My Caribbean escape was a reminder – we must never give up our desire to roam

A trip to St Vincent and the Grenadines revealed a Covid-free bubble where life is in full-swing

By any standards, it’s been a wild summer. The hallucinatory hue of lockdown was followed by an amazing unleashed week in Polzeath, Cornwall, and then the crescendo; two weeks clawed from the jaws of vacation disaster when St Vincent and the Grenadines miraculously popped up on a list of travel corridors. 

The rollercoaster ride was in the guesswork. Keeping track of the latest lock-ups, lockdowns and temporarily out-of-bounds nations became a full-time occupation that escalated into an obsession as it became increasingly clear that no one, especially those making the decrees, could claim any degree of expertise in this fast-evolving farce. 

The choices being made on where we could and couldn’t journey seemed as random as the symptoms and victims of this nastiest of viruses.

At times I felt like a crowd scene member in Monty Python’s Life of Brian as those of us hankering to escape our borders after the lockdown months charged toward, and then backed away from, a multitude of popular destinations in Europe and further afield. 

In the process of trying to decide if and when we should join the fray of beleaguered tourists and do our bit for global recovery, my sympathy went out to government, airlines, travel companies and everyone associated with the travel industry. To remain afloat and keep your spirits buoyant when even a meteorologist would be hard pushed to know which way the wind was blowing, was onerous. 

During the darkest days of lockdown, when Cornwall had looked like it would be out of bounds, my teenagers, already devastated by the cancellation of all music festivals, finally slumped into abject misery. An invitation from a friend with a house in Mustique helped them to rally, but it seemed a very long way to travel in an uncertain world. 

Whether we’d be allowed to board the BA flights on which we’d secured last-minute seats at a knock-down price was anyone’s guess. The omens weren’t good when those flights were cancelled by the airline, until we discovered they could be reinstated on subsequent days, requiring us to rebook in an unnecessarily complicated, but eventually successful, process. 

Pioneering friends who’d embarked on the first flight to St Lucia (our transiting destination) after lockdown, warned us to stock up on snacks and we were glad we had when the offer of one of two unappealing salads turned out to be the only food on the plane. I’d never felt so much affection for a tube of Pringles and hope I never will again. Still, with David Rudder and Sparrow blaring their enticing Soca into our headphones to get us in the mood once we were in the air, there was little that could have dampened our spirits. 

After five months, we were airlifted off our populous island nation and bound for an infinitely smaller one, where Covid had barely made a dent and life as we had previously known it was still in full swing. Over 15 sun-soaked days, we enjoyed a bubble of pre-pandemic-style life, with a few concessions to troubled times. Hand sanitisers were placed outside the few eating establishments we visited, but made with St Vincent’s finest liquor… Sunset Rum (84.5 per cent alcohol!), mixed with fresh aloe. 

Who were we to sniff at the slightly viscous, jellylike feel of it on our hands when we were drinking the same thing in the evenings diluted with orange and lime juice, angostura and nutmeg as Rum Punch? Life on this beautifully underexploited chain of islands was very much business as usual, and the local residents appeared happy to welcome back the visitors that their precarious economy largely relies on. We visited new haunts as well as old, discovering an aspirant kingdom in miniature on Happy Island, a recently created coral outpost of no more than 20 metres square off Union Island, run by the irrepressible majesty in waiting, Jonty. 

A gourmet cultural melting pot was literally revealed when we ate Rasta Pasta (think green, yellow and red veg cooked aglio e olio) on the beach at nearby Sparrows, a French émigré’s long-running restaurant, renamed since nearby Tobago Quays became a Pirates of the Caribbean location. Luckily there was exercise, too, communal sunset strides along Mustique’s wild cactus-strewn Windward coast and dancing until way too late under a silvery moon at Basil’s Bar, where teenagers outnumbered adults four to one. 

Watching our kids on the dance floor as we rested in our chairs, Covid was briefly relegated to its own diminished bubble while we succumbed to the pleasure of remembering how we will one day live again. 

These difficult days have inspired plenty of debate about other people’s choices and also a tendency to judge, with stay-at-homes often vociferously decrying those who choose to roam. It’s a debate that’s incongruous, perhaps, on these travel pages, but also one that ignores our oldest and most successful instinct: Homo sapiens’ refusal to be restricted and confined, either by geography or what we believe to be possible. 

Two weeks of Caribbean immersion reminded me that, like all island nations, we are uniquely ourselves, but also part of a vast planetary archipelago that stretches across the globe and from which we can never truly shut ourselves off – and nor should we.