Deciding to switch our itinerary to explore pastures new, on Sunday, 25th February 2024, we cast off the mooring ball on Bequia Island around mid-morning and enjoyed a slow motorsail over to the private island of Mystique, with its year-round population of about 500 people, who mostly live in the village of Lovell or in staff quarters of the private villas, while the remaining inhabitants occupy about 120 of these private villas scattered around the island.

The island is owned by a private limited company called Mystique Company, which is in turn, owned by the island's home owners. Ownership includes the airport and the private airline. There’s only one hotel on the island, the Cotton House, also owned by the Mystique Company.

After being greeted by the Harbour Master, who helped secure us to a mooring ball, we paid our dues of $220EC for a three night stay and dinghied ashore for a snoop around.

Mystique is a rarely visited island by cruisers for a host of reasons; one, its a beat to get there, two, it’s very expensive and three, cruisers are restricted to where they are allowed to go, enforced by a security team permanently established on the island. Why?

Well, it’s an exclusive sanctuary for royalty, rock stars, politicians and business tycoons to relax in anonymity. It’s been home to Princess Margaret, it was a holiday destination for the late Queen Elizabeth II and her late husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Catherine, holiday there, it’s home to rock stars like Mick Jagger and fashion icons like Tommy Hilfiger, and it has been a holiday destination for other famous individuals including Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Denzel Washington, John Travolta and Bryan Adams, all of whom clearly did not want the common plebes like ourselves snooping around their homes or indeed socialising with them in the majority of the common areas.

We were restricted to the waterfront, a section of the beaches on the western shoreline, part of the park area nearest the mooring field and the beautiful little village, located opposite one of the lovely beaches, which comprised a number of colourful “gingerbread” buildings serving as boutique shops, a fine wines and cigars shop, the Sweetie Pie Bakery coffee shop and a supermarket, as well as a fruit and vegetable stall. We were also allowed to frequent Basil’s Bar jutting out on stilts from the shoreline.

Additionally we could take a tour of the island, for a fee of course, but we weren’t actually interested in looking at hedges and gates of famous people’s homes. Better still, though, some of the villas are for rent at the bargain basement special rate of $8,000-$150,000 USD per week depending on how many bedrooms you would like.

Attending the Sunset Jazz Dinner at Basil’s Bar on our first night, while a very enjoyable outing, albeit expensive, was definitely an interesting and somewhat bizarre experience, given the clientele that seemed so out of place in the modern day Caribbean setting; it all seemed very colonial.

Although Roy and I would not recognise most people considered to be famous, even if we tripped over them, we were sitting in the company of many, given that the restaurant was absolutely jam packed, testament to the number of golf carts associated with the different villas parked outside the venue. It was also evident that tables were “designated” to specific individuals and their families who seemed to regularly attend this weekly dining event, most walked in like they owned the place, which in fact they did, and no one was dressed in anything less than a designer outfit. Greetings between parties were kept brief and nonintrusive, bordering on nonchalant, and polite applause was offered to the band at the end of each song. All this while we sat squashed in a corner of the restaurant, at a table undoubtedly reserved for the visiting cruisers or indeed for the few cruisers willing to pay the prices.

A few days later, if it wasn’t for the lovely couple, Sharon and Martin, off Sonsy Lass, who had joined us for a morning coffee, we would never have recognised Shania Twain enjoying a coffee too at the Sweety Pie Bakery coffee shop, while we tucked into our baked delights.

That entire morning was, in fact, a series of chance encounters. It started with us meeting Sharon and Martin for the first time on the dinghy dock, although we knew of their yacht, given that they too had completed the ARC 2023 rally with us and we’d all shared the same dock in Gran Canaria. It was indeed another random event that resulted in us meeting cruisers that we could just as easily have met months earlier since we all probably walked passed each other numerous times on the dock back in Gran Canaria. Regardless, it led to an unexpected, fun morning and a celebrity sighting.

Other activities, besides lazying around onboard, included walks along the waterfront, although a security guard in her car was positioned strategically to ensure we didn’t infringe on the privacy of any home owners or overstep the stated boundaries, swims in the crystal clear water and taking the opportunity to clean Paw Paw’s topsides, as well as enjoyed our Zoom family get-together.

Would we visit Mystique Island again? No, but we’re glad we did. It was indeed an unusual destination with its own very distinct culture of privilege, class and all the trimmings.