Antigua

Wednesday 24^th February, Deep Bay, Antigua.

We survived quarantine! And were released! And have been being tourists! And I really feel like I'm on holiday – I know, it's a sort of permanent holiday, but we're anchored in this lovely bay with a gorgeous strip of beach, a fancy resort with over-water bungalows, a smattering of very nice houses (including Georgio Armani's) on the hill and I'm just really feeling the Caribbean holiday vibe.

There's even a ruined fort on the hill to explore.

So we hunkered down and did our time in quarantine. Everything got cleaned to within an inch of its life, even the hard to reach bits. Anything that was broken got fixed. Karl's hair got dyed. The cookbooks came out (we were down to canned goods). Karl played some guitar. I tried to do some drawing. We came to recognise the regular walkers and runners along the edge of the harbour. We had Sushi Sunday. And we realised it's cold in Antigua in winter! Sunsets require a fleece and a blanket. The horror. We pretty much had the whole harbour to ourselves apart from a dredge, a couple of tugs and the odd visiting cargo ship. In normal times there are up to four big cruise ships docked here at a time – insane, can't even imagine it.

Gráinne's quarantine spot.

St. John's in pre-covid times.

The beginning of another masterpiece.

Karl makes it so the cable doesn't electrocute people anymore.

Spam for dinner again.

My first ever attempt at sushi. It wasn't bad.

All rugged up for sunset.

When check-in day finally arrived I was a bit nervous – you just never know. We got there early, then the nurse was delayed by an emergency so we had a good hour and a half wait to start imagining all the things that could go wrong and calculating the odds of the rules having changed again. The health check went smoothly but then the immigration computer was being flaky so they spent an eternity relaying our details to someone on the other end of a phone. Then the immigration officer got suspicious - “so you checked out of Grenada on the 29^th of January? And you're entering Antigua on the 12^th of February??? Where have you been all that time?” she said with the tone of someone about to pounce on a victim. “Uh, quarantine” we answered as politely as we could. That worked. And actually, all the officials were really friendly. Antiguans are just really lovely people.

Ashore!

That first day ashore in town was weird - after a couple of weeks in Carriacou and then a couple of weeks alone on a boat the hustle and bustle of a town was a little overwhelming. First stop was a mobile phone shop for a SIM to get back online and make sure the rest of the world was still there. Second stop was for pizza. Third stop was the meat market to try to satisfy Karl's urge for fresh cow. And then we indulged in the joy of fresh food (we hadn't stocked up for a quarantine before leaving Carriacou, we've learned that lesson!).

Fresh food! Market stalls everywhere.

Fresh food!

The daily challenge of bringing home the shopping.

St. John's is a lovely little spot, population of about 20,000, just big enough for atmosphere and small enough to walk around. Antigua itself has a population of around 100,000. It was first populated by the Arawak from Venezuela from around 300 BC. They were ousted by the Caribs, also from South America, around the 12^th century. Columbus spotted and named the island on one of his voyages and then the British colonised it in the 17^th century. The 18^th Century was the height of the sugar plantations and slave trade to the island. In the 19^th Century the collapse of the sugar trade (Europeans had figured out how to make it at home from sugar beet) and the abolition of slavery changed the economics of the island. Antigua (must have been dragging its heels a bit) didn't become independent from Britain until 1981 and is now heavily dependent on tourism. So that's what we decided to do. Tourism.

Sir Vivian Richards has a prominent place in the local museum. Apparently they take their cricket very seriously here.

The island's in the middle of a spike in Covid cases so there's a curfew (which doesn't bother old people like us) and restaurants are open for takeaway only (although there always seems to be a picnic table conveniently located close by). And the post office is closed but the casinos are open. Here they seem to have opted for the handwashing station instead of hand sanitiser so everywhere has a little sink outside and the fancy supermarkets even have hand-driers. So it's very quiet but that's all the better for us to have the sights to ourselves.

Very diligent mask-wearers, the Antiguans.

Open for takeaway only but.......

...magic picnic table out front.

We hired a car for a few days to drive around, see the sights and do the daily visit to a supermarket. The big sight to see is Nelson's Dockyard – the old British Navy port in English Harbour where Nelson once served. All the old buildings are still intact, there's a great fort on a hill with a cannon and there are lots of very very fancy yachts.

Overlooking English Harbour in the foreground and Falmouth Harbour behind it.

At Nelson's Dockyards.

English Harbour.

Ongoing restoration work.

Nelson's Dockyards.

Shopping for our next boat, I vote for the one with the pool at the back.

We also visited an old sugar plantation where there's a restored windmill (to crush the sugar cane) and ruins of the big house, stables and distillery. Really interesting to get a bit of a feel for what the plantations were like.

Other than that it's mainly beaches beaches beaches. Although a lot of the coastline is occupied by big resorts or privately owned very large houses which seems a shame. Still, there was always a nice picnic spot for lunch.

Picnic time.

Beach.

Karl on a beach.

Antiguans have an interesting way of farewelling their deceased on billboards.

Having thoroughly explored the island we gave back the hire car and pottered around the corner from St. John's to anchor in Deep Bay. Another world. We were only going to stay for a couple of days but it somehow turned into 10 days. I got to go ashore for a drown (although I am improving!) every morning. At that time of day if you meet another person you consider the beach crowded. A couple of times we walked over to the nearest village, Five Islands Village, for lunch. It has a smattering of houses, two cafés (hence we went twice), a bar-grill and a very shiny new campus of the University of the West Indies. We walked up to the ruins of Fort Barrington which overlooks both Deep Bay and the entrance to St. John's Harbour. Other than that we just sat around looking at the neighbours.