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The Dune Preserve is simply the coolest bar on an expensive, but ice-cool, island, Anguilla. The only problem with the Dune Preserve is that it does not preserve particularly well. As the name suggests it is built on a dune, so every time there is a serious puff of wind the whole thing is blown away.

'Well dat four times I rebuild in six years,' says Bankie Banx, his thin dread-locks jiggling. Bankie is the Dune's owner and Anguilla's resident singer. He reopened the Dune Preserve, again, in mid-November. Much of the same material is re-used in the rebuild, particularly boats, which are something of a leitmotif at the Dune - boats as roofs, boats as bars, boats protruding surreally from the corner of rooms.

But the joy of the Dune Preserve is chilling, in the warm Caribbean air, to the sound of the waves in Rendez-vous Bay, on the rickety wooden decks that are perched on the sand. And from time to time Bankie Banx himself will play his guitar and sing, all wistful and mellow. It's just a classic Caribbean bar.

Blanchard’s: If I had a gourmet dinner for each time I heard the words 'I should write a book about my Caribbean experiences.' I would be a wheezy old lardbucket by now. The American husband and wife team that has been running Blanchards on Meads Bay for 6/7 years, have actually done it, in 'A Trip to the Beach'. 'It's a bit 'Year in Provence' comes to the Caribbean,' says Bob Blanchard. And so it is, and of course it has a specifically Caribbean eccentricity about it. It describes a year in the tiny, scrubby and arid island, in which they cope with the vagaries of Caribbean customs (who would leave cases of expensive Bordeaux wine sitting on the jetty), delight in dancing chefs and face the horrors of the immensely destructive Hurricane Luis... while still setting up the most successful restaurant on the island.

As for the food, it can best be described by that much abused word ‘eclectic’ - the USP being that the produce is flown in fresh daily from Miami and France. Not much is harvested on Anguilla - except lobsters. Melinda’s lobster cakes are renowned all over.

Hotels: I'm not in habit of shouting at hotel managers, but there are times when you have to. With Dulcie, Iddy and Jamella singing at full volume (West Indians like it loud), it was the only way. Edward Michelin, a Jamaican, has just opened Coco Bay, a series of cottages scattered over a headland on the west coast of Antigua. They need a little wearing in, but what's nice about Coco Bay is that the cottages have adopted a consciously West Indian style. Like the wooden West Indian homes of years past, they have clapboard walls and shingle roofs, with exposed beams on the interior and muslin nets on the beds. Then there is a view from the bed, and from the shower, and a small balcony with suitably relaxing planter's chairs from which there is barely a need to get up.

What's not so nice is the projected price, at a rack rate of around US$600 a night (albeit all-inclusive), but check the tour operators and there may still be some good deals.

Elsewhere, spa fever has arrived. They are opening up in hotels all over the Caribbean at the moment. At the new spa at Eden Rock in St Barts a few weeks ago I happened to be one of the first customers, on their second day of operation. I've never been one for spa treatments -- I had a massage once, but didn't quite understand - but I'm game, so I gave it a go.

Thalasso treatment, I'm told, uses seawater as part of the treatment. So it is appropriate that treatments at Eden Rock take place on the sea's edge, facing a palette of blues worthy of a surreal painter.

I started off with a standard series of water-jets in a seawater tub and then moved on to the surround-shower -- water-torture with a view...But each treatment is tailored and when he heard I was off for a hideous run in the Sahara, Nicolas devised a few extras for me, stretching me, rolling me about and generally pummelling me. At one point I thought that I was about to be folded into the fourth dimension, but I was still there moments later, relaxing with an appropriately clean and detoxifying fruit cocktail.

For those who don’t know the Eden Rock, it was the first hotel on the island and since its refurbishment by Yorkshireman David Matthews (who bought it in 1995, three days before the island was trashed by Hurricane Luis), has claimed a spot as one of the best. Beloved by Garbo and Mitchum, it is built on a rock, with a wide balcony overlooking the sea, and with a small but fashionable, beach. Eden Rock has only ten rooms, all romantically decorated (check out their website) and yet sports four restaurants, including a tapas bar (well, sophistcated St Barts tapas), a gastro affair (‘full frontal French’) and the magnet on the beach - the Sand Bar. People come from all over the island to spend the day here, which is why staying at the Eden Rock makes you feel so special. Day time plane spotting is quite fun too - the island runway ends just a short distance down the beach, but since most of the planes are small 4-seaters, the disturbance is minimal. Clients are mainly from the US - as is the case on St Barts generally. See their website at www.edenrockhotel.com, or check out traveller reviews at www.wheretostay.com, a great Caribbean resource.

Barbuda: You'd think, by the name, that Barbuda was somewhere between Barbados and Bermuda. And so it is, geographically. But in spirit it is a world away from either. It is a scrubby, barely developed island, with three very expensive resort hotels and some of the most magnificent beaches in the Caribbean.

The oddest thing about Barbuda is the natural life, most particularly the frigatebirds--vast, scissor-tailed creatures with a seven-foot wingspan, which can be seen casting a solitary, angular silhouette throughout the islands. They nest in the mangroves in the north of Barbuda.

Once the outboard is switched off you hear only the gutteral clacking of the males displaying. Their beaks are held vertical because at their necks there is a vast red balloon, the size of two rugby balls. The male builds the nest and sits on the egg, but when the chick has hatched he moves on, cruising the high seas for plunder. The frigate bird is the most devastating of attackers. Like a ship of war it swoops in to attack other birds, in mid air, pecking them from behind until they release their catch. Then he tilts his wings, flies down, and snatches the meal before it hits the sea.

Nevis is surely the loveliest of the Caribbean islands. It has developed quite a bit over the past five or six years, but still it retains its charm, developing more slowly than the other islands.

The Four Seasons has just re-opened after a year's closure and is poised to bring back its brand of seamless service to the island once again. Everybody will urge you to go there. But in my mind this is missing the point of an island as charming as this, which has a collection of wonderful plantation-style hotels - Hermitage, Montpelier, Nisbet, Golden Rock and the Old Manor. With the exception of Nisbet they are up in the hills rather than on the beach, but they speak of a more gracious, bygone age and there are few places as lovely around the islands."

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