Anguilla: Seven Attractions and Natural Wonders

Thirty-three beaches and not much else

Anguilla is a small, flat, dry coral island at the northern tip of the Lesser Antilles — about 26 kilometres long and rarely more than 5 wide. It has no mountains, no rainforest, and no cruise-ship dock. What it has is beaches: the tourist board counts 33, most of them long, empty, and lined with the kind of soft white sand that squeaks underfoot.

The island chose a particular path — a handful of very expensive resorts, a lot of small guesthouses and villas, no buildings taller than the palms, and a strong local food and music scene. The seven entries below are the beaches and boat trips that make up a stay. It is a dry-season destination; hurricane season runs June to November.

1. Shoal Bay East

Shoal Bay East, on the north coast, is the beach that lands on the magazine lists: about three kilometres of powder-white sand, a reef close in for snorkelling, and water in every shade of pale blue. It has a scattering of low beach bars and restaurants — Uncle Ernie's is the institution — but no wall of hotels.

Weekends can bring a local crowd and a live band; weekdays it is close to empty. Don't confuse it with Shoal Bay West, a separate, quieter beach at the other end of the island.

2. Rendezvous Bay

Rendezvous Bay is a long, gently curving beach on the south side, facing the green peaks of French Saint-Martin across a narrow channel. The sand is soft, the water is calm and shallow a long way out, and a couple of resorts and beach bars are spaced far enough apart that it never feels busy.

It has a place in the island's history: it was here that a small British force landed in 1745 during a failed French invasion, and again where troops came ashore in 1969 in the almost bloodless episode that kept Anguilla British.

3. Sandy Ground and Road Bay

Sandy Ground is the closest thing Anguilla has to a town by the water: a low sand bar between the sea and a salt pond, lined with fishing boats, dive shops, and the island's best-known bars and live-music spots. The salt pond behind it was worked commercially into the 1980s and now draws wading birds.

This is where boats leave for the offshore cays, where the fishing fleet comes in, and where a lot of Anguilla's evenings end up. It is walkable, unpretentious, and central.

4. The west-end beaches: Maundays, Cove, and Meads Bay

The western tip of the island holds a run of beaches that are, if anything, even better than Shoal Bay and even quieter. Maundays Bay, fronting the Cap Juluca resort, is a flawless crescent; Cove Bay next door is largely undeveloped; Meads Bay, on the north side, is a long stretch of restaurants and low-key luxury hotels.

Barnes Bay and Little Bay (the last reached by rope down a cliff, or by kayak) round out the corner. You can spend a whole trip just working along this coast.

5. Sandy Island

Sandy Island is barely an island at all: a curl of white sand with a dozen palm trees, a reef around it, and a single open-air restaurant and bar. A small boat runs out from Sandy Ground in about ten minutes, several times a day.

You go to snorkel the surrounding reef, eat grilled crayfish and rum punch at picnic tables in the sand, and do very little else. It is the classic Anguilla half-day, and a reminder of how exposed these cays are — the island has been scoured flat by hurricanes and rebuilt more than once.

6. Prickly Pear Cays

Prickly Pear East and West sit about 10 kilometres northwest of Anguilla, across a stretch of open water, and make a full day out by charter boat. There is a good beach and a beach bar on the east cay, a shallow reef and an underwater "grotto" of ledges and caves for snorkelling and diving, and low cliffs where frigatebirds and boobies nest.

The cays are a protected marine park. Trips usually combine them with Sandy Island or the reef at Little Bay, weather permitting.

7. The Heritage Collection Museum

For a break from the sand, this small private museum near East End is the best place to understand the island: Amerindian artefacts from the Fountain Cavern, a sacred cave with pre-Columbian petroglyphs; photographs of the salt-raking and schooner-building economy; and a detailed account of the 1967–69 "Anguilla Revolution," when the island rebelled against being tied to Saint Kitts and asked to stay British.

It is run by a local historian and is usually open on weekday mornings. Combine it with a drive to the East End ponds and the island's few surviving colonial-era cotton-estate ruins.

Anguilla is a place to do less. Rent a car, pick a different beach each day, eat well — the island takes its food seriously, from beach shacks to the resort kitchens — and take a boat to a cay when the water is calm.