Islands are coming thick and fast now….this morning we woke up in Antigua. Jane joined me for the sunrise on Deck 10, on what would turn out to be our cloudiest day yet. We docked next to 3 other absolutely huge cruise ships including the Celebrity ‘Ascent’ which appeared to have a restaurant on an exterior lift mechanism that took it up and down the outside of the ship. The Norwegian ‘Epic’ on the other hand had the water slides on the top deck!
I’ve always wanted to visit Antigua and it was on my very original Top 10 wish list that we created when Jane and I first me, over 25 years ago. I think the desire to visit had come from when I studied Geography at Uni over the 30 years ago. Leera and I had done a term of study called ‘The Caribbean’ and the guy who taught us really just showed us his holiday slides. When it came to exam time he realised that he hadn’t actually taught us anything so basically gave us the questions in advance so that we wouldn’t fail. The pictures that had stuck in my mind were those of the famous English Harbour.
So today’s trip would take us to see the ‘Heights and Sights’ of Antigua. Our guide described it as a ‘Liquid Sunshine’ day as we set of on our little tour bus around the island in the rain. Eek …this isn’t what we’d planned. As we drove our guide pointed out the old sugar mills, the old cotton industry and how people used to farm for themselves but no longer bothered. Tourism, that was the big thing now. It probably had been ever since the 80s when we studied it.
We were also shown the hospital built by the Chinese, the Viv Richards Cricket Stadium, a gift from the Chinese and the biggest supermarket on the island XPZ , owned by the Chinese. Interesting. Our guide didn’t really comment on this but I got the feeling he wasn’t too happy about it.
As we left the urban area of St John’s we began to drive through rural villages. It was colourful and a bit of a visual overload with the candy pink church, the sky blue laundry, the lime green barbers and the red Lee Fung restaurant. There was even a cute purple police station. But it wasn’t exactly pretty. It was chaotic, messy, ramshackle and in need of a jolly good tidy up. There was corrugated iron everywhere, wrecked cars just left to decay in the lush vegetation and houses made out of old shipping containers. Hm…..more of this later but for now we’d arrived at the viewpoints for English Harbour up at Shirley Heights.
We made two stops and luckily the cloud had partially cleared and the views were absolutely stunning. The view is down to the numerous coves, harbours and sandy beaches. There are loads of big sailing boats moored and today several ocean going yachts out racing on the water. There were little plaques around telling us about the history but we didn’t really take it in as we were so busy taking our photos. We didn’t have time to visit the little souvenir stands either.
This contrast between the wealth and poverty of the island made me very thoughtful and it came even more into perspective as we tried to drive through a tiny village called ‘Suid’ but pronounced ‘Sweet’, I think. Here we got badly held up by the ‘Total Gridlock’ caused by a funeral. Cars were parked up everywhere along the narrow street and all of the people had come out dressed in their finest. The tour buses could hardly get through and as we were stopped some young guys walked past being very rude about us folk on the bus. They were spitting feathers and clearly not in the camp of ‘tourism’ is good for the island….hm. This got me thinking again. Why are the islands that we have visited sooo different in terms of their development? In particular, WHY, if Antigua has had tourism as its main industry for 30+ years with the super yachts and luxury hotels, hasn’t that helped lift the local population out of poverty? Discuss. As our old exam question would have asked.
Meanwhile, back on the island our next stop would be one of the 365 idyllic Antiguan beaches. Hurrah. We drove past some absolutely gorgeous empty white sand beaches but sadly got taken to one which was over-crowded with US cruise ship passengers being very loud. Jane and I grabbed a beer from the noisy, colourful bar and escaped the madness a little way up the beach. I had a quick dip and it was lovely but Jane and I agreed that Antigua wasn’t top of our list to revisit. This made me feel slightly guilty as surely what they need is for us to visit and spend some real time and money locally on the island rather than what we’d done today.
Back on board ship, there was a lot of honking of ships ‘whistles’ and cheering as the passengers on Epic returned late from their catamaran trip. This would never happen on our little ship. The logistics, organisation and service have been impeccable. The staff are so friendly and our 3 cabin crew, Riba, Kevin and Jay have looked after us brilliantly freshening up our room twice a day and creating our lovely towel art animals for us! Every trip we have done has been great, good value for money and v well organised.
In the evening we were going to go to the BBQ on the pool deck but it had an absolute downpour and so this had all been packed away. We couldn’t get into the Italian and so we settled for a lovely meal in 47 Degrees and an early night. Tomorrow would be our last day….and what a contrast we’d see in unknown Guadeloupe.
Where shall we go to next? 