Anguilla: Our Favorite Island – Today

Road Bay, Anugilla

As has become the norm, we planned to go to one place and ended up somewhere else. This time it was Anguilla. The passage to St. Martin is into the trade winds and we left at midnight. Anguilla is roughly the same direction, but given it is a little south to the wind and waves, it was easier to get there and we had never been, always wanted to go, so we changed our plans and went to Anguilla.

This turned out to be a good choice, as Anguilla is beautiful, the people are very friendly and the food is good. Anguilla is a relatively small island (17 miles long and 3 miles wide) and is administered by the British. Its economy is based on tourism and there are many nice resorts on the island. It is difficult to explore by boat, as the reefs are very shallow and there are no good anchorages, so we chose to see the island by car.

During our first few hours in Anguilla, we amazed at how friendly everyone was. While we were clearing customs and immigration the lady checking our paper work went out of her way and arrange a rental car to be delivered to us at the dinghy dock later that day. Then, as we where walking back from the Pyrat (pronounced Pirate) rum distillery carrying our booty (bags of rum), a school bus stopped and offered us a ride back to the dock. We turned it down, as it was less then a mile and we need the exercise. A minute later a car stopped and asked if we needed a ride, so either the people are very friendly, or we looked tired and feeble, or they were simply after our rum. We choose to believe the people are friendly in Anguilla.

Given all the offers of help, we decided we must have needed some nourishment to finish the short walk to the dinghy, so we stopped at a beachside restaurant and ordered lobster and beer. Anguilla is known for there lobster and it was great.

Touring the west end.

We spent the afternoon and evening touring the west end of the island in our rental car, searching for a beachside restaurant where we could watch the sun set over the Caribbean Sea. We found many new resorts with villas available from $6m to $10m, but nothing in our price range. We finally found a nice restaurant/bar (the Oasis) on the southwest side of the island and watched the sun set and the lights of St. Martin come alive.

After sunset, we went to the highly rated Mango’s restaurant (about 2 minutes away) and had an excellent dinner. In our opinion, the food was only second to the outstanding food on St. Barth’s.

Touring the east end

The next day, with our trusty Toyota rental car, we headed off to the wild outback of the east end of the island, through the main town of “the Valley”, to Shoal Bay and off road to see the isolated beaches at the far end of the island. There are amazing beaches, with no one on them, sounded by large reefs.

As we wandered though the unmarked dirt roads, we stumbled onto Nat’s Place for some refreshment, once again we were the only customers.

From Nat’s we made our way back to hang out on the beach at east Shoal Bay.

There was live entertainment at Elvis’ that night, another beachside bar in Road Bay where we had anchored Berkeley East. The music was supposed to start at 9:00, so we got there a little after 9:00 and grabbed a bar stool. As time went by more and more locals joined the crowed, but the band was nowhere to be found. Around 11:00 the band showed up and started to play. I guess 11:00 is 9:00 island time in Anguilla. The music was good and the crowed was very entertaining.

By now, it was feeling like we were on vacation, as we were spending so much time on land. We headed back to Shoal Bay beach and grabbed a couple of beach chairs, an umbrella and a rum punch to enjoy the view.

Suitably sunned and refreshed we needed some food so it was off to Smokey’s for ribs. Smokey is yet another Anguilla beachside restaurant with great food and music.

As much fun as we were having, we hated to leave, but we needed to get moving or we would be in Anguilla forever, so we headed off to St. Barth’s for more great food and beautiful beaches.