With her son Brady at the helm, we motored up to little La Fe, a settlement of maybe two hundred people on a green lawn at water's edge with no electricity, no running water, no phone. Dell has property here, and we stopped to visit with her sister Sylvia. As we sat on the porch of a small house, a young man pulled out an old guitar and sang a country-western-style song he'd written about the Garinagu; others gathered around, singing harmony. Accompanied by a passel of kids, we collected limes from one of Miss Dell's trees ("The guests like to have them in their drinks," she explained). As we were leaving, Sylvia ran down to the boat to give Dell some cassava bread, the only time I got to taste this traditional Garifuna staple during my travels. We continued on to Orinoco—the Garifuna town founded by Miss Dell's great-great-grandfather and the Miskito woman he married, and Dell's birthplace—where her uncle Frank Lopez told tales of the town's 160-year-old history. We stopped in on an elderly aunt, and a young man performed on the drums.

That night in the Casa Blanca's restaurant, I met an American expatriate who had written off Puerto Viejo as already too developed. Changes are coming here, too. "You're seeing this place just on the cusp," he said, and he told me about a new road linking Pearl Lagoon to the rest of the country. Later, I asked Dell for her thoughts. "You see the cars in town? That's how they got here," she said. I had seen perhaps three. Because of the road, she told me, so many people had come for Holy Week (the high season in Central America) that she had had to turn away potential guests. She intends to have six more rooms with private baths by next Easter; she had already bought the sand to give to the local fellow who will make her bricks.

The next day was my very favorite on the western shores of the Caribbean. Early in the morning, Miss Dell, Brady, and I headed out to the Pearl Cayes. We passed at least three dozen fishermen, working for their daily catch in their cayucos, and checked in with the coast guard before picking up speed for an hour or so across open sea. Sand Fly Cay (appropriately named) is home to Miss Paula, Dell's half sister whom she grew up with, and only four or five other people. The house is right on the beach, there are some places to sit, and coconut husks burned in the sand. We went fishing while Miss Paula started making us a spicy fish stew called rondon for lunch. The fish mainly ate my bait, but I did catch a small one, which Miss Dell praised as being "a market fish." Stretched out in an old lounge chair on the beach, I enjoyed my rondon, which reminded me of the tapado I had had in Livingston and the hudut that I had never managed to track down in Punta Gorda—fish, coconut, peppers, and green banana.

Before heading back to Pearl Lagoon, Miss Dell took me to see some of the cayes that are at the center of an ownership dispute: Although the islands are all community property, a developer has nonetheless sold a number of them to individual buyers. A couple of the islands have armed guards. But not Grape Cay, a two-and-a-half-acre drop of sand with nothing much on it besides coconut palms. Brady stayed out fiddling with the boat, while Dell and I went ashore. I immediately plopped into the water, which was at the temperature of an enormous personal bath; I discovered the meaning of "happy as a clam." Miss Dell industriously collected fallen coconuts. "Aren't you going to come in?" I called. She piled up her coconuts and made her way over. She plopped too, and there, in about eighteen inches of water, we lay, two middle-aged ladies, basking, occasionally splashing—another hour or so spent together, alone in paradise.