3 Real Caribbean Destinations Featured in The Getaway
Grab a painkiller and settle back for a virtual vacation to some of the dreamy locations featured in my mystery-thriller The Getaway.
1. Virgin Gorda
Virgin Gorda is the third-largest and second-most populous island in the British Virgin Islands, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. It doesn’t have an airport, so you get there by boat. (For me, it was a ferry, although feel free to take your yacht if you have one.) It’s therefore off the beaten track, which I enjoyed, because it felt like I got to see the real Caribbean, rather than a picture postcard.
On VG, there are the resorts – everything freshly painted, with lush gardens; staff mostly young and white, with British accents – but the rest of the island has a comfortable, small town feeling.
During my visit, I stayed in Spanish Town, which is much less resort-y. It’s mostly BVIslanders getting on with their regular lives. Rectangular houses in sunbaked colours: oranges, pinks, blues, yellows. A lot of construction going on, with the clang of steel, rhythmic hammering forming a continual backdrop. Roosters crowing every hour of the day. The beaches are beautiful – casually, stunningly beautiful – but the signs for tsunami muster points and emergency evacuation routes are ominous.
2. The Baths
The Baths are a geological wonder located on the southwestern tip of Virgin Gorda, and this is the part of the island that’s a real tourist draw. For good reason, since the Baths are gorgeous. They’re a collection of giant boulders, which shoulder together to create sundappled caves, light slanting through the crevices above, the sea swirling around your feet.
I’d heard the Baths are best at sunrise and sunset, so when I visited, I got up at a brisk 4:30 a.m. (hello, jet lag) and walked there. It was like I was the only soul alive. I followed the trail to Devil’s Bay, a sandy track winding here and there, littered with boulders. I came out in a beautiful little crescent of sand, unremarkable but for its giant boulders. I slipped past them, went the wrong way, back again, and I spied it: a very unnatural set of wooden steps. Feeling like Alice in Wonderland, I climbed.
The only word to describe being inside the Baths is: preternatural. The water that swirls around your feet glows a gorgeous, uncanny green in certain parts of the cave.
At sunrise, the Baths were mine and mine alone for 20 minutes. Then I heard them, the brash exclamations. ‘It’s like the Grand Canyon in here!’ Backpacks discarded. A pair of American girls shooting a YouTube video. Magic gone.
Oh, well. It was lovely while it lasted.
3. Anegada
Anegada is the second largest of the British Virgin Islands, but one of its least populous, with only 450 residents. Unlike the other islands, which have dramatic volcanic hills, Anegada is flat as a pancake. Hence its name, ‘the drowned island’.
Here was my experience of visiting Anegada: early in the morning, I stood on the dock on Virgin Gorda and looked out a grey sea, great waves crashing. I waited. I waited. The ferry to Anegada wasn’t coming, was it? (Such is life on an island. I’ll never complain about the bus being late ever again!)
Someday I will visit Anegada, because it seems like an extraordinary place. Proper desert island vibe, with just a few hundred inhabitants. I still wrote about it in The Getaway, basing the scenes on research instead of firsthand experience.
White sand beaches. Salt ponds with flamingos. Lobster fishermen and great mounds of conch shells. A single road in cracked concrete and a moped is the best way to get around. That is, if you choose not to go horse riding, because there’s a horse farm on Anegada. Sounds nice, right?
What about Keeper Island?
Of course, the most beguiling location in The Getaway is Keeper Island, home to hotel magnate billionaire, Kip Clement.
Is it a real place?
Nope, sorry.
There are plenty of billionaires and celebrities who do own private islands, across the Virgin Islands (Richard Branson, Google co-founder Larry Page, and – yikes – Jeffrey Epstein), in Belize (Leonardo DiCaprio), and in Fiji (Mel Gibson).
However, Keeper Island is purely a construct of my imagination. I do have a nifty map of the island if you’d like to take a look, though.
