It took me less than five minutes to fall hopelessly in love with Bequia. I'd just checked in to my little hotel and was sitting in its open-air cafe, facing the beach and Admiralty Bay. Yachts nodded gently in the water. The wind rattled the palm trees overhead. In the kitchen, the young cook was singing a slow, stately hymn. And that was it: suddenly I felt I had no need to ever go anyplace else, ever again.

Before today, I'd never really understood the fascination with sunshine destinations. I couldn't conceive of saving my whole life just to retire to a white sand beach. The Caribbean was not high on my must-see list - if my Dad hadn't gotten posted to Barbados, I might never have come to this part of the world. No major museums? No hustle-bustle of a big city? No absurdly enormous swathes of wilderness? No global crossroads of cuisines, musics, languages? Not my thing, I would have said.

Granted, before this trip my beach holidays were limited to Acapulco and Phuket - maybe not the most dignified examples of the genre. But I just couldn't see myself paying a whole lot of money to do a whole lot of nothing.

Here's what I did today: I ate breakfast in that open-air cafe. I walked along the beach, and back again. I lay down in my little room and closed my eyes and listened to the wind and the ocean; maybe I slept for awhile, or maybe not. I walked through town and up to the old British fort. I shared a large, steaming-cold Coke with a girl from Maine.

Tonight I'll find some local food - conch curry, maybe - and maybe some live music. I'll have a Hairoun or two, the local lager. Then I'll go lie down in my little room again and listen to the wind and the ocean some more, until I fall asleep. And I'll wonder if maybe - just maybe - the yachties and the time-share owners and the snowbirds and even the cruisers might have known a thing or two about "slow travel" all along.