In the lobby of Anguilla’s Malliouhana Hotel – all salt-air cross breezes, arched doorways and shades of diaphanous blues and lemon yellows – there’s a framed photograph of (long-ago) Aristotle Onassis at the helm of his yacht. He and Jackie O were frequent guests here, and indeed his diving helmets adorn the lobby, bequeathed by Onassis to the hotel’s general manager with whom he’d become friendly. Below his image is a photo of a glamorous couple sitting at a backgammon table in a swimming pool. The woman is wearing a string bikini and both are deeply tanned and look profoundly relaxed. The image telegraphs high leisure and uncompromised pleasure – a moment in which there is nothing else in the world to do in the middle of the day but to play a game, not beside the swimming pool, as most people would, but in it. (One can only imagine the hotel staff instructed to produce this aquatic mise en scène.) Surrounding the couple, much like what surrounds the island itself, is an expanse of sun-lavished liquid blueness. Anguilla is 26 kilometres long and only 6 kilometres wide – this island is all coastline in the way that supermodels are all legs.
The tropical chic of Malliouhana’s breezy bar. Photo: Courtesy of Anguilla Tourist Board
Anguilla has long been a place celebrities have used as their private hideaway, where they go to recharge. It’s the island you choose when, say, St. Barths is too stressful: too full of white parties and superyachts. Justin and Hailey Bieber have vacationed in Anguilla’s The Beach House villa, set on the powdery sand of Meads Bay; the only time the paparazzi showed up was when they hunted Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt as divorce rumours swirled almost 20 years ago. Oprah, Harry Styles, Adele and Robert De Niro are habituées as is Paris Hilton, who nicknamed it “my secret island.” Anguillans respect privacy. Here, glamour lies in discretion. About the island’s laid-back vibe, a local, who just moved from Barbados, tells me: “In Anguilla, you can take it alllll the way down.” The toes-in-the-sand serenity is not just a vibe and a brand, it’s also the law of this little land. There are no sprawling all-inclusive resorts or casinos, and jet skis and Sea-Doos are illegal – they cause damage to the coral reefs (and to a person’s tranquillity).
The striking limestone Anguilla Arch. Photo: Courtesy of Anguilla Tourist Board
On a brief sojourn here last winter, I checked into the Malliouhana Hotel, the island’s first luxury hotel. The 63-room property, all juicy-coloured tropical nostalgia, just celebrated its 40th birthday, and its glamour has only benefited from the sands of time. The pool is decorated with palm trees and yellow parasols as well-frilled and fluffy as icing, while matching yellow-tummied bananaquits careen through the shrubs of wild guava, the birds as festive as floating champagne bubbles.
The iconic pool at Malliouhana. Photo: Courtesy of Anguilla Tourist Board
At least part of the Mallihouana’s allure is its superb setting, perched atop limestone bluffs overlooking Meads Bay, which is what every Caribbean beach longs to be: silky, coconut-white sands, rocky outcrops, secret coves and inlets where you are more likely to encounter a turtle dove or a sea turtle than, say, an actual tourist. Though one could say the same of all of the island’s 33 beaches. I like people (at least occasionally) but what a delight to barely lay eyes on any of them.
There is thrillingly little reason to leave the hotel, though I do, for a day trip to one of the island’s seven offshore cays, Sandy Island. Anguilla is a slender dream of a tiny island, haloed by a constellation of even tinier unpopulated idylls, each an island emoji set to life, palm trees topping piles of white sand. The boat trip to Sandy Island, plying a sea as clear and blue as molten tanzanite, prompts passengers to repeatedly comment: “It’s so … blue.”
A heavenly view of Sandy Island. Photo: Courtesy of Anguilla Tourist Board
“We don’t need photoshop here!” the boat’s captain tells us. “We’ve got the real thing!”
Sandy Island is the sort of castaway-chic paradise where you can find lobster salads and cell reception. There’s a restaurant, appearing out of the sand like a mirage, and I order the crawfish – their specialty. Presented with this crustacean luncheon, I feel as close as I’ll ever feel to Daryl Hannah in Splash. More movie scenes float to mind. Anguilla makes me think of that classic rom-com storyline: a Type A, work-obsessed, overstressed character (like Jack Nicholson’s Harry Sanborn in Something’s Gotta Give) is ordered by a doctor to relax, to go on holiday. In the next frame, the character is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sipping from a coconut on some preposterously perfect beach, calypso music and thatched huts in the blue background.
Spiced shrimp kebabs are served at Sandy Island’s tiny paradisical restaurant. Photo: Courtesy of Anguilla Tourist Board
Anguilla is that paradise par excellence. After a few days here, self-medicating on sunshine, I start to feel deeply relaxed. Amid the beaches free of crowds, the skies clean of clouds, the sumptuous quiet, there is nothing to do except marvel at the blueness, maybe swim – or take up water backgammon.