Awesome Antigua...

Antigua

Antigua has proven to be the beauty that meets our long-held expectations for the Caribbean, but which Martinique and St. Lucia have not lived up to, in that the beaches have fine golden sands and water so blue it hurts the eyes.

Glorious water at Turner's Beach, Antigua.

The superb beaches here have attracted countless resorts which seem to be mostly scattered around the coast on the calmer west side of the island. We stayed at Sugar Ridge which is not actually on a beach at all, but has a free shuttle (driven by a lovable character Vorn) to three fantastic beaches all within 5 minutes. These are Nest (the closest, but Von steers you away from this beach when the cruise ships are in), Darkwood and Turners. Only Darkwood seems to be an "official" name, the other two are named after the bar/restaurant/beach-hire business which has set up shop on each of them.

Each of these beaches are much the same, smooth clean sand leading into crystal clear blue water. There is no surf. On the sand, for anything from $US1 up, you can rent a sun lounge, an umbrella, a hobie-cat or kayak. You can buy trinckets and souvenirs from sellers who are not too persistent. And of course you can get a drink, or many of them, and a meal. Sugar Ridge appears to have an arrangement at these beaches, because the sun-lounges are complimentary, although, of course, you still can tip Vorn.

One on of our visits to Turners Beach we encountered what we decided to call "cruise ship trash", ignorant people sporting "Carnival" beach towels, who made use of our umbrella and sun lounges without a word of request or thanks, lying so close they put their hands on our towel. Cruise ship people join tours off their boats which crowd these beaches for a few hours. On days when there are no cruise ships, everything is quiet in Antigua.

Our Toyota Yaris parked at the deserted but idyllic Fort James Beach.

From our taxi as we drove to Sugar Ridge from the airport, you have to go through the capital, St. Johns, and we saw three huge cruise ships crammed into the tiny harbour. A few days later when we visited St. Johns in our rental car, the harbour was empty! We have no idea of the schedule of cruise ship visits to Antigua, but 3 one day and none on another seems a little irregular, and a volatile strain on this little country's tourism resources.

We rented a car for several days in our week here. It came from Sunny Rentals, a little operation based in Sugar Ridge resort. By observation, most of the resorts seem to support little rental car businesses, and they must be nice little earners from guests who like to be more independent than taxis or guided tours allow. Like St. Lucia, in Antigua you drive on the left, and our car was a Toyota Yaris, a must more practical rental than that useless sporty thing we got in St. Lucia. One little lurk is that Antigua does not accept either your "real" drivers' license, nor the International Driving Permits we carried, but insist on selling you a termporary permit for 50XCD each (yes, like St. Lucia, Antigua uses the Eastern Caribbean Dollar, but when we leave here, we'd better get rid of our stock at the airport!).

We have discovered that "Ziplining" is a popular non-aquatic recreation in the Caribbean.

With our little Yaris, we were able to skip down to Nest Beach for pre-breakfast swims. At that time of the day, there is no-one else in sight, so you don't have to get your cossies wet. The beach is no less spectacular at near-dawn than at any other part of the day - it's such a pleasure to swim in this water!

St. Barnabas Anglican Church became the oldest church in Antigua after the earthquake of 1843 destroyed St. Pauls. It's unique appearance is partly due to use of local "greenstone" in construction.

The weather in Antigua is much like the other Caribbean islands. Warm all the time to very hot when the sun is out, punctuated by sudden downpours of tropical rain which ususally don't last very long, and no-one worries about. Sometimes the sky is clear and blue, but just as often it is grey and threatening - many of our photos are taken with leaden skies.

This island, off the coast of Antigua can be reached by just hiring a water taxi, but when you get there, there is nothing but sun, sand, perfect water, but no shade or cappucinos!

Our room at Sugar Ridge is comfortable but a little compact, especially when you consider the amount of luggage we are carrying. But it has a great patio with table, chairs and a lounge, and a little private plunge pool. Ours never catches the sun, so it's a little chilly, but very refreshing when you are hot and sweaty. The resort is set on the side of a steep hill, and you can work up a sweat walking around (golf buggies are available). It's "Sugar Club" has a gym, two great pools, including a lap pool about 25m long, and a restaurant. We were very pleased with the food here, maybe the best we have had in the Caribbean so far. A minor point, but this resort is very generous with beach towels, which you can replace as often as you like - in Martinique, we were allocated one baech towel each which we had to keep for 3 days before we could replace them, and we were specifically instructed not to take them to the beach ("only the pool"), and there was also some smart card system Carte Serviette to manage them! We prefer the relaxed, generous approach of Sugar Ridge, and it compares very favourably with the strict bueaucratic (dare we say Gallic?) approach generally at La Pagerie.

And for Valentine's Day, we splurged out at the resort's fine dining option, "Carmichaels", which is located on top of the ridge and enjoys a spectacular view over the coast and Jolly Harbour, nearby. The food here was really excellent, but expensive. During the day, Carmichaels has an infinity pool and a bar for high altitude indulgence and sunset watching.

The view from the infinity pool at Carmichaels Restaurant, high on the ridge at Sugar Ridge and overlooking the Caribbean Sea.

Jolly Harbour is within easy walking distance of Sugar Ridge, but the walk is made more difficult by the typical Caribbean characteristic of "no footpaths" - you have to dodge the speeding cars on narrow streets. There is a fine beach there (with the usual accoutrements), and a largish marina, casino and at least two or three resorts plus numerous restaurants. We tried to find an advertised laundromat here, but had no success. The sign said it was here, the people said it was not! Being a marina, there must be a laundry for the yachties somewhere.

We had fish and chips one night at the London Bus themed Shells Restaurant in Bolans. Children's entertainment looks to be well catered for. Next door is a pizza restaurant which we also patronised.

Antigua is pretty small, and it only took us a few days to explore it in our Yaris. The roads are narrow and in poor shape (but not as bad as St. Lucia's). They are twisty and hilly. Traffic is light, but even a few vehicles close together makes an impact on these road conditions. That said, divers are generally patient and courteous. If someone parks somewhere even just to chat to someone else, it means one direction has to give way to the other to get round it. But there is no agro, and everyone waits patiently for their turn whenever there is a holdup.

The biggest issue on Antiguan roads is that there is no directional signage! You actually navigate around by dead reckoning with your map, counting intersections and saying "this must be it". We took the wrong turn many times, but people are friendly and will always give directions. There is a small number of signs, but they have long ago faded to illegibility - we would stop at the sign and try to position it in the best light to try to pick out what it might have said. Drivers behind us waited patiently while we did this. Mostly we just had to guess!

The view from our rental car as we try to decipher the faded directions on this typical road sign in Antigua.

Getting through St. Johns is the biggest problem, even though it is a tiny city. It is shabby town with very narrow streets and no parking. At least most of the streets are one way, but figuring them out was difficult. We were lucky enough to drive down Market Street on Market Day - it was busy and slow going, but very colourful and lively. Houses around the city in the "inner suburbs" were pretty poor and dilapidated. We hope the huge tourism industry here is helping the general population. Finding the correct route out of St. Johns in any direction was pure guesswork. After a few goes, you learn the landmarks, at least on the road back to Sugar Ridge!

This opulent house near Five Islands Village is telling everyone that the owner is the richest person in the neighbourhood.

The north-west corner of Antigua is called St. Georges or Dickensen Bay. It's coastline is packed with resorts which tend to dominate the magnificent beaches they lie on. Sandals, a large chain of Caribbean mega-resorts which advertised heavily in the USA while we were there, had the biggest place, but there were dozens more. You've just got to find your way down an unmarked road in the general direction of the beach. We only tried one or two, but they seem quite happy for guests to drive in and have a swim at their beach. The inevitable security guard just waves you through. We were told that all beaches are public in Antigua, but finding ready access to them can be a challenge.

Just another perfect resort beach, this one overlooked by a "fort" construction we saw (in ruins) all over Antigua, and is, we believe, part of the 18th Century British signals network on the island.

Hawks Bill Resort is in a perfect location with a series of just beautiful beaches, one of which is officially designated for nudists.

Half Moon Bay, described as one of Antigua's finest beaches receives surf rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean, but has protected areas for calm water swimming. THis beach is out of the way, and hard to find, but still had many people enjoying it, plus coconut sellers and a bar/restaurant.

The absolute highlight of Antiguan tourism (apart from the beaches, sailing etc) is Nelson's Dockyard (named after Horatio Nelson, one of several British Admirals to be based here), located in a little harbour adjacent to the much bigger English Harbour next door. This relic from Britain's naval wars with Spain, Portugal and France is, according to the sign, the only working Georgian dockyard left in the world, and was the key to her 18th Century supremacy. It is now administered by the Antiguan Government, with the old buildings preserved and restored as much as possible - a great place to visit! The buildings are kept alive by being used for chandleries etc. servicing the mega-buck yachts calling into this historic port as well as apartments, restaurants, bars and the like. A Caribbean Sunsail yacht-charter base is here, and Antiguan yacht racing is centred here.

Columns which used to support the 1797 boathouse at Nelson's Dockyard.

Dormer windows like this one characterised the upper level of the orginal boathouse structure at Nelson's Dockyard.

Modest sailing vessels like these two line the walls at Nelson's Dockyard.

We also visited the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, one of cricket's famous test arenas. We only planned to take a photo from outside the site, but a gardener got off his lawn-mower to insist we go inside, and then the security guard waved us further onto the premises. They are getting ready for a match between England and the West Indies in a week or two's time, and we heard a rumour that the English team is going to stay at Sugar Ridge. If they do, they'll certainly get some helpful advice from the many English tourists staying here!

The Sir Vivian Richards Stadium is soon to host the West Indies vs England.