"Gotta say, staying chez Fanjul is about as good as it gets," the author writes. "First of all there are no better hosts, more fun or adorable than Pepe and Emilia. Plus they happen to live in Paradise."
The travelogue would be little more than a high society vacation diary were it not for the individuals involved. Instead, the author's husband and her hosts are now two of the lead characters in one of the world's most sensitive trade negotiations, which has the potential to add a sugar war to a growing list of tensions between the US and Mexico.
Describing the 2009 trip was Hilary Geary Ross, socialite wife of Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor who is now Donald Trump's commerce secretary. Their hosts at Casa de Campo, a Dominican Republic luxury resort: José "Pepe" Fanjul, the Cuban-born Florida sugar baron, and his wife Emilia.
Eight years on, Mr Ross and Mr Fanjul are star players in a negotiation to resolve a bitter sugar dispute over Mexican exports to the US by a June 5 deadline. Mexican negotiators fear Mr Fanjul - a longtime Republican donor and part owner of the UK sugar producer Tate & Lyle, which lobbied for Brexit - is secretly pulling the political strings.
The sugar talks are a dress rehearsal for bigger negotiations due later this year to update the North American Free Trade Agreement that governs Canada, Mexico and the US's commerce in everything from cars to corn. And that makes them an early test for President Donald Trump, who regularly boasts of his dealmaking prowess.
But they also serve as an example of the minefield of interests and powerful lobbies the Trump administration has to navigate as it sets out to renegotiate Nafta. And they are drawing attention to the unusual personal relationships that billionaire members of Mr Trump's cabinet such as Mr Ross, a former Rothschild banker who made his fortune turning around distressed businesses, have brought into government.
Mr Ross and Mr Fanjul have never done business together. But they have known each other for years, largely through the New York and Palm Beach society circuits. The two men have also found common purpose in politics. Mr Fanjul is a longtime patron of Marco Rubio, but became a major donor to the Trump campaign after the Florida senator's presidential bid collapsed last year.
When Mr Ross hosted a Trump fundraiser last July at his home in Southampton, Long Island, Mr Fanjul was part of the exclusive "host committee". That day, according to campaign finance records collated by the Center for Responsive Politics, he donated $94,600 to the Republican party and $5,400 to the Trump campaign.
Mr Fanjul's role in the sugar talks has been entirely behind the scenes, according to sources close to the talks. In recent weeks the sugar baron has visited Washington as part of the negotiations, according to one person close to the situation. He and his son have also spoken multiple times to Mr Ross by phone.
Florida Crystals, the company controlled by Pepe Fanjul and his older brother, Alfonso "Alfy" Fanjul, declined repeated requests for comment. An industry spokesman tasked with responding by the company said: "Who attended meetings or had conversations is immaterial to the case at hand."
But Pepe's involvement should not be a surprise. The brothers are major players in both the US sugar industry and the country's politics. The family once owned vast plantations in Cuba but were kicked out by Fidel Castro. "We do not want what happened in Cuba to happen to us again," Alfy Fanjul told Vanity Fair in a rare interview in 2001.
In 2016 the Fanjul brothers each donated more than $300,000 to political campaigns, with Pepe focused on Republicans and Alfy, a longtime Clinton supporter who had a bit part in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, preferring Democratic causes. Their family holding company, Fanjul Corp, donated more than $1.1m in 2016, according to data collected by the CRP.
That push into politics is part of a bigger campaign by an industry that in Washington is known simply as "Big Sugar" and has been flexing its muscles in the latest talks. Long considered one of the biggest beneficiaries of US subsidies and protectionism, the industry donated $11.2m to political campaigns in 2016 and it has gone all out in recent weeks to urge the Trump administration to take a hard line on Mexico.
Its message is designed to resonate with a president who won last year's election in part by railing against Nafta and companies shifting jobs to Mexico.
"I think [Wilbur Ross] really understands this is about American sugar jobs going potentially to Mexico," says Jack Roney, director of economics and policy analysis for the American Sugar Alliance, the industry's voice in Washington.
A spokesman for the US commerce secretary would say only that the negotiations have been "difficult" and that Mr Ross remained hopeful a deal could be reached. But people close to the negotiations say the industry pressure appears to have contributed to a shift in the administration.
Mr Ross was initially conciliatory, portraying a deal as an easy way to rebuild confidence with Mexico after an acrimonious start to the year.
"It is my hope that this will be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship that will strengthen our nations," he told reporters in March, after launching the latest round of negotiations during a visit from Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexico's economy minister.
Privately, some Trump administration officials pitched the talks as a way to help the centrist government of Enrique Peña Nieto woo the 2m Mexicans working in the sugar industry. Those workers, they warned, represented a natural constituency for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftwing populist leading in the polls ahead of elections next year. A victory for the man known as "Amlo" would inevitably lead to a more confrontational relationship with the US.
However, once negotiations started, according to people involved, the tone shifted and has not budged since. At one point, according to people on both sides of the talks, Mr Ross told his Mexican counterparts by mobile phone that he needed just 15 minutes to seal the deal with US industry. When he called back 90 minutes later, says Juan Cortina, who as president of Mexico's National Sugar Chamber has played a leading role in the talks, the message was blunt and Mr Ross sounded deflated.
Mr Cortina described how the conversation went: "He said, 'I can't sell it with my industry. They've always punched above their weight, they have lots of lobbyists in Congress and I can't force them to accept. Take it or leave it, and if you don't sign . . . I'll put duties in place'."
The dispute between Mexico and the US grew out of a collision between Washington's long-running and controversial support for sugar growers and its obligations under Nafta, which in 2008 required the US to remove restrictions on Mexican imports.
Angered by what they claimed was a flood of cheap sugar, US producers responded by launching an anti-dumping case in 2014. Before punitive tariffs were introduced, a deal was negotiated that set a floor price and strict quotas for Mexican imports. But that deal collapsed last year after US producers accused Mexico of gaming the system.
US farmers and refiners still accuse the Mexican industry of mounting a state-subsidised assault on their livelihoods and communities, pointing to a 2001 government rescue of the Mexican industry that saw 27 sugar mills nationalised with the last two returning to private hands only last year.
"Last year I grew the very best [sugar beet] crop I have ever grown and I will lose money on it," says John Snyder, a fifth-generation beet farmer from Worland, Wyoming, who until recently was the president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, a petitioner in the 2014 dumping case. "When [Mexican producers] were dumping all of that sugar in our market it depressed our prices substantially. And we're living with the impact of that."
If no agreement is reached by June 5 Mr Ross has threatened to impose tariffs of 80 per cent or more on Mexican sugar imports. Mexico is already talking about retaliatory moves should that happen, an option made easier by its recent victory in a World Trade Organization case against US curbs on tuna that has given Mexico the legal right to levy $163m a year in trade sanctions against Washington.
The talks hinge on complicated details - like tenths of percentage points in the "polarity", or quality, of imported raw sugar. But the underlying discussions reveal more deep-seated suspicions. Mexican sugar producers believe they are the targets in another effort by the Fanjuls and US producers to shut them out of the US market.
"They want more [sugar] for their mills so [the aim is to] remove competition from Mexico and remove competition from [other companies] in the US. They want to become a monopoly in refined sugar cane," says Mr Cortina.
Others close to the Mexican side see the episode as a display of the Fanjuls' power in Congress and a lesson for the Trump administration in the difficulties of taking on a well-connected industry.
"Ross is sincerely trying to get a deal but Fanjul and his friends in Congress are putting a huge amount of pressure on him," says James Glassman, a former senior US state department official who is helping the Mexican sugar chamber.
Also lined up against the Big Sugar industry are the confectionery makers and other sugar users. In a letter to Mr Ross last week, 51 members of Congress warned that imposing tariffs on Mexican sugar would only hurt US food companies, which complain they already pay an inflated price.
"This is a proposal that only a guy in the sugar industry in the United States could love," says Bill O'Conner of the US Sweetener Users Association.
Mexico's negotiating team still believes some on the US side want to torpedo any agreement.
That too would benefit the Fanjuls. The resort where Mr Ross and his wife were staying in 2009 is owned by the Fanjul family's Central Romana, the Dominican Republic's largest private sector company. Among its holdings are sugar cane plantations that export raw sugar to the US and would benefit from restrictions on their Mexican rivals.
It is also clear that it would be a blow to the Mexican sugar farmers and workers already alarmed at Mr Trump's attacks on Mexican immigrants and his vow to build a border wall.
"That Trump is very angry. He's mad at Mexicans. He's racist and that's why he doesn't want Mexican sugar," grumbles Carlos Vázquez, a 52-year-old mechanic at the Tala sugar mill near Guadalajara, who fears for his job if the US gets its way. "There could be a lot of lay-offs in Mexico."
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