When I long for the Caribbean, my thoughts don't turn to snazzy resorts but to local gossip, goats, chickens, marketplaces, empty beaches and pots of home-cooked fish stew, fragrant with pepper.
We'd intended to stay one night, but the beach is clean, pots can be washed in the freshwater streams, and there's a public loo nearby.
Universal Pictures and Relativity Media, however, spent roughly $45 million to make "Savages," which follows two beach bums whose successful pot business becomes the takeover target of a Mexican drug cartel.
(866 354-0450 www.readerscatalog.com SEE BY THE SHORE -- A large clear glass bean pot lamp holds lots of shells, sea-washed glass or beach stones.
Rodman's pink house opens onto a public beach peppered with surfers, pot-smoking teens and the sporadic gawker.
In it, I carried everything I needed: bedding, clothes, a camp stove, beach chairs, an umbrella, pots and pans, a first-aid kit and 20 or so paperbacks.
Bamboo mats, pots of beach grasses and other greenery shield the space from the row of cars that stands between the bar and the Byram River.
Actually, there are no mosquitoes at Kapalai to speak of — and no palm trees, except in pots; no beach, unless you count a slender sandbar that peeks above the waves at low tide; no rental cars, no shopping street, no bars.
Three rooms overlook the pebble beach with its lobster pots and upturned fishing boats (two of them have a sea-view conservatory; the third, a child-friendly twin, shares a bathroom); all share a fresh and vaguely New England look (patchwork quilts, striped cottons, lighthouse motifs).
"A light-skinned yuppie smoking pot on the beach is a user and left in peace," says Ms Nader.
