Islands

Give me a golf cart on an obscure small island and I am ecstatic. That’s how I felt on Christmas Eve rumbling around North Bimini, one of thirty inhabited islands in the Bahamas, with my wife and teenage sons on a balmy day full of benign clouds and serendipitous discoveries. I’m a traveler who is blessed and cursed with hyper-curiosity. Places with too much to see frustrate me because no matter how long I stay, I’m inevitably nagged by a sense that I missed something. I love cruises but port days are a particular tease because you’re always racing against the clock to get back to the ship. So for me, Bimini, with zero stop lights, no fast food and nearly as many golf carts as its 2,000 inhabitants is almost perfect.

The world’s obsession with the Maldives has always been a mystery to me. I’ve witnessed as, one after the other, even my most beach-averse and device-addicted friends returned from these islands entranced by some ineffable quality, only able to give the vaguely cult-like response: “You have to experience it to understand.” One quietly admitted to spending more on her honeymoon there than on the wedding itself. Apparently, it had been entirely worth it. Having worked in travel for many years, I’ve been inundated with the pictures we’ve all seen a thousand times: lines of pristine over-water villas, tranquil turquoise ocean contrasting with startlingly white sand, all running together in a blur of gorgeous, but dare I say it, borderline sameness.