A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean
by Melinda Blanchard and Robert Blanchard
Overview
From the Publisher
This is the true story of a trip to the beach that never ends. It's about a husband and wife who escape civilization to build a small restaurant on an island paradise — and discover that even paradise has its pitfalls. It's a story filled with calamities and comedy, culinary disasters and triumphs, and indelible portraits of people who live and work on a sliver of beauty set in the Caribbean Sea. It's about the maddening, exhausting, outlandish complications of trying to live the simple life — and the joy that comes when you somehow pull it off.
The story begins when Bob and Melinda Blanchard sell their successful Vermont food business and decide, perhaps impulsively, to get away from it all. Why not open a beach bar and grill on Anguilla, their favorite Caribbean island? One thing leads to another and the little grill turns into an enchanting restaurant that quickly draws four-star reviews and a celebrity-studded clientele eager for Melinda's delectable cooking. Amid the frenetic pace of the Christmas "high season," the Blanchards and their kitchen staff — Clinton and Ozzie, the dancing sous-chefs; Shabby, the master lobster-wrangler; Bug, the dish-washing comedian — come together like a crack drill team. And even in the midst of hilarious pandemonium, there are moments of bliss.
As the Blanchards learn to adapt to island time, they become ever more deeply attached to the quirky rhythms and customs of their new home. Until disaster strikes: Hurricane Luis, a category-4 storm with two-hundred-mile-an-hour gusts, devastates Anguilla. Bob and Melinda survey the wreckage of their beloved restaurant and wonder whether leaving Anguilla, with itsinnumerable challenges, would be any easier than walking out on each other. Affectionate, seductive, and very funny, A Trip to the Beach is a love letter to a place that becomes both home and escape.
My thoughts
I LOVED this book! I read a lot of travel essays, and although this one might not exactly count as a travel essay because they went one place and stayed put, it ranks up there among my favorite travel essay books!
I found the book entirely entertaining. It had the right mix of travel, history, local customs and characters, adventure, humor and even disaster, as regretable as it is. It even has recipes! The Blanchard's are a likable couple, someone I think I could be friends with. In fact, I feel like I know them so well after reading this book that I'd like to ask them how their son, the studio artist, has fared in his career. (I have a daughter going into the art field...!)
I just really enjoyed this book. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading to the bookstore to see if the Blanchard's have written other books.
Favorite Passage
"Good morning. My name Oliver. I work for the Health Department...I just came to give you some fish."
"Fish?" I asked.
"I come to put fish in your cistern. Where the cistern be?"
"Are you serious?" Bob asked. "You're putting fish in our water?"
"That's right," he said. "You won' have to worry anymore. These fish eat bacteria."
We hadn't been worried about our water before, though we never considered using cistern water for anything but cleaning. Our staff thought it silly, but we insisted on using bottled water for everything to do with food; we weren't about to take any chances.
Bob escorted Oliver to the dining room and lifted the cover camouflaged as part of the floor. I could hear their voices boom with an echo from the cavernous cistern below. Oliver scooped out three fish from the cooler and dropped them into the vastness.
"There," he said as he covered his cooler. "You all set for a while."
Three little fish now swam in our 7,500-gallon cistern, protecting our water supply. No chemicals, no filters, just three little fish.
