Shoal Bay East is two miles of coral-powder sand on the north coast of Anguilla, in the British Caribbean, an island of limestone so porous that no rain runs off it into the sea, behind a reef that flattens the Atlantic into a shallow lagoon of clear water, and it is ranked among the best beaches in the region year after year for the sand, the reef and the shack bars standing on the beach itself. The sand is ground from the coral by the parrotfish that graze the reef and pass it as white powder, so fine that the walk is easier down where the sea has packed it, and the water is clear because no river or runoff muddies it, since the island's rain sinks straight into the rock; the beach curves for two miles round the bend from the village to the far end, where the reef's coral heads rise in scattered mounds with lanes of bare white sand between them, snorkelled from the beach in water a few metres deep. From December to April the water inside the reef is at its clearest and the sand is free of sargassum weed.
The bars are part of the beach. Uncle Ernie's opened on this sand in 1984, when Shoal Bay had no electricity and Anguilla's tourism barely existed, and grilled ribs, crayfish and rum punch still come out of wooden bars standing directly on the sand, a few steps from the water, with reggae on Sundays; hurricane Irma in 2017 scoured the shore so deeply that the ground beneath Gwen's Reggae Grill was swallowed, and the bar was rebuilt further along the bay when the sea gave the beach back. The island has no casinos and no cruise ships, and the beach is quiet on a weekday, with a few loungers under the sea grape trees and the reef breaking white beyond the lagoon. Shoal Bay East is a beach the fish made and the reef keeps calm, and the bars were there before the lights.