In 2000, I started thinking about the possibility of collectively designing and implementing an anarchist utopia. The idea grew, and eventually a group of us had plans to colonize an uninhabited island in the Carribbean, known as Samana Cay. Three expeditions were planned for that year: a scouting expedition with two or three people to investigate the island and get a feeling for what resources were available; an infastructure expedition with five to ten people to establish basic housing, water, sewage, and agriculture; and then the colonization expedition. Of course, we never made it past the scouting expedition.

JP, Jack and I were going to make that first trip. Our plan was to fly from Miami to Acklins Island, the inhabited island nearest to Samana Cay, and then wing it from there. Acklins Island is 24 miles off the coast of Samana Cay, and it gets air service once a week from Bahamas Air. There was practically no information available about Samana Cay or Acklins Island, but we heard that many fishermen live on Acklins. We thought we could bribe one of them to take us to Samana Cay.

The only report we got about Samana Cay was from a friend of a friend of a fishing guide operating out of Miami. The Topo-Maps we got showed a large reef around the island, and this guy confirmed our report: "Yah, the one time I tried to go to Samana Cay, that was the most dangerous thing I've ever done in my entire career -- ever."

Not withstanding that, I met JP and Jack in Atlanta for the drive to Miami. The car barely got us there and we had some last-minute passport issues to arrange, but we made it to the airport just in time for a short flight to Nassau. A 20-seat prop plane was going to take us the rest of the way. From the air the ocean was beautiful and the islands looked anything but hostile -- we even tried to spot Samana.

At long last we arrived, but Acklins Island was not what we'd expected. The airport was one room without doors, the heat was unbearable, the dust was inescapable, and there was nothing else but mangrove in sight. Notably, there was no bank or store. There weren't very many people, either -- most had moved off the island in search of economic propserity. The only fishermen on the island were skin divers, and none of them had boats. We talked to a self-identified rastafarian who told us that there was only one person on the island capable of taking us to Samana Cay. This guy, Newton, turned out to be a somewhat tough drug runner with a personal airstrip in front of his house. He wanted a lot of money to take us out there, so we negotiated the best we could. But this left us in a difficult situation -- we only had the money that happened to be in our pockets (no bank), which wasn't quite enough for both food and transportation. We bought a few cans of soup from another guy on the island and decided to ration those out across the duration of our trip. This came out to roughly one can of soup a day.

We agreed to leave for Samana Cay the next morning and went to sleep on the beach. Instead of a tent, we brought jungle hammocks. These are canvas hammocks with mosquito netting connected to a plastic top. They turned out to be a complete debacle, and mine was defective on many levels.

First of all, given the unexpected tree sparsity, we didn't have enough rope to hang and secure the tops of three hammocks. So, we had to hang them and let the plastic roofs fall down on our faces. Since we were in direct contact with the mosquito netting, this also meant that mosquitos could bite us through it. Unlike lounge hammocks, these had no wooden pieces holding the hammock strings apart. Without those, it was like sleeping on a rope. The hammock would flip over and we'd fall on the roofs against the beach. What's worse, my zipper came off and tore right through the mosquito netting the first time I zipped it up. Mosquitos poured in, and I woke up the next morning with well over 200 mosquito bites.

We had picked up some insect repellant that was 50% DEET, but even that (at risk of cancer) didn't seem to help. I don't like killing anything, even insects, but I couldn't take it anymore. "That's it!" I exclaimed, "I'm killing mosquitos!" Before the wind picked up that morning, I killed at least 60 mosquitos. None of their friends seemed to get the message, though -- they just kept coming.

That morning, Newton arrived with two tough looking friends and no explanation for why they were coming as well. We didn't trust them, and they didn't trust us. Here we were setting off with a drug dealer and his two friends who could jump us at any moment, or leave us for dead. We thought about putting a note in Newton's kitchen:

"REMEMBER: Pick the three white kids up from Samana Cay on Jan 2."

We started off through the "flats" in their skiff. Eventually Acklins disappeared behind us, and we couldn't see land in any direction. All the while, though, the wind was picking up. We were headed dead into it, and the waves were getting bigger and bigger. Soon we found ourselves in the middle of 10ft swell, with waves pouring over the side and soaking all of us. For hours we struggled up wave crests, shot down the back sides, and plunged into troughs -- barely making forward progress.

In time, the sun started to set. We were in the middle of the ocean, not even half way to Samana Cay. Locating the island in the dark would have been impossible, so we turned around and started a mad rush back to Acklins. The flats and their intricately shallow coral formations were difficult to navigate even during the day, and we barely made it back to the Acklins beach before the sun set.

It was another frustrating night.

The next day we finally made it to Samana Cay. We waded ashore and said goodbye to Newton, hoping that we'd see him again. To our disappointment, it was almost immediately apparent that the island was in no way ideal. We could deal without fresh water or incredibly fertile soil, but there were virtually no trees -- only very sharp bushes, ants, and mosquitos. We spent a lot of time exploring the desolate wasteland and laughing about our misfortune. We were also very hungry, so we spent a lot of time trying to find food, without much success. The fish were too smart for us, and so were the cocanuts.

Since there were no trees, there was no place to hang our hammocks. Instead, we would just lay them out on the beach next to our fire of rotting driftwood. This was alright, until the gale-force winds picked up in the middle of the night. At that point, the plastic roofs would start to act a lot like parachutes, and the wind would drag us along the beach.

Somewhat to our surprise, Newton did return for us. We struggled back to Acklins for the weekly flight to Nassau. At the Acklins airport, however, Newton tried to give us a sealed cooler to check on the plane. He wouldn't tell us what was in it, so we didn't want to have anything to do with it. Never the less, Newton followed us into the airport shelter area. Instead of giving us the usual spiel about "Have all your pieces of luggage been under your control at all times?" the guy working there looked at us, then looked at Newton and asked "Is that the cooler?" Newton nodded, and the attendant threw the cooler on the luggage cart. We never saw who got it in Nassau.

We were hungry and tired. In Nassau we ate until we puked. We looked so hungry that the first place we went didn't even charge us. The abundance of food and water seemed unbelievable, so we ate non-stop.

The trip was a disappointment, and it was full of some truely miserable moments. But even though all of the planning conversations about desalinsation and cisterns didn't add up to much, it was a valuable experience. When you're sitting on a beach in the middle of nowhere, covered with mosquito bites, sunburnt, starving, salt-caked, and wet -- you meet parts of yourself that you don't often encounter. And I'm glad we at least made it to the island. The closer we got, the worse our situation became -- but we made it. We didn't betray time by idly making wish-plans to be followed by inaction, we went there and tried. Even when we stood on the island for the first time and realized that its beauty from a distance did not hold up to scrutiny, I was glad we were there. There are always other islands.