and overseen hydroponic gardens in various parts of the world. Now he looks after CuisinArt’s.He spoke quietly about his work, as he took us up and down paths between the plantings in his greenhouse hydroponic farm. It assures that vegetables — tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and so on — adorning CuisinArt tables haven’t endured long weeks in container ships; at CuisinArt they’re just minutes off the vine.At lunch I had proof of the garden’s worth: my salad shone with great luminous tomatoes picked that morning. “It makes a meal memorable,” said smiling Chris Richardson, sitting opposite me.

   He’s a graduate of two universities, one in the U.S., one in England and is obviously high energy: his Blackberry was always at hand and he checked often. We talked of the hotel. It has 300 employees, 95 percent of whom are Anguillan. Then we discussed Anguilla’s social culture, which I sensed is a caring culture, one based on deep tradition. Consider what he said when I asked about family: “We have three children of our own, all in or about to go to university, one in math and physics, one in engineering, one in law. And a boy who has become family just finished college.”

   “My wife,” he added, “sometimes thinks of starting a home for boys.” (I wasn’t surprised when I heard he’s also minister of music in his congregation.) It reminded me of what Dr. Frank Hughes of Paradise Cove told me earlier: “On Anguilla our values stay strong because of Christian legacy. We have little poverty because everybody is everybody’s keeper.”

Further information: www.anguilla-vacation.com/; for Paradise Cove Resort: paradise.ai/ for guide service: wohodge@hotmail.com

The author express his gratitude to Anguilla’s Tourism Board for support and assistance in his research and interviews on Anguilla.

Special to The Hamilton Spectator