Haven't had a chance to write about this but a couple of weeks ago we got to go to the oddest festival we've been to yet - Country music on the Caribbean beaches of Anguilla. Pat Green, Rivers Rutherfors, Chuck Cannon, Wendell Mobley, Chuck Jones and the James Slater band, rocking out at internationally renown Reggae artist It was at Bankie Banx' place.



The Dunes Preserve, which in itself is one of the neatest places to go on the island was jam packed full of locals and quite possibly every white person on the island.  The preserve is a 5 room treehouse, built from old boat parts and sitting on a nature preserve, right on the beach.  The maze of hallways, bridges between the trees and stairs up and down the place provide hours of fun, while drinking or not.

But it was quite odd to have a couple hundred native Anguillians standing there listening to country music, compared to the usual Reggae music.  It took a couple of hours for the rhythm of everyone's sway to adjust but it finally turned into a really unique experience and I continue to be impressed by the cultural tolerance of the Caribbean people.



The usual suspects pictured above were there too and hear-say has it that the one that posesses rhythm ended up dancing on stage around 1am in the morning.  The kids came with us and mingled with most of their classmates until almost 11pm before crashing in the car.

And a bunch of Anguillians actually sang along when Billy Ray Cyrus' got up to play "Achy Breaky Heart", in good fun.