For me, a week without Web or e-mail access qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.
I practically live on the Internet, even when on vacation in far-flung locales. I’ve rarely been offline for longer than a day or two since first venturing into cyberspace in the late 1990s.
So, when Mom recently proposed holding a weeklong family reunion on a tiny Caribbean island, my first question was, naturally, “Does it have Internet access?”
Cooper Island in the British Virgin Islands, as I soon learned, isn’t that kind of place. This isle, just off the coast of Tortola and scarcely 1{ miles by a half-mile in size, caters to travelers who yearn to get away from it all _ including their Web browsers and bulging e-mail in-boxes.
None of the guest cottages at the Cooper Island Beach Club resort have Ethernet jacks or phone lines for linking laptops to the Internet. They even lack TVs.
What passes for high-tech within each cottage is a single battery-fed electrical outlet for charging digital cameras or MP3 players, as well as listening to a car-style radio and CD player built into a cabinet. In a nod to the recreational sailors who flock to the resort, cottages also have banks of boat-style switches for turning on lights, fans and the like. But that’s it.
“We don’t claim to be a high-end, five-star resort with all the gadgets in the rooms,” says Toby Holmes, one of the resort’s managing partners.
It’s much the same at the adjacent Cooper Island Hideaways, with two guest houses offering breathtaking ocean views and all the comforts of home _ those that aren’t digital, anyway.
Now, there are ways around this problem. If you have a Web-ready mobile phone that can gain access to a cellular data network on nearby Tortola, you’re golden. Better yet, use the Beach Club’s private ferry service for day trips to Tortola and one of its many cybercafes.
But I decided to try a little experiment. I would avoid all pathetic attempts to gain online access during my Beach Club sojourn, no matter how frantic I might get for e-mail or the Web, and try living a low-tech lifestyle for a change.
Cooper Island is hardly hell on Earth. Just above sea level, a tiny remnant of an ancient plain that vanished with the last ice age, the isle is an uncomplicated haven.
But those who visit must be ready to see their horizons _ physical as well as virtual _ shrink. The island has no roads, which aren’t needed because they’d lead nowhere. Even a walk along the island’s coast is a near-impossibility because only Manchioneel Bay has a proper, sandy beach.
This tends to suit Beach Club visitors just fine. “They can veg out,” Holmes says. “They can spend the day reading, sleeping, swimming or lying in the sun.”
The Beach Club’s palm-verdant grounds are quite soothing. The resort’s aloe vera plants can soothe in a different way. When a young relative of mine got sunburned, a resort staffer cracked open one of the plants’ long, stiff leaves and used its inner gel as a healing balm.
The resort’s restaurant, housed in what used to be a large private residence, serves up such delicacies as conch creole, chicken roti and grilled mahi-mahi with your choice of cajun-mango or ginger-rum sauce. The Beach Club has an intimate breakfast area, as well.
Full-service scuba facilities provide easy access to some of the region’s top dive spots, complete with a selection of underwater shipwrecks (some of which are famous in scuba circles). The Beach Club also provides a modest tourist-style boutique beside the scuba center.
With all this, who needs e-mail? I did, as it turned out. While I enjoyed reading, napping, kayaking and playing with my small arsenal of gizmos, I continually and sometimes desperately craved online access.
I make no apologies about this. I’ve often been scolded for wanting to pop into cybercafes in foreign lands to check my e-mail and scan my RSS feeds, those automated infostreams that help me keep abreast of my favorite Web sites. I always have the same reply: I’m better able to relax on holiday if I can clear out my piled-up online information first.
Besides, I don’t like to be hemmed in. Cooper Island’s geographical constraints might have proven more tolerable, even enjoyable, with an option to venture online, at least on occasion. But, virtually as well as physically restricted, I found my mind racing at times.
Listening to the audiobook version of “Cell,” Stephen King’s creepy novel about mobile-phone users gone mad due to a mysterious electronic pulse, I became paranoid about how humanity was faring beyond Cooper Island’s shores. When one of my relatives sauntered out of his cottage with a phone held to his ear, I had to restrain myself from tackling him and wresting the device from him.
Whew.
So would I do this again? Actually, yes. Cooper Island and the Beach Club really are quite nice.
But I’d take steps to preserve my sanity. I’d line up local cellular service on a device capable of downloading e-mail and Web pages, or I’d get over to a Tortola cybercafe for a Net hit on occasion. (I never did this on my trip because, frankly, what I saw of urban Tortola seemed deathly boring. I’m told some of its rural beaches are pretty, however.)
Getting away from it all is really not a problem for me – provided I don’t become a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, if even only for a week.
