You’ll know when you know….

What makes a place good? What makes a hotel worth staying in or a restaurant one that you would recommend? Taking an even wider angle POV on the subject, what makes a place worthy of visiting in the first place?

It’s something that I go through all day every day as I research a place – who would want to come here and why? Does this appeal to a dirt-bag backpacker who will sleep in a gutter rather then pay $20 for a hostel. Or is this a spot for the uber-rich who think nothing of dropping $3000 a night on a hotel room. Well today was a pretty typical day, I saw both extremes in all of their glory. Stepping back for a sec, so what makes this place good?

This morning I left the Island of Provo and I jumped on a ferry to the neighbouring island of North Caicos. In the past there was only one way to get to this next island – a brief but inconvenient and expensive flight. This little plane ride made it just too damn hard for lots of people to even bother to check out this island. Which does have its advantages – keeping numbers down, preserving authenticity. But in the Caribbean, authenticity is often interchangeable with exclusivity – which is always the high price option. And when there are only high rollers in a place, all of a sudden the price of everything goes straight through the roof. So there is a balance to be found in there, where a place isn’t over run, but you can actually afford to be there.

So I buy my ticket and head down to the wharf – the ferry was parked up and I knew I was onto something good. The boat was a glorified motorboat with rows of seats running up the middle of the craft – there would be room for about 20 people for the 30min voyage. I was early and chose a seat – I wondered how full it would become.

As departure time approached the ferry slowly filled to capacity and I looked at my fellow passengers and I knew I was onto something good. There are times when you are travelling when you can just tell that you’ve caught onto what you’ve been looking for all along. I was the only tourist. Locals chatted away in Creole on their mobile phones, laughed and jostled their boxes of shopping onto the seats. In Provo I was right smack dab in the middle of the tourist track – but the second I got on the ferry everything changed.

I arrived onto the island and got in a taxi to take me to my hotel. I arrived to find that I was the only person to be staying here tonight. Walking from my beachfront room to the water I made the first tracks on the snow white sand. Looking down the beach – there wasn’t a single sign of human habitation – save the rusting hulk of a shipwreck poking out on the oceanic horizon.
I took a deep breath, and knew I’d found what I’d been trying to find. I’ll stay here for a couple of days exploring this sparsely populated island – searching out choice snorkelling spots, deserted stretches of white and whatever else I come upon…

This puts it all into focus – I chatted to an island hotelier today, she was feeling a bit stressed as she had a big night tonight. She was going to be running at capacity and all the guests were set to check in this afternoon. She had eight guests arriving. Yes – 8.

Sometimes paradise is a golden sand beach, or a snowy mountain top. But sometimes the best sort of paradise is the one that gives you that feeling that you discovered something. And maybe that’s what we travel for – to discover new places on our globe – and new things inside the globe we carry on our shoulders…
Cheers
~Scott