After a four-year gap due to the COVID pandemic, we eagerly returned to Anguilla for a two-week vacation. We love this tiny Caribbean island and have taken a welcome break from Vermont winter for fifteen years. I have written many posts about lessons from Anguilla gleaned during our visits, and this trip uncovered more.
The trip
For the first time in many years, Celia and I stayed in Anguilla without company. In the past, family members, and Celia’s women friends would join us for a week. But flights were so expensive that we couldn’t afford to bring family, and Celia’s friends couldn’t come for various reasons. The villa where we’d stayed previously was up for sale, so we looked for another place to stay.
We love the East End of the island and found a wonderful Airbnb in Island Harbor. Right on the northern coast, it featured two decks overlooking the North Atlantic, without a speck of land between us and Nova Scotia, 3,000 miles away.
Here’s the view from the large deck outside our apartment.
And here’s the view from the lower deck.
We loved our new accommodations (read below for more reasons) and hope to return there next year.
So, what lessons from Anguilla did I learn on this trip?
Lesson 1—Don’t make assumptions
The third agreement of Don Miguel Ruiz’s classic book “The Four Agreements” is
Don’t make assumptions.
I’ve spent so much time in Anguilla that, understandably, I make assumptions about what a new visit will be like.
I think I’m a little wiser about making assumptions these days. One thing I now know is to not assume that something I’ve experienced in the past under certain circumstances is likely to occur when those circumstances are repeated. Great initial experiences may not be so good the next time.
For example, on our Anguilla vacation, a memorable restaurant could go out of business or somehow lose its allure. Perhaps, a perfect beach is now covered with seaweed. The Nurse Boy Carwash and Thick Madam clothing store are no more. The perfect bartender who knew your names and made the best rum punches left for better pastures.
The day we arrived offered a good example. We’d had some charmingly idiosyncratic meals and good times at a little shack, Lime Keel House, that was within walking distance of our new island home.
But when I passed it on my morning walk, it was clear that the restaurant was closed. A woman working inside the building told us they were renovating it into a tourist store.
Well, since it had been four years since we’d last been on the island, I assumed that some things that we had loved would be gone. Smart, huh!
Don’t make assumptions!
Over the next two weeks, we found that the vast majority of places and experiences were just as wonderful as we remembered!
Goats still roamed everywhere!
Our favorite restaurants were still around and just as good as ever!
Once again, the sunsets did not disappoint.
And the beaches were just as gorgeous as we remembered.
OK, the Nurse Boy Carwash and Thick Madam clothing store were, sadly, no more.
But they were pleasant memories, nothing we needed to experience again.
And Ruthy’s Yum-Yum and Fruity Web were still thriving!
Lessons from Anguilla: I learned that sometimes the present can turn out to be quite like the enjoyable past.
Lesson 2—Stay open to new possibilities!
We’ve been visiting Anguilla for the last twenty years, so we’re pretty familiar with the island. With an area of just 35 square miles, 16 miles from end to end, and 3.5 miles at its widest, it’s eminently explorable. Over the years, I think we’ve walked or driven down every rocky road. So it was easy for me to assume that there wouldn’t be any major surprises on this trip.
Yeah, I know.
Don’t make assumptions!
The world outside the vacation
Just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean the outside world can’t come crashing in. We got some unexpected upsetting family news early during our stay. There was not much we could do about it, and we were able to (mostly) let it go. But this was a reminder that vacations aren’t a sealed hermetic pleasure bubble that nothing can penetrate.
Hermit crabs
OK, we were not expecting this. As we walked down the concrete path into our new home, we saw a lot of these guys moving out of our way…
They’re called hermit crabs, and we’d seen them before on the island. What was different, we soon realized, was the sheer quantity of these creatures that lived around the building compared to our previous sightings. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. (Later, a local friend told us that island fishermen used to come to the area where we were staying and use the crabs as bait for their lobster traps.)
We quickly became attached to these odd creatures. They move around surrounded by a shell they’ve found that fits their bodies. When they sense potentially dangerous circumstances, like us, they either scurry away from the open or withdraw into their shell. As we walked on the path we could hear the clink of their shells hitting the concrete as they moved or retreated. When the path wasn’t level, their retreat often turned them into a shell ball that rolled entertainingly down the path.
Hermit crabs are omnivores that feed voraciously on anything available. After watching them for a few days, we put out a piece of melon rind and made a 30-second time-lapse video of what happened when we retreated for fifteen minutes. The crabs leave at the end when we approach to retrieve the camera.
Enjoy!
Unexpected weather
We have always visited Anguilla at some time between February – April. The weather is generally delightful. Rain is light and occurs for short periods and rainbows abound. Hurricane season occurs during the fall, so we’ve never experienced bad weather on the island.
Until this trip.
Midway during our stay we experienced two days of torrential rain. All the boat ferries between Anguilla and St Martin had to stop running (which hardly ever happens) and the island was cut off from the outside world except by air.
That was OK; we could stay outside on our large deck, watch the ocean, and stay dry. But when we went out to dinner, it was a different story. Night had fallen, and driving the length of the island turned into a very scary experience. Visibility was so poor it was almost impossible to anticipate the frequent expanses of water of unknown depth that would suddenly appear around a corner. We are used to driving on winding Vermont roads in icy conditions, but our 45-minute drive to dinner and our return were perhaps the most challenging driving we’ve ever done.
Later, our landlord told us that the two days of bad weather were very unusual for February. They were more like hurricane-season weather when a big hurricane goes nearby. (I wrote this post about what happened when Hurricane Irma hit Anguilla in 2017.)
But we made it to dinner and back home safely. The trips became a memorable experience, and we gained a new respect for what it’s like for Anguillians when they live through hurricane season each fall.
Unexpected experiences
Yes, Anguilla is a tropical island so there are coconut trees. While relaxing on Shoal Bay East beach one day, this guy ran up the tree right next to me…
…and chopped down a coconut.
He wanted a drink.
Two spots for meditation
This was a small unexpected treat, but regular readers of this blog know that I meditate daily. I can do it anywhere, but it’s nice to be in a supportive and beautiful environment. Imagine our delight when we found our apartment had a little meditation deck (not included in the listing), clearly made with us in mind.
Our lower deck (pictured at the start of this post), surrounded by the ocean and enveloped in the sound of breaking waves, turned out to be a wonderful place to meditate too!
Lessons from Anguilla: I learned that, even though you’re very familiar with a place you love, I can still discover new things there.
Lesson 3—Sometimes things unexpectedly improve
We’ve seen Anguilla beaches change so much between our trips. When we first visited Shoal Bay East Beach, the east end of it featured Gwen’s Reggae Bar and a small resort called Serenity. The beach in front of these properties was beautiful, and our former landlady and many tourists and locals danced to live music at Gwen’s every Sunday at lunchtime.
But over the years the east end of the beach shrank drastically. The palms in front of Gwen’s that once held hammocks fell into the sea and the beach disappeared…
…and Gwen’s had to be abandoned and rebuilt down on the west end of the beach (where it remains to this day).
In 2020, the last time we’d visited Anguilla, right before COVID decimated tourism on the island, walking down to the old Gwen’s from the main Shoal Bay East beach was a slightly perilous undertaking. At high tide, waves could dash you against the rocks. At low tide, you’d certainly get pretty wet. The sea had essentially eaten the small beach at Serenity.
But on this trip, the beach was back! Once again, we could walk the entire length of Shoal Bay East, rounding “proposal point” and enjoying the white sand down to Serenity, which has once again installed beach chairs and umbrellas.
The beach came back!
We’d experienced the resilience of Anguilla after Hurricane Irma but had thought of it as the remarkable resilience of the Anguillian people. But Nature is resilient in surprising ways too, and this was a pleasant lesson to learn during our vacation.
Lessons from Anguilla: Nature can be resilient as well as people. I’m thankful that we live in a world which still has some buffers to the increasing climate emergency we are now experiencing.
Any other lessons from Anguilla?
These are the three lessons from Anguilla I picked up on this delightful trip. But perhaps you’ve learned more? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
What a lovely recap – now I want to go there and must add it to my loooong list.
Thank you, Joyce, glad you enjoyed it!