Islands

It started when I was small on a small island in a small country, my love for islands. The country was Panama, the island was Taboga and I was all of twelve years old. The island was, is, in front of the Panama Bay guarding the entrance to the Canal, or so I was told. There were still traces of WWII when the Canal was a most strategic asset to the war in the Pacific and the Navy -or the Army- had built barracks on the island for the officers. Several rows of long one-storied clapboard houses built on stilts with wooden shutters and mosquito nets under the swaying palm trees. The barracks had been turned over to the locals and became one of the 2 hotels on the island; the other was hotel El Chino, a rambling house built by a Chinaman on the water with a balcony running the long of the second floor, a door set every 6 feet or so.

My young feverish imagination thought this was the most romantic setting, with balmy tropical breeze and gently lapping water, the closest I would ever get to Honolulu.

Every year we would cross over on a belching ferry smelling of diesel, I was inevitably seasick. Once there I imagined this was Paradise, or at least the movie version of “South Pacific”. We swam in warm clear waters, picked shells, picked fights, ran wild, got horrendously sunburnt, drank soda pop and were serenaded by pimply youths which invariably provoked uncontrollable fits of nervous giggles. There were no cars. Narrow fragrant paths lined with hibiscus and jasmine winded through a tiny town of very modest houses.

It was the perfect island for a child.

A short distance away was the even smaller island of Taboguilla with a tiny pristine beach where after a short crossing, we would picnic. My early first hand encounter with corruption came shortly after I had left the country –and the islands- when I learned that an unsavory character had bribed his way into building a fishmeal factory. First he destroyed the beach then he killed all the wildlife and created a permanent shark-infested habitat by tossing dead fish back into the sea. Not many years later the factory went belly up but the beauty was lost forever. When approaching the Panama airport the plane often banks over Taboguilla and I can see the rotting shell of the long defunct factory a silent witness to bygone greed and stupidity.

As I grew up so did the islands. Contadora Island in Panama tried to become the next thing for the budding jet set. The only real jet setter that ever spend any time there –albeit not by choice, I think he would have preferred Cap d’Antibes- was the Shah. That did not end well. For him or Contadora.

After a very auspicious beginning and putting together a most charming hotel reminiscing of the French Canal, the operation was turned over to Meliá, who rapidly proceeded to trash the place and fill it with ugly tourists paying close to nothing who had to lug their own towels and hang their laundry from the balcony railings, the hotel having promptly sold all the linen.

Today the derelict ruins are a sad reminder and an unbearable eyesore.

Time passed and I turned towards St. Maarten an island recently made famous by the likes of Jackie O and Palm Beach royalty, all bona fide jet setters.

The Caribbean a place so far famous for beautiful beaches and appalling food suddenly had a sophisticated hotel in the French Moroccan style.

We travelled over to St. Barth’s and with the trepidation of a novice sailor crossing the Equator for the first time I crossed over to the topless tribe. Then in St. Barth’s people had no money and fewer clothes and you could eat lobster and frites overlooking the Plage de St. Jean and the best looking kids in the planet for less than 5 euros today and you didn’t even have to cover up.

True to the liberated winds that blew on the Med I moved to the beaches and nightlife of Ibiza: one truly crazy scene. At sundown half naked people would flock to the old town and form conga lines between the tapa bars; anybody was welcome to join in. The chartered jets landed and took off nonstop, disgorging hordes of thirsty revelers mainly from Hamburg and Manchester.

The island was one big party and the party in Ibiza never stopped.

There is only so many all-night raves and roaring jets you can take until you start longing for the Sea of Tranquility. I spent the next years maturing and sailing around Greece exploring the shores of Spetses, Hydra and the Sporades with a kind man and experienced sailor. We would drop anchor at night in the smallest cove we could find and before sunup we would pull the nets and clean the fish. The stars at night filled the horizon and danced on the water; the filleted fish was lunch every day.

In the evenings we would go ashore and drink retsina and eat fresh calamari on the port. I delighted listening to the old fishermen their well-polished Homeric tales rolling off their tongues with the softness of a totally incomprehensible language.

I went back to St. Barth’s, older and better funded.

The villas were stunning, the tourists were paunchier, the place was decently clad and indecently expensive. It was still beautiful; the loveliest island in the Antilles and certainly the chicest; the food top quality, all you could get in France -métropole and more.

There were bigger yachts, more champagne, more silk caftans, more bling, less glam; still had some pretty good times, notwithstanding. We rented large villas with underwater piped-in-music and state-of-the-art chef kitchens. The best part of the day was going early, before our guests woke up, to the local baker for fresh croissants. I would swing by in the little convertible negotiating the narrow roads, music full blast and pretend I was back in 1986.

As I sit in Menorca today I have come full cycle. The island has become trendy but the blue Med is unchanged, it is I who has.

In the end you don’t need another island. In the end you just need to recall a long ago memory of an early sunrise, the sound of receding waves on crushed sea shells or the swaying masts in the port and share a glass of wine with friends by the water to remember that no man is an island.