The Great Caribbean Saloon Series/Ruminiscences
Brookhiser, Richard
THE GREAT CARIBBEAN SALOON SERIES RUMINISCENCES by Richard Brookhiser T he time to flee America for the Caribbean is winter, though if, like me, you are in an annual months-long fret about income...
...If music is the most important thing in life, then you must go to Jamaica...
...Again, why bother...
...It takes about ten minutes to get there in a Boston whaler, and once you've snorkled a little, and walked around it three times, and watched the black-headed terns hovering like wooden models on wires, there is really nothing to do...
...Seafood is the best bet...
...0 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 33...
...Some drinkers reach the point where they don't care what they eat, but if you're that much of a souse, you've probably lost all good taste in drink too...
...Fruit potions—daiquiris,piña coladas, planter's punch—are rum's true milieu, though you run up against a typically Caribbean limitation on the food side, which is that there almost never seems to be fresh fruit...
...For snorkeling, there are other destinations...
...The coast is dusted with beaches, like soft white pollen...
...There is indeed an echo of old or New England—Nantucket on a griddle—though the isolation Nantucket has achieved by means of the bulwark of money has here been secured by the no man's land of no money...
...That's all right, it tastes good enough anyway, and if you luck into something fresh, it makes up for a lot of cans...
...This leaves you with beans and mole sauce three times a day, which will begin to feel like a diet of footballs...
...What to drink...
...Well, I went there...
...Another exception is Castro...
...Wines can be had, but the mark-up is dismaying...
...In any case, you will be drinking...
...John Updike used to go to Anguilla for his psoriasis, and even then, which was the sixties, people were saying that the days of its remoteness were passing...
...Pass all this by and go to the ferry landing in Marigot...
...The dishes Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a columnist for the New York Observer...
...Here, on the basis of experience which consists of trips to six islands for pleasure and Cuba for business, are some pointers: What to eat...
...One, surprisingly, is curries...
...Though it is a potent spirit, rum mixes readily with anything that can stand up to it...
...This amounts to, where to go, and that depends on what you want to do...
...I have tried two hamburgers, seven years and several hundred miles apart...
...The quarter-inch thick film of mud called news vanished...
...he knows a beach shack in Carriacou where, for one dollar American, you can get red snapper done to a turn...
...You're in a place beyond the last place...
...THE GREAT CARIBBEAN SALOON SERIES RUMINISCENCES by Richard Brookhiser T he time to flee America for the Caribbean is winter, though if, like me, you are in an annual months-long fret about income taxes, the time to flee is June...
...In the first case, leaving from say, New York, the point is to go some place warmer...
...He must have a good relation with his caterer...
...The Anguillian flag is a circle of three red dolphins...
...It has exactly ten palm trees on it, and it looks as if it were set there by the Anguillian Tourism Board...
...I will get a letter, I know, from some lowlife epicure who will tell me that my only problem is a timid hewing to the beaten path...
...The world wore a sunnier aspect...
...Where to drink...
...Unless it is hanging off a tree over the bar, and often not even then, the fruit in your drink will come out of some can...
...If an invitation to his buffet table comes your way, and you don't mind eating under the roof of a despot, you will eat well...
...they brought with them are often good...
...The sense of monotony is heightened by the fact that you must rigidly avoid such dishes as guacamole, or any salad, unless you want to spend half your vacation in the bathroom...
...Its moment in the headlines came in 1967, when it seceded from a federation arranged by the decolonizing British with St...
...Anguillian publications still talk darkly about the dread Kittitians...
...You can fly to Anguilla through San Juan or St...
...I have no intention of risking them two hours from Miami...
...Fly to Sint Maarten, which is the Dutch half of a neighboring island, then take a cab to Saint Martin, which is the French half...
...The roads are haphazard...
...Prices are almost always ruinous, New York levels or worse...
...the locals consider it a parvenu, preferring Don Q. I once had a friend, a folk musicologist and a female baritone, who swore by Barbancourt of Haiti, which she carried in a silver pocket flask and passed around to buck up fellow wassailers...
...You have seen the ad that says, "When asked what medication they would take to a desert island, nine out of ten doctors chose Bayer...
...Food, as all good drinkers know, is the companion of drink...
...They had to be the worst in the hemisphere...
...It still seemed pretty remote to me...
...It is tiny and poky, but you haven't seen the one you're going to yet...
...Appleton comes from Jamaica...
...Half an hour takes you there...
...Aficionados of gambling and sailing will have their favorite spots...
...On the ride to my hotel, we passed four houses of worship: one Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall, one Church of God of Prophecy, two Methodist churches...
...Bacardi, now located on Puerto Rico, was once a Cuban firm...
...American and European beers are widely available, but why travel to drink Heineken...
...The food here is Mexican, which means that it is very tasty, very heavy, and very much the same, meal after meal...
...In the second case, the point is to go some place cooler and more clement...
...the inbreeding must be Hapsburg...
...Cozumel was excellent, though I haven't been there since Hurricane Gilbert was...
...Still, I would rather eat in Cozumel than all points east...
...The same may apply to the Indonesians who followed the Dutch...
...English is spoken in both places, and the dollar circulates as under the Stars and Stripes...
...This is the little island off the coast at Cancun...
...The last is Cozumel...
...I have carried my internal organs safely through Morocco, Java, and the Great Indian Desert...
...Unfortunately, there is almost no good food in the Caribbean—or at least little that I've come across...
...Many of the Anguillians seem to be surnamed Gumbs...
...London ended up sending in policemen to restore order...
...The only alternative is to stick to the local classic which, happily, is excellent: rum...
...Rum is made from sugar cane, and all the large islands and several of the small ones make their own...
...The land is flat and dry and bare and rather ugly...
...In Jamaica, they make a brand called Red Stripe, which is bad without being actually offensive, like Indian beers...
...The simplest drink is the rum and Coke, which is pretty foul, but does the job...
...Mount Gay from Barbados...
...It is called Sandy Island, and it lies just out of Road Bay, off Sandy Ground...
...But the last time I went to the Caribbean, I was feeling fried, so I wanted to do nothing at all...
...The names of places and things have a blunt, archetypal quality, like names in the Shire: South Hill, the Old House, the Valley...
...The island is about the size of Manhattan, and the population is 7,000...
...There is one thing, actually, for Sandy Island Enterprises runs a bar in a shack, which stocks lots of rum...
...When I saw "Fang" in a headline—on the East Caribbean Chronicle I think—I had to remind myself that this was a Chinese democrat, not a tooth...
...I am a tourist, not a traveler...
...The place has the essential quality of a place, that it makes all other places seem irrelevant...
...As with food, options are limited...
...Thomas, but I think the way I went was best...
...You would think the fish and shellfish, which are caught on the spot, would be better, and they are somewhat...
...Maarten/Martin is a stop for cruise ships, and has been crapped up accordingly: Moroccan restaurants, Italian restaurants, stores selling Girbaud jeans at $50 a leg...
...They may be the last people who do us honor...
...Gorbachev, Foley, Giuliani became wraiths...
...At the end of one long hot plantation tour, the guide handed around coconuts which he lopped open with a machete, adding some rum and a straw...
...But Caribbeans love to overcook...
...He's welcome to it...
...Don't repeat the mistake...
...The British brought a lot of Indians to the Caribbean as coolies (whence V. S. Naipaul...
...So I went to Anguilla...
...There are three exceptions to this grim picture...
...Kitts and Nevis...
...In the Dutch islands, there are fantastic concoctions like guavaberry liqueur, though you'd have to be crazy...
...If you want spiny lobster that doesn't taste like the Michelin tire boy, you must be very firm...
Vol. 22 • September 1989 • No. 9
