Barefoot paradise
Sarah Miller gets light-headed and lethargic in Parrot Cay Atravel editor who doesn’t get out much may be an oxymoron but seeing the world vicariously through the lightbox is one of the perks of editing Condé Nast Traveller. A much-needed break from other people’s holiday highs and lows became a near obsession last summer as the temperature hit 30°F in London and the city began to empty. Of course it should be easy, but the sheer choice available made this a fraught decision. City and culture or sun and beach? Self-knowledge (I get bored lying idly on the sand while my daughter tunes into her iPod) versus self-improvement (learning to relax and giving my daughter a post-exam treat). The result? Not Florence or a villa in the hills of Tuscany where we usually head, but offseason in the Caribbean for a week. No Tiepolo, but no Rome airport queuing for a hire car either. Instead we arrived at Providenciales, the tiny main island of Turks and Caicos, as dusk was settling over the quiet ocean, and took a refreshing boat ride through the glassy water to Parrot Cay.
Slightly dreading the professional welcome that many resorts go in for — strange coconut drinks with parasols — when all you want to do is to dump the cases and leave the world outside your room, we were met and speedily delivered to a beach villa with its own kitchen, veranda, pool, whirring fans and billowing muslin drapes around four-poster beds. The idea of doing anything more strenuous than reaching for a bottle of mineral water quickly became the pattern of the week, thanks to the discreet attentions of our ‘butler’, who appeared — rather disconcertingly to begin with — whenever a thought about lunch or a drink entered one’s head.
Puritan guilt dissolving by the minute, island time imprinted itself on to disrupted sleep patterns, and the sound of the ocean and occasional clatter of lizards on the bleached wooden decking outside soothed and more than satisfied. Another day, another lizard, another cloudburst at lunch — funny how you don’t mind a real downpour when all you have to worry about is what time to have dinner or whether you should have a therapeutic massage.
A rhythm set in where the world was reduced to a blue horizon beyond a stretch of wild grasses and sand, with no one to disturb your view except when you chose to venture out to the restaurant, spa or main house. People-watching reached its zenith one morning as we sat next to Thierry Henry and his family, who like us had escaped the va-va-voom of the real world for the tranquillity that has enticed the likes of Bruce Willis, Donna Karan and Cindy Crawford to buy second (or third) homes on this barefoot paradise. And here’s a paradox: Parrot Cay, owned by Christina Ong (think fashionable addresses around the world, including the Metropolitan hotel in London), is where power-brokers, Hollywood actors and certain rock stars come to rejuvenate their spirits — I’m told Paul McCartney was also here — but the point is you don’t have to see anyone if you don’t want to (and I didn’t).
The closest I got to ‘meeting new friends on holiday’ was a glorious French couple in their late fifties who had decided to try the ‘breathing class’ offered by the excellent Como Shambhala spa. My excuse was a bout of pneumonia and pleurisy earlier in the year, theirs was simply the good life and in his case an expanding waistline and stiff back. Madame was as lithe as Madonna. Merciless teasing by my sceptical family about coming all the way to the Caribbean for classes on how to breathe meant I had assumed ‘breathing’ would be just that inhalation followed by exhalation as night follows day. But relaxing properly is hard work. Our state of pranayama saw Madame put me and her husband to shame as both her delicate toes touched the wooden floor over her shoulders behind her head. Such core-centering contortions required dedicated concentration and, in my case, a fleeting memory of attending the same antenatal class as Ruby Wax. Lying on our mats and being instructed physically to imagine the outcome of our pregnancies, she exhaled the statement that if God had intended women to have babies, he would have invented zips.
Light-headed, lethargic but somehow not lazy, our stay at Parrot Cay was not only what the doctor ordered but one of those rare pampered stays I would happily repeat — assuming I get a chance to travel.
Sarah Miller is editor of Condé Nast Traveller.
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