I want to find Anguilla’s oldest resident to see if life here has always been this way, so I meet 95-year-old Daisy Wong (her surname was actually ‘Juan’ but nobody could pronounce it) at the public library. She’s dressed in her Sunday best and doesn’t let go of my hand as we talk. Yes, she says, things are much the same as when she was a little girl, except ‘we dressed better back then’. A real force of nature, Daisy was introduced to me as a poet and revolutionary. She delivers on both counts, reciting long stanzas she has written about the uprising against the British in the late 1960s.
‘Anguillians were yet to meet them with machetes, sticks and stones; rolling tanks and driving trucks ready to break their bones; the spirit of God had left them for they suffered hard and long; and now they were more determined, God made their spirit strong.’
Daisy herself served as a lookout on the beaches, tasked to warn when British boats were approaching. But the truth is this fragment of coral and limestone has never attracted much attention. After planting the flag, the British mostly overlooked this island and went about establishing ties with more attractive Commonwealth nations such as Barbados and Antigua. Small and barren with thin soil and low rainfall, it was described by an English politician in the late 17th century as a land ‘fit for little or nothing but goats’. Elsewhere in the region, cotton, tobacco and sugarcane plantations flourished and slaves-turned- subsistent farmers from Anguilla took to jumping on schooners to find seasonal work cutting cane in the Dominican Republic and British Virgin Islands.
It may be barren, but Anguilla has, hands down, the finest beaches in the Caribbean. From the best swimming at two-mile-long Rendezvous Bay to the perfect curve of Maundays Bay; the rollers, pelicans and beach bars of Meads (pronounced Maids) Bay, and remote Captain’s Bay, where dolphins play in the surf. Fridays are spent chewing over where to spend the weekend, one of the toughest decisions of the week.
But Anguilla is not go-slow in every way. The island is positively pioneering when it conies to food. It all started with Malliouhana hotel on the cliffs above Meads Bay and Turtle Cove, my favourite place to stay. When the British owner Leon Roydon opened the hotel more than 30 years ago, he hired Michelin-star-garnering French chef Joseph Rostang to oversee the restaurant, flew in quality ingredients, built up a vast private wine cellar carved into the cliffs and reset the culinary standard in the region.
