“Excuse us,” we asked the first person we saw at the dock. “Can you tell us where to find a taxi?”

The old man looked us over. “Where are you going?”

“We’d like to find a hotel,” we answered cheerfully.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he said.

We put the suitcase in the trunk and buckled ourselves in. Thirty seconds later, he announced, “Here we are.”

He refused to accept money but he did tell us to come to his restaurant, where he served “the best fried turtle on the islands.” François’s eyes lit up. “Gross,” I thought. I draw the line at any animal that features prominently in Aesop’s fables.

The receptionist asked us how long we were planning on staying. “About ten nights,” we said.

She opened the large reservation book, running her forefinger down each page. She never said a word. She didn’t look at us, just turned the pages s-l-o-w-l-y. “That’s it,” I thought. “They’re booked full and we’re stranded.”

Finally she spoke. “This way,” she said.

The receptionist, who was also the bellhop, carried our bag to our room, then waited for a tip. We asked her whether the hotel was full. “All the rooms are vacant,” she said. They remained that way during our entire stay.

Our room was right on the white, sandy beach. The calm blue ocean filled the horizon. Except for a few palm trees, there was nothing else on the beach.

We put down our bags and decided to go look for a place to eat. Walking up and down the island, we noticed that the streets were empty—no tourists, no locals. The atmosphere reminded me of a book I had read in junior high about a boy who was the only survivor of an atomic bomb and had to rely on his wits to survive. I couldn’t remember anything else about the book, but I knew that if I had to rely on my wits to survive, I was far worse off than the turtles. We went back to our hotel, but the receptionist wasn’t there. That was because she was now the waitress at the hotel’s restaurant.

We were seated after a few minutes and given menus with pictures of lobsters on them. “That’s what I want!” said François. “Sorry,” said the receptionist-bellhop-waitress, “but it’s not lobster season.”

We ordered conch chowder and sandwiches. The service was quite good, but then again we were the only customers in the restaurant. The food, though, was unbelievably expensive. We later found out that this was because everything has to be brought to Spanish Wells by boat. A box of Cheerios at the island’s grocery store, Pinder Market, cost $6.50.