Canouan

The flight into Canouan takes less than fifteen minutes from Kingstown, which gives you just long enough to see the island from the air: the comma shape of it, the white teeth of the windward beaches, the golf course covering the entire southern plateau in a shade of green that is visibly different from the native vegetation. The resort development on Canouan is significant. When you land, you are aware immediately which side of the island’s economic argument you’ve arrived on.

Charlestown, the main village on the west coast, is old Canouan — a fishing community that predates the resort by several generations. The waterfront here has the quality of a place that exists for its own purposes: boats pulled up on the sand, nets drying, a small Catholic church whose white walls are extraordinarily bright in the midday sun. The women who run the kitchen in the old rum shop near the pier make a fish stew I still think about — whole fish, the broth dark with seasoning and some kind of root vegetable I couldn’t identify, served with white rice and a glass of sweating cold water. The stew was better than anything I ate at the resort.

The resort occupies the southern and eastern sections of the island with a thoroughness that can feel disorienting if you’ve been in Charlestown for a few hours first. Golf carts cross the manicured green, villas perch on the ridge above the sea, and the beach at Carenage Bay has the maintained quality of something overseen rather than simply existing. It is, by the standards of Caribbean resort beaches, a very good beach. By the standards of the windward side of the same island, it is a managed imitation of one.

The windward beaches, accessible via a rough track over the ridge, are the real thing. The surf here runs harder, the sand is piled in wind-drifted ridges, and the visibility out to the reef is extraordinary on a clear day. The Atlantic swell arrives unimpeded from the east and breaks in long lines along the reef edge. I sat on this beach for two hours without seeing another person. There was a frigate bird hanging overhead, not fishing, apparently just watching the sea. I know how it felt.

The tension between the two Canouan’s is never resolved and isn’t meant to be — the island has to accommodate both economies. But Charlestown is the reason to stay here rather than just passing through, and the windward coast is the reason you’re glad you made the extra effort to get somewhere most people miss because the golf cart can’t reach it.

When to go: December through April. The resort fills up in December and January; if you’re staying independently, March is quieter and cheaper. The windward coast is best in the morning, before the afternoon trade wind picks up and the surf gets chaotic.