Anguilla: Shoal Bay, Cap Juluca & the Caribbean's Quietest Luxury

Anguilla is the quietest island in the Caribbean, and that quiet is the whole point. It is a flat, low, limestone-and-coral sliver of land, sixteen miles long and barely three wide, a British Overseas Territory with no volcanoes, no mountains, and almost no ostentation, just thirty-three beaches of astonishing white sand and the clearest shallow water in the Leeward Islands. Where its neighbors build up, Anguilla holds back. There are no high-rises, no casino strips, no cruise-ship piers large enough to change the character of the place. You arrive by small plane, or by ferry across the channel from St. Martin, and the island keeps its voice low from the first minute.

Shoal Bay and the Beaches

Shoal Bay East is the beach that appears on every list of the world's finest, and standing on it you understand why: the sand is powder, the water is a shade of turquoise that seems lit from below, and the reef a short swim offshore is full of fish. But Shoal Bay is only the most famous of Anguilla's beaches. Meads Bay, on the western end, is a long, rolling crescent favored by the island's best resorts; Barnes Bay is smaller and more sheltered; Little Bay, reachable only by boat or a rope down a cliff, is a pocket of perfect calm. The rule of Anguilla is that no beach is private, every inch of sand is open to the public, even the sand in front of the most expensive hotel.

Cap Juluca and the Resorts

Cap Juluca, A Belmond Hotel, is the island's defining property, a sweep of whitewashed, Moorish-arched architecture along the curve of Maundays Bay, so photogenic that it has set the image of Anguilla luxury for forty years. Its 113 rooms and suites are spread across twenty-four villas, all of them beachfront, and the bay in front of it is the calmest stretch of water on the island. The Four Seasons Resort Anguilla, set between Barnes Bay and Meads Bay, is the newer standard-bearer, a Forbes five-star property that has helped earn Anguilla its reputation as the culinary capital of the Caribbean, with a dining scene, Blanchard's, Veya, Straw Hat, that punches well above the island's size.

Getting There

There is no airport for large jets. The route is through Princess Juliana Airport (SXM) on St. Martin, then a twenty-minute ferry or a small charter flight across the channel to Anguilla's Clayton J. Lloyd Airport (AXA).

Reference Links:

- Visit Anguilla (official): ivisitanguilla.com

- Cap Juluca, A Belmond Hotel: belmond.com

- Four Seasons Resort Anguilla: fourseasons.com/anguilla

- Anguilla (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguilla