Portsmouth

The rum punch at Purple Turtle Beach Bar is served in a plastic cup and costs less than a coffee anywhere I have lived in the last five years. I sat with it on a plastic chair at the edge of Prince Rupert Bay and watched a man spend forty-five minutes untangling a fishing net without apparent frustration, pausing occasionally to speak to a dog that was not his. The bay is large and protected and in the late afternoon it turns colours that would embarrass a postcard — deep cobalt fading to turquoise at the shore, the green hills of the north crowding the horizon, the white triangles of anchored sailboats from Europe and North America dotting the middle distance. Portsmouth is small, unpretentious, and has somehow avoided the renovation impulse that has made other Caribbean port towns feel like stage sets of themselves.

The Indian River is the thing you come to Portsmouth specifically for, and it is genuinely unlike any river experience I have had elsewhere. You hire a rowing boat and a guide at the northern end of the beach — no motors are allowed on the river — and spend an hour being punted into a mangrove tunnel that closes overhead within the first few minutes. The light changes immediately: bright Caribbean noon becomes green and dim, filtered through a canopy of bloodwood mangroves that have been growing here for centuries, their roots arching into the dark water in shapes that look carved rather than grown. Herons stand motionless on exposed roots. The water is so still and tannin-dark it reflects the canopy perfectly, and for a moment the distinction between river and sky dissolves. My guide, a young man named Lennox who has been rowing the Indian River since he was twelve, pointed out a purple heron standing so still in the shadows that I had looked directly at it twice without seeing it.

Above the bay on the northwestern headland, the ruins of Fort Shirley sprawl across the Cabrits National Park. The fort was built by the British in the 1770s, abandoned in 1854, and has since been swallowed and partially released by the forest — stone battlements trailing vines, cannon barrels orange with rust, officers’ quarters reduced to foundations in the grass. The views from the upper battery take in Prince Rupert Bay on one side and Douglas Bay on the other, both enclosed by volcanic headlands, and you can see clearly why the British wanted to hold this position. I walked the park alone in the late afternoon when the tour groups had gone, and the only sounds were wind and birds and the distant clatter of the town below.

Portsmouth has a university — Ross University School of Medicine — which means there is a steady population of American students and, as a result, a few more restaurants and Wi-Fi connections than the town’s size might otherwise suggest. This creates an odd texture: fishing boats and medical students, nature guides and pharmacy graduates, all sharing the same stretch of beach bars. It should feel incongruous. Somehow it just feels like Portsmouth.

When to go: November through May for the calmest sea and best conditions on the Indian River. The river can run high and fast after heavy rains, which makes the boat trip less pleasant but no less striking. The Cabrits ruins are good year-round; visit in the late afternoon for golden light on the stone walls.