Little Pool At Little Bay Beach, Montserrat
No community can thrive without first looking out for its youth. In the Caribbean, that means, in part, offering safe venues for kids to swim. You might think this easy in a region comprised of islands surrounded by the world’s most beautiful seas. Not so. Unpredictable coastal conditions give inexperienced swimmers pause. At the same time, the cost to build and maintain municipal swimming pools makes them pretty scarce across the Caribbean. In Montserrat, though, they’ve developed a pretty great solution along the shores of Little Bay. There, beneath a cluster of beach bars, souvenir shops, and the island’s lone dive operator you’ll find the little pool at Little Bay. That’s not an official name, of course. Everyone I asked couldn’t provide me with one. To me, though, the name truly fits as the tidy arc of rocks and cement tetrapods forms a cozy swimming spot ideal for novice swimmers, who quite often are also small. Strong swells are fairly frequent here, so the pool really does come in handy. The mostly man-made structure was installed just a few years ago. Even so, the little pool at Little Bay already attracts scores of fish, much to the delight of novice snorkelers.