What would you do if you won the lottery? My answer is perpetually ready: I’d go to the Bahamas.

The national bird is the flamingo. Unlike us, they don’t shoot it

This was, of course, before the Bahamas hit our national headlines. Now clearly, I have to find another thing to do with myself as the Bahamas is starting to sound rather cliché.

In fact, I’m rather upset at John Dalli for this: of all the islands in the Caribbean region, could he not have gone to Trinidad and Tobago or Puerto Rico instead for his record-mileage-breaking stint?

I have been planning to win the lottery and retire to one of the 2,000 islands which make up the Bahamas for years now, way before we started seeing those ads promoting the Caribbean region as the ideal romantic destination where you can get a his ‘n’ hers flip flops and deckchairs. The only thing that has kept me away till now is the little detail of forgetting to buy a ticket.

My fascination kicked off when, as a 10-year-old, I came across a set of old The Unexplained magazines in a box under the stairs, which so smacked of ‘forbidden reading’ that obviously I spent many an afternoon under the stairs with a torch, lapping it all.

It is how I got to know about that Fire in the Sky chap, who claims he was abducted by aliens, even before the movie came out. It’s how I know that aliens have an upside down, pear-shaped face, with two huge lemons for eyes and a grape for a mouth. And it’s how I learnt that Malta is pretty safe from alien attacks – Mars men beeline for the American continent.

But it was also the first time I read about the Bermuda triangle, an imaginary area in the Caribbean region known for: Vanishing people! Ghost ships! Disappearing planes! You know how it is when something is scary but so, so, alluring? I didn’t want to go, but I so wanted to.

So I dusted an old Philips atlas and I came to a compromise: one day I’ll go to the Bahamas. The islands are at the edge of the imaginary ‘devil’s’ triangle: safe enough, but close enough.

After some years, I was dusting the old atlas to look up the Bahamas again. I had just been dealt my first historical shock: Christopher Columbus had not really landed on the American continent at all.

Instead, on that destiny-loaded day in 1492, Columbus, convinced he had reached Japan, parked his ship on a Bahamian island, San Salvador. On landing, he is said to have muttered: “Ah, baja mar”, which translates to “Ah, shallow seas, let’s skinny dip”. Someone took notes and years later they named the islands after his first utterance.

And so it was that the Bermuda Triangle and Christopher Columbus became my important excuse to one day visit the Bahamas. Of course, the fact that on these islands it’s summer all year long, and the beaches are pink and look like infinite stretches of our own miniscule Blue Lagoon, strengthened my resolve to retire there to write a book.

I’m certain, in fact, that that is what John Dalli was doing on that marathon flight: looking out of the airplane window, to see if the Bahamas are the best spot to scribble his biography. If he is still contemplating the idea, here are the top 10 things he needs to know about it:

1. Like Malta, there’s only about 300, 000 people living there.

2. Like Malta, the Bahamas have one of the highest ratios of churches per capita in the world.

3. They got their independence in 1973, nine years after us.

4. Like ours, their political and legal traditions closely follow the British ones and are part of the Commonwealth

5. The national bird is the flamingo. Unlike us, they don’t shoot it.

6. Every Friday the wife of the Bahamian Governor holds a tea party – I am not sure if it’s for tourists or for members of the high society.

7. They beat us to it: they have two carnivals, one on Boxing Day and another one on New Year’s Day.

8. Smuggling of illegal migrants into other countries is secretly quite common, tsk, tsk.

9. We were once a Switzerland in the Mediterranean; Bahamas are a Switzerland in the Caribbean: it’s a bank haven, a businessman’s dream.

10. A final word of warning: because of its geography, the country is a major trans-shipment point for illegal drugs – but who cares when crime on the streets is non-existent?

In fact, there is so much affinity between our islands and theirs that now the whole of Malta will be flocking to Hamilton and Euro Tours begging for kruwsis to the Bahamas. I won’t even bother buying a lottery ticket. My grand retirement dream has been foiled.

Twitter: @KrisChetcuti