Antigua and Barbuda

January 2015

Click here to view the Antigua photos

It had been a few years since we had visited the Caribbean – namely Barbados, and having spent Xmas at home, we had booked an all-inclusive week in Antigua which sounded very glamorous. We were flying from Manchester Airport on January 25th and took advantage of a cheap Travelodge 20 minutes away on the Saturday night to make the 10am take off a lazy affair.

We had used Virgin Holidays for the Barbados trip and the drinks and in-flight entertainment were all thrown in. This trip was organized by Thomas Cook and they were grabbing back every penny they could get away with. All drinks were chargeable at expensive rates (£4 for a small can of beer), £3 for headphones to access a minimal in house entertainment and another £4 if you wanted the full entertainment package. Consequently, I had a long 9 hour dry flight and just watched the two available films plugging in my own headphones. Disappointing.

We arrived in sunny Antigua at the V.C Bird International Airport around 3pm on the Saturday afternoon. They were four hours behind GMT. We had left Manchester at 3’c and touched down to 28’c. Passport and luggage formalities over, we found the shuttle minibuses outside the terminal and were ushered aboard the one going to the Jolly Beach Resort. Crossing from the airport to the capital St Johns and then down to the resort took about 30 minutes.

When we arrived we were given rum punches while waiting to check in. With our ‘all-inclusive’ red wristbands, we were given a third floor room with a sea view but later requested a ground floor room which we acquired a couple of hours later. The rooms were rather small with a bathroom and small patio. But the grounds were extensive with a major pool, a smaller one, spa, two bars, a main restaurant and three al la carte restaurants. It is one of largest and oldest (40 years) all-inclusive hotel complexes on the island.

Antigua with about 108 square miles, is the largest of the Leeward Islands and also the most popular and developed. “Antigua and sister island Barbuda lure cruise ship passengers and casual travelers with gorgeous beaches, luxury resorts and plenty of historical sights” (Eye Witness guides). There is nothing spectacular about its landscape, although its rolling hills and flowering trees are picturesque. “But its coastline, curving into coves and graceful harbours, with 365 soft white sand beaches fringed with palm trees, is among the most attractive in the West Indies” (Footprint). Indeed, it was our resort beach that was the highlight. An endless stretch of white sand in either direction lined with palm trees and a light aqua blue sea that was 27’c in temperature. So during the week we could alternate between the beach and the pool. I even jogged along the beach pre-breakfast a few times.

The food at the hotel was excellent. Breakfast was a help yourself buffet of full fry up, personally cooked omelettes, French toast, juices, toast, fruit, cheese and cold cuts. I loved the breakfasts. Lunches had soup, three main dishes – meat, fish or bolognaise chips, vegetables and a selection of desserts. The evening meals had another three different main dishes and a different selection of desserts. You could get decent red wine with your lunch and dinner. There were ‘themed’ nights – fish, local dishes and BBQ.

The food was so good that I had to control the lunch intake or else I was still full for dinner and we ate later and later. The two bars served excellent cocktails in plastic beakers – different rum punches, BBCs, Baileys. The bar was open from 10.30am to midnight but we rarely lasted past 10pm.

It made a real difference to have a selection of crap American TV stations and three movie channels to choose from in our room. One morning we watched the only Antiguan TV station’s breakfast show. They had quaint things like ‘Word of the Day’ – which today was ‘disdain’ and how it could be used in everyday conversation. One of the presenters was a religious minister who reminded the viewers to be kind to each other and promote community activities on the island.

The CIA Website said of Antigua “The Siboney were the first people to inhabit the islands of Antigua and Barbuda in 2400 B.C., but Arawak Indians populated the islands when Columbus landed on his second voyage in 1493. Early Spanish and French settlements were succeeded by an English colony in 1667. Slavery, established to run the sugar plantations on Antigua, was abolished in 1834. The islands became an independent state within the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1981.

It is mostly made up of low-lying limestone and coral islands, with some higher volcanic areas. The highest point is Boggy Peak (now Mount Obama) at 402m. The 91,000 population is mostly Protestant. It has a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of government and a Commonwealth realm

Tourism continues to dominate Antigua and Barbuda's economy, accounting for nearly 60% of GDP and 40% of investment. The dual-island nation's agricultural production is focused on the domestic market and constrained by a limited water supply and a labour shortage stemming from the lure of higher wages in tourism and construction.

In 2009, Antigua's economy was severely hit by the global economic crisis and suffered from the collapse of its largest private sector employer, a steep decline in tourism, a rise in debt, and a sharp economic contraction between 2009-11. Antigua has not yet returned to its pre-crisis growth levels. The average salary is $18400 ad they use the East Caribbean Dollar (ECD).”

It was an English speaking country and we found the locals very relaxed. The staff at the hotel couldn’t do enough for you but even when we visited St Johns and the cruise ships were in, the touts hanging around the ships would approach, ask if we needed their services and immediately back off when we said we were staying at the Jolly Beach resort. They could see our red wristbands.

For the first two days, I went diving with Indigo Divers. They arranged to pick me up at the Jolly Harbour at 8.30am on the Monday morning. It was only a five minute walk from our hotel room. Jolly Harbour was a small marina complex, with a few shops, a supermarket and an elegant casino and nightclub building that had been shut down but still dominated the area. The estate agent windows revealed just how expensive property was here to rent or buy.

Pats and Don pulled up in a powerful boat and we headed out of the protected harbor and motored past our hotel and down the coast in choppy water pulling in at another bay where two British tourists were motored out to us in deeper water. We went diving at the most famous reef called Cades. On day 1 we did 50 minute dives at the Three Tears site and Coral garden. The water temp was 27’C. I saw a ray and lobster on both dives but it was the beautiful coral in clear visibility that was most memorable.

On day 2, I was joined by a English Pilot and a Canadian off one of the cruise ships. We dived at the Barracuda Reef West and East. Sights included 4 reef sharks, 3 lobsters (1 out of its cave on the seabed), 2 large barracuda and Don went hunting lionfish which were not indigenous to the region and attacked local species. I watched him spear 2 which I had never seen before.

On the Wednesday, we caught a local minibus into the capital of St Johns. With a population of around 27000, this was a bustling historic port town which is the governmental and commercial hub of Antigua. At the centre was the cruise ship dock at Heritage Quay, lined with upscale duty-free shops and restaurants. Two cruise ships were docked and their passengers drifted off the ships and into the town to find plenty of relaxed hawkers offering tours of the island and visits to beaches. To be honest there wasn’t much in this town apart from the twin steepled St John’s Anglican Cathedral and a strange sculpture of VC Bird, the island’s first President. Within a couple of hours, we were bored and headed back to the resort.

Originally, we had intended to visit the island of Montserrat which had had the Soufriere Hills volcanic eruption in the 1990s that covered a third of the island and buried the main town of Plymouth in ash. It would mean getting a taxi to the port to get the ferry, a two hour journey there, hiring someone to take us around the island and then getting back. The hotel did offer a day trip but it was going to cost $430 for the pair of us and we eventually thought we’d rather spend that on another holiday rather than a small unimportant island.

Renting a car was expensive enough (£75 a day) which included the laughable purchase of an Antiguan Drivers’ License (valid for 3 months! Which was really useful for a week’s trip). But we wanted to tour the small island and reserved a car for the Friday. We had a number of sites to see but road directions were often haphazard and we didn’t always find them.

South of our resort, along Antigua’s southwestern coast lay two wide white sand beaches called Turner and Darkwood. These were beautifully long but isolated beaches. We attempted to find Boggy Peak (now Mt Obama) but there were no signs to it and going up and down the road four times did not give us a clue. We saw the Cades Reef which I had dived on earlier in the week.

Fig Tree Drive was a winding road passing through the most thickly forested area on the island. There were no fig trees but banana and mango trees lined the road. We followed the road around and back down towards the coast and climbed up to Shirley Heights. High on the hill above English Harbour, this renovated historical sight, overlooked the surrounding coastal scenery. It is famous for its panoramic views and on clear days, you can see as far as Guadeloupe and Montserrat which we could just make out today. I heard a guide point out a vast complex where Eric Clapton apparently lived.

At the Visitors Centre, we watched an interesting 15 minute show about the history of the island and near the reception I noticed a scale model of a harbour. It turned out to be the port of Lowestoft which was my home town in the east of England. Lowestoft had originally been a fishing port, then built oil rigs. I didn’t like to tell them that the harbor was virtually unused now.

We then drove down to English Harbour & Nelson’s Dockyard which is a ‘historical gem’ that lies on the southern coast of Antigua. The 15 square mile Nelson’s Dockyard National Park and English Harbour (which included Shirley Heights) had some buildings traceable to the late 18th century when the British ruled the island. The dockyard park has a museum, restaurants and an inn. It was a bit twinky and touristy but you could get up close to the massive boats moored in the harbour and pretend to be rich and famous or just rich. We checked out the Admiral House’s Museum with a bust of Nelson outside but I suspect that this was all built long after he spent his three years on the island. pparently English Harbour was the best protected harbour on the island but was a haven for pirates and military fleet alike.

We headed back inland and made for a well signposted ‘Donkey sanctuary’ until we got close. A ‘1 mile to go’ sign led up a sandy lane that went on and on and we turned around at 3 miles and gave up. Later we heard from tourists on official tours that all the donkeys were in the hills grazing anyway and they saw nothing. Betty’s Hope was a farm with the remains of a 17th and 18th century sugar plantation with supposedly an actual working windmill of the type used to grind sugarcane. The plantation operated between 1650-1920s. It was worth a photo and not much else.

Devil’s Bridge on the east Atlantic coast was a natural formation - a stone arch over the sea. During high tide the area below becomes a pool with the waves cresting over the top of the bridge. It is said that anyone falling from the bridge is bound to drown and legend has it that many slaves chose this fate by throwing themselves off the bridge into the sea. We watched the sea crash through it. Up the road was a lovely sandy beach at Long Bay.

We headed northwest past the new Sir Viv Richards cricket stadium built for the 2007 Cricket World Cup and skirting around the slow traffic at St Johns found Dickenson Bay which had a boat on its side marooned on the sand. The sun was dropping and we had pretty much exhausted the sights we wanted to see. We had to deal with the gridlocked ‘rush hour’ traffic at St Johns before getting back to the Jolly Harbor Resort about 20 minutes south.

Since the car was not due back until 9am, we got up early the next morning and went looking for an old fort on the west coast. There were no signs and we couldn’t find it but we did come across a local village which was pretty run down and very different from all the resorts we had seen on the island.

On the Saturday, a major storm hit our area and everyone was forced to leave the beach and find something else to do. There were activities every day at the hotel. We attended bead necklace making and on the Saturday did sea shell sculptures which was fun. We also went kayaking earlier in the week. There was an excellent fire breather/limo dancer in the evening. Earlier in the week, we had watched dancing and limo dancing on the beach. Other evenings there were steel bands, local bands, dancers, karaoke. I must admit I became sick of hearing ‘I shot the Sheriff’.

On the final half day (Sunday), we relaxed on the beach or around the pool and hovered up as many cocktails before a lunch with wine before checking out and being taken to the airport. Our flight went via Barbados supposedly for a 90 minute stopover to pick up passengers. But they forced everyone to go through a single X-ray machine/official to get into the transit lounge and it must have taken an hour to get everyone through before we were all told to start lining up to board the plane again. Doh! Another long dry night flight. Leaving Antigua in 29’c, Manchester Airport was -2% Welcome back to the English winter.

If you want a relaxing beach holiday with spectacular beaches, friendly staff, good food, enough things to do in a week without killing yourself and the most beautiful light aqua-coloured sea, then I thoroughly recommend Antigua. I know that I am often guilty of running around like a headless chicken when I visit a place, but this island did not force you to do it. We came back very refreshed and eager to do another Caribbean island in the future.