I’m trying to find the figures at the bottom of the sea, but as the parrotfish and sergeant majors sway into my face, all I see is reef. Shafts of light slice through the murk, illuminating a confetti of watery dust. I feel a million miles from anyone, or anything. Then our guide’s feet slide into view and he turns towards us, catches my eye and points. We thrum forwards and the haze begins to clear. Suddenly, there they are, on the ocean floor just ahead: a huddle of children, standing in a circle and holding hands, their calcified bodies teeming with coral and weed. I can hear nothing but the blood pounding in my ears. I look at the impassive, eyeless faces below, made ghastly by plankton and the currents of the sea. They are known as Vicissitudes.

Spooky though these juvenile zombies are, they mean no ill. They were cast in cement and sunk to the seabed 12 years ago off the west coast of Grenada, in the once barren Molinere Bay. It is not an aquatic mausoleum, then, but an underwater sculpture park designed to compensate for the damage wrought by human activity to the reefs. Eerie and peculiarly beautiful, they suggest a different sort of holiday from the one you might expect to take on a tiny Caribbean island whose appeal to tourists is usually shimmering sand and endless sunshine. But, as well as being blissful, Grenada is breathlessly interesting and exciting, too. And if, like me, the closest most of your holidays come to an adventure is the in-flight decision between chicken and fish, the contrast between its exertions and its indulgences may still just about be in your ballpark.

We are staying at Silversands hotel, which is as luxurious a bolthole as you’ll find to return to at the end of your day’s adventure. It opened this year, six years after Egyptian telecoms billionaire Mr Naguib Sawiris first visited and found himself seduced by Grenada’s sleepy, laidback vibe.

Mr Sawiris commissioned architects Mr Reda Amalou and Ms Stéphanie Ledoux, whose designs can be found from Angkor Wat to Marrakech, to create a £100m beachfront resort with the longest infinity pool in the Caribbean and a cognac lounge where you can order a £4,780 shot of Hennessy 8, should you be so inclined. Silversands, which sits on Grand Anse beach, employs 250 staff to look after 43 rooms and nine villas, five of which open directly onto the sand (Mr Lewis Hamilton nearly bought one, apparently). It is all white and wooden, limestone and granite. As soon as you arrive at the reception area, sheltered from the busy road on one side and open to the endless ocean on the other, you are in a different world. That 100m pool, flanked by daybeds under dark slats of bulletwood and seeming to flow directly into the sea, encapsulates Silversands’ central principles of stillness, scale and an obsessively curated sort of peace.

At the airport it is easy to spot the hotel’s driver, who picks us up in one of the property’s Tesla Model Xes and invites us to hop in beneath its spaceship-style falcon-wing doors. If you would like your days of adventure bookended by extravagant ease, Silversands and its staff will swaddle you in comfort and, as I found, bring you more towels than you know what to do with.

Haul yourself away from your lounger and there are certainly adventures to be had. Most of them get you back to Silversands in time for a hot-stone massage and a dip. One morning, we don helmets to drive all-terrain vehicles in convoy along helter-skelter roads and dirt tracks before turning sharply into the undergrowth that marks the beginning of the island’s steep volcanic hills. The mongooses and mona monkeys make the forest as loud as the ocean is silent. The greenery and heat seem to curl around our ATVs until we burst free onto a plateau that offers a view across the island to make your stomach lurch and heart sing. From there we roll on to a lagoon where we take off our helmets and shirts and plunge beneath a bellowing waterfall, then roll back to the hotel for lunch.

On another day, we sail the island’s coastal waters on a ruby-red Carriacou sloop, named after the neighbouring island where its elegant design was perfected hundreds of years ago, and chase the horizon as the sun goes down. We might just as easily have tramped down the beach to find a scuba instructor or taken a speedboat to a tiny deserted island to enjoy the sun in complete solitude, or gone deep-sea fishing for sailfish and yellowfin tuna.

Should you inexplicably come on holiday to the Caribbean despite an aversion to water, you might seek your amusement by going to see how rum is made or how nutmeg, Grenada’s most vital export, is harvested, or suck the tart, acidic flesh from a cocoa bean and marvel at quite how far it is from Dairy Milk. Or you may choose to follow in the footsteps of Carib and Arawak bushwackers and trek for hours from Cemetery Hill, which got its name in the 1700s after outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera, through bougainvillea and ginger lilies until you reach the top of Mount Qua Qua. You can even take your chances walking along the edge of the main road, which, for an island with a population of just 108,000, is remarkably reminiscent of the Hanger Lane gyratory.

To the committed loafer, this may seem like an alarming intrusion of effort. I can only tell you that each escapade seemed to stretch and enrich the time. I am sure I read as many books as I might otherwise have done, and slept better, and drenched myself more thoroughly in the sun. The usual bureaucracy, the tedious organisation associated with such outings, on the other hand, was almost completely erased.

It occurred to me, as I collapsed onto a lounger and gratefully accepted a sundowner, that this may be the only threat to the excitement that awaits you. The hospitality is so enveloping that you will be hard pressed to abandon it for another foray beyond Silversands’ handsome gates.

silversandsgrenada.com