The Caribbean Oscars...

We've just had the Oscars, so we've desided to award our prizes for the best performance in various aspects of our stay in the Caribbean...

Best Hotel

This was a tough award to decide, because some of our hotels were spacious resorts, and some were jammed into inner-cities, so the comparison is not apples with apples.

• Stonefield Estate in St. Lucia would be a strong contender due to its fabulous view, generous balcony, private plunge pool and outdoor shower, but its facilities are a little rundown, there was no TV, the resturant was too limited and the hot water failed regularly. The outdoor shower here rates an honourable mention.
• La Pagerie, a fine modern establishment in a busy town in Martinique, is let down by its petty regulations, practically no off-street parking and no hot water. Its live entertainment was a real bonus.
• Sugar Ridge in Antigua is a great and modern resort with two impressive pools and restaurants. Our room in a villa of 4 units had a tiny private plunge pool and a nice balcony, but did have (that Caribbean trait,) poor hot water.
• Sugar Mill in Tortola wins the prize for best restaurant, but our room was too quaint, had no TV and only luke-warm water. The balcony was inadequate.
• W at Vieques is a serious contender with a very spacious room in an ultra-modern and very chic resort. W is let down by luke warm water, a rocky beach, a restaurant requiring bookings and Fawlty Towers type performance when you finally got a table.
• Avila in Curacao is another strong contender, a modern resort on a great but we suspect artificially enhanced beach. The shower water was hot! The location was great. Trouble is the resort was just too crowded, and petty regulations were frustrating. Our room had minor faults which were reported but not rectified.

But our prize goes to El Convento in Old San Juan. This old and compact inner-city hotel was just perfect, full of character and interest, with numerous dining choices within and nearby. No view, no beach of course, but we had a great room, with a kitchenette, safe, and high flow hot water! There was a pool and a jacuzzi on the roof. This is a great place to stay.

The centuries old El Convento Hotel in Old San Juan was our selection for the best hotel we stayed at in the Caribbean.

Generally, in our experience, the good Caribbean hotels we stayed at provide WiFi as part of the package (something Australian hotels could adopt) but don't have guest (coin-operated) laundries. Laundromats in town were hard to find too, and were then open only in odd hours. Breakfasts may or may not be included. Tea/coffee making, refrigerators are safes are highly desirable but not universal. None, including El Convento, had a microwave oven in the room. Most but not all had fitness centres, and all have swimming pools. They include free parking, but sometimes there's not ebough spots. Best Rental Car

The award for the best rental car goes to the brand new and bright red Jeep Wrangler we got from Island Rentals on Vieques in Puerto Rico. The roads on Caribbean islands are typically potholed and rough, and this was probably the most suitable vehicle we had for that type of terrain. Honourable mention should go to the Suzuki Grande Vitara we had on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, also a great car for steep and rough roads.

The registration plate on our Vieques rental Jeep shows the iconic fortifications and sentry boxes of Old San Juan.

The least suitable car we rented was a sports-modified Misubishi Lancer from Avis on St. Lucia. This ridiculous car had spoilers and wings totally unsuited to the extraordinarily rough roads that country has to offer, and its protrusions made it doubly difficult to negotiate deep potholes and ridges, and bumps, which proliferated on the roads.

Worst Traffic

It's hard to believe that traffic could ever be a major problem on tiny Caribbean islands, but Martinique excelled itself and it took us 90 minutes to travel 10km to the airport on our departure day. We had observed this traffic situation on previous days, so we avoided it, but could not do so on the last day. A nightmare in a manual-transmission rental. Fortunately, we allowed plenty of time and didn't burn out the clutch, but we had to get up very early!

Longest Petrol Queue

There was no competition for this award - it went to the only open gas station on the island of Vieques. It took us three trips before we could make a successful purchase. The first time, after queueing for 30 minutes, and being second in line, the station abrubtly closed to clear the way for a tanker which had come off the ferry from the "big island" and was going to top up supplies. Over an hour later, we came back to join the queue gain, but we discovered that the station was still closed. Two hours later, we were successful, with only a very short queue.

Gasoline shortages on Vieques are quite common, apparently. The arrival of the tanker was a cause for comment and some celebration amongst the locals.

Steepest Roads

This award is a tie between St. Lucia and Tortola, where terrifyingly steep stretches are quite common, coupled by exceedingly tight and blind hairpin bends. The Caribbean islands that we drove on were variably hilly and mountainous, but these two were the most extreme, and share the prize.

Lookout & bar over Cane Garden Bay in Tortola. The scary downhills from here to the bay, and Apple Bay, helped Tortola share the prize for the steepest roads.

Weirdest Driving Experience

Driving everywhere in the Caribbean required us to quickly adapt between the two sides of the road. However, the weirdest combination was in Tortola where they adopt the British practice of keeping left, but all vehicles are left-hand-drive, imported from the USA. Gives the drivers a very good view of the edges of the road!

Best Beach

Of course, beaches are a combination of things, like the sand, the water, the surf, facilities, even access, and diferent people will weight these factors differently. But on our assessment, our best beach was Turners on Antigua, based on the colour of its water and the colour and fineness of its sand. It has no surf. Also, we could go to Turners before breakfast and be the only people on the beach.

Turner's Beach on Antigua was our favourite location for early morning swims. Later in the day, bars and restaurants opened, lounge chairs were rented, and crowds built up. On cruise ship days, it was best to go elsewhere.

If clear, beautiful water was the main criterion, then a Curacao beach would win the prize, but they just lost out because of the broken coral underfoot. We believe the clear water and the lack of sand are related, and we can well understand why Curacao is such a diving paradise.

Honourable mention goes to Caracas Bay on Vieques. This beach is so nice that we'd drive from one side of the island to the other just for a pre-breakfast swim. It's attractions were clean sand, clear water and a slight surf. Even early in the morning, this popular beach had a few other people on it.

Prettiest Marina

The Caribbean is replete with marinas, but most of those we saw were pretty scruffy places. The one that stood out and gets this award is Sopers Hole on Tortola. The water at Sopers Hole is crystal clear blue, but also the marina buildings themselves are tidy and well maintained, and quite pretty to boot. This was a very busy marina, lots of yachting activity, tourist cruises and shopping/eating possibilities.

View of Sopers Hole in Tortola, winning our prize for the prettiest marina of the many we saw.

Best Attraction

We almost didn't visit Nelson's Dockyard in Antigua, but when we did, we realised it is one of the great attractions of the Caribbean, and wins our award. This Victorian relic used to house the British Navy and is named after Admiral Horatio Nelson who had tenure here. It is now managed as a National Park, and is kept alive by being a working marina as well as a tourist attraction with interpretative signage, restaurants and bars. A stunning place to visit!

Just one of many historic ruins at Nelson's Dockyard. The cobbled ramp is an orginal use to haul goods up out of the water.

A very honourable mention has to go to the Queen Emma Bridge in Willemstad, Curacao. It's a pontoon bridge which is pulled aside to make way for vessels from yachts up to giant cruise ships and super-tankers. The frequent traffic and its location downtown makes the bridge a unique and fascinating tourist attraction.

And another mention goes to the cruise ships we saw everywhere. Our itinerary was intended to avoid cruise ships and their passengers, but it was impossible. Any maybe just as well, because it was truly fascinating to see these gigantic floating blocks of flats being manoeuvered and parked in tiny harbours. On disgorging their cargo, we saw the entire nature of each location change, only to return to its more languid natural self when the ships pulled out.

Cruise ships dominated every destination. Here we see one sailing out past the opened Queen Emma Bridge in Curacao, past another moored at the Mega Pier.

Best Coffee

Coffee is grown in the Caribbean, and they are proud of it, but finding decent espresso and cappucino (to our Aussie taste) was quite difficult. Lots of places offer cappucinos, but they often don't cut the mustard, mostly being too weak or milky. Our award for the best cappucino goes to Cafe Don Ruiz in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Our favourite cafe, with the best cappucino in the Caribbean, was this one in Old San Juan.

Best Food

We were disappointed at how poor the food was in some locations, in particular St. Lucia and (very surprisingly) Martinique, where the French tourists seemed to quite happy to eat uninteresting meals. We have decided to split this award into two categories...

• Best island - Curacao. Avila food was good, but we also easily found nearby restaurants with excellent quality meals. We ate better in Curacao than anywhere else.
• Best meal - Sugar Mill, Tortola. Grilled fresh lobster was a weekly special at the already excellent restaurant at Sugar Mill, and it was exquisite. We even shared this meal with Richard Branson. The special Valentines Day menu at Carmichaels at Sugar Ridge, Antigua was also very good, but not up to the standard of Sugar Mill.

We had our best Caribbean meal at the Sugar Mill (Tortola) restaurant. The gazebo shown here was a great location for quiet relaxation after breakfast, with a cuppa, and views over the sea.

Best Island

All the islands were good in some ways, and added considerably to our knowledge and enjoyment of the diversity of the Caribbean. Basically, they all share the same history - the original inhabitants, Amerindians, were pretty well destroyed by the mostly Spanish invaders of the 15-16th Centuries, who then established plantations and, needing cheap labour, kidnapped Africans and established slave trading. This is the background everywhere, and we were pleased to appreciate this view of the Caribbean.

We were visiting in the here and now, and our objectives were to relax and enjoy the current ambience of the islands. Because of the diversity, it is impossible to select a single winner, but our favourites are:-

• Old San Juan: not strictly an island at all, but a huge surprise and a great delight. Fabulous downtown and fortifications.
• Antigua: great beaches, easy to get around when you work out where you're going.
• Curacao: the clearest, blue-est water, very civilised, easy to get around.

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.