Anegada is the hot blonde, the beachy stepsister to the rest of the BVI's tall, coolly lush-green volcanic isles. It's the only island in the chain that was born slowly of coral instead of volcanic violence. Its origin has given the island a unique personality and makes this sparsely developed isle an exceptional day trip from Tortola or Virgin Gorda.
My day started with an early morning flight from Tortola's Beef Island Airport. The 10-minute hop aboard Clair Aero's Cessna gave us a great view of Horseshoe Reef. One of the world's largest coral reefs, it has witnessed 300 shipwrecks over the years.
The physical differences be-tween Anegada and her sister islands are what led to its Spanish name, which means "drowned island." It is a low, flat slab of limestone, sand and arid scrub forest - a desert compared to the other BVIs, which are rocky, mountainous and heavily forested.
But that doesn't mean Anegada is barren. As my taxi left the only bit of paved road on the island, I noticed the sandy track was bordered by wild orchids. The driver stopped beside an inshore salt pond so we could get a look at the flamingoes wading in the shallow brine. The lack of any tall landmass to catch rain clouds and cause freshwater runoff has allowed the surrounding reefs to grow into spectacular formations, creating as lush an ecosystem as any rain forest.
After a breakfast of eggs and passion-fruit juice at the Pondside Lobster Hole in The Settlement - home to nearly all the island's 200 residents - I was ready to hit the beach. My first stop was Cow Wreck Bay, named for a ship filled with cattle bones - meant for chalk and button factories in the U.S. - that wrecked on Anegada's reef. Thatch umbrellas provided shade between swims along the reef, while the Cow Wreck Bar, decorated with bovine skulls from the wreck, provided cool drinks.
By noon, I was snorkeling over Loblolly Bay's spectacular reefs. Coral-crunching parrotfish, gliding angels, gaping grouper - the entire tropical fish identification book was there in living color among tall stands of elkhorn and massive brain corals.
On the west end of Loblolly Bay, the back of the beach is anchored by thick sea grapes. Behind the sea grapes is the Big Bamboo. This open-air restaurant and tiki bar is an island tradition; its grilled lobster is the Holy Grail of cooked crustaceans. I sat down at a picnic table set with sand-filled bottles, which keep the placemats from blowing away in the fresh breeze. My tablemates were a group of day-trippers who'd sailed the 20 miles from Virgin Gorda to snorkel reefs and eat lobster and, since the sun was now over the yardarm, hoist a rum punch or two.
Bananaquits chirped and played among the surrounding vegetation as plates piled high with rice, corn on the cob and lobster arrived in front of us. Anegadans are almost all fishermen. And almost all they're after is the lobster that inhabit the deep water. Now I know why. I took the first bite au naturel - just plain lobster.
And I took every bite after that the same way. It was so succulent that using melted butter would have been redundant.
Posted online 01/01/01.
