Take to the water for the best excursions in Antigua

Every Caribbean island has its own vibe. A region that seems homogenous on first glance has a surprising variety of culture, landscape and tourism opportunities. Exploring that diversity is one of the strong points of a cruise, where you might get to five or eight different islands during one trip.

But sometimes, you just want to chill. My husband and I had worked all the hours we could in 2018 and by mid-summer could already anticipate total exhaustion by Christmas. We didn't want sightseeing. We didn't want to socialise with others. We just wanted a warm, picturesque place to recover. If we were doing the Caribbean, we wanted to settle into just one island, and we wanted it to be easy.

We'd visited Antigua on our 2016 cruise, and a great sightseeing tour across the island had softened us up for a return. It ultimately won our 2018 holiday investment because of:

• Direct flights from London that make travel convenient
• Well-priced package holidays at a range of resorts
• The much publicised 365 beaches (one for every day of the year...)
• An English legacy that skews toward British and Europeans tourists (sorry, Americans), and shapes the attitudes of the locals (the French islands can be hard work)
• It's suffered far less from recent hurricanes than other islands

Once settled at Ocean Point Resort, we admittedly didn't go out enough to offer any expert insight into the island. Our three excursions, however, gave us a good taste of a relatively small place. They were all fun and worth booking as packages, in our case all departing from and returning to our hotel. (Everyone we spoke to who'd rented a car regretted it; let the locals drive.)

CIRCUMNAVIGATION

My favourite day out involved circumnavigating the island aboard the Excellence. This is the middle option,  speed-wise, of three boats that do the same clockwise journey in and out of the capital and cruise port of St. John. You can go faster on a speedboat, or slow down on a catamaran, with length and number of stops adjusted accordingly. The Excellence is a big motorboat with an upper and lower deck and a good amount of shady seats on the lower for people with sensitive skin. If you are sitting outside, you'll go starboard to see Antigua's coastline, which is the main point of this sightseeing excursion. 

One of the crew gives commentary throughout. There's a bit of history, a bit of geology, and a lot of ogling the various resorts and neighbourhoods of the rich and famous. The more you cross the island's interior, with its shabby shacks and dubious infrastructure, the more you'll scratch your head at these Architectural Digest-worthy mansions overlooking the sea. Someone should study Antigua to refute the trickle-down theory of economics, because no public area we spotted matched the sleek prosperity of those private homes and resorts. Where do these wealthy residents shop and dine out? I never saw likely options.

The circumnavigation also teaches you the importance of offshore islands and island positioning for your holiday destination. On the Atlantic-facing eastern shore: strong winds, choppy waters. North (where we stayed) and south: not as rough but still subject to strong winds and tides sweeping through the channels that separate Antigua from neighbouring islands. (Barbuda to the North, Guadeloupe to the South.) It's the eastern, Caribbean-facing shore that offers the gentlest tides and the longest, most placid beaches. 

Offshore islands and deep bays can counter the Atlantic effect. We stopped for lunch and snorkelling half-way around Antigua at Green Island, a natural barrier between the Atlantic and Nonsuch Bay. The snorkelling wasn't very good ... a lot of dead coral and perhaps a dozen varieties of tropical fish, few bigger than a hand's length. But the small beach we'd edged into was exquisite.  After lunch, the Excellence continues around the island, making a short detour into Falmouth Harbour where you'll see how the other 1% lives. Yachts here rival anything in Monte Carlo. Mansions on the hills above are the domains of the super-rich. We briefly overshot St. John's to drop passengers at the Sandals Resort (we'd picked up there on our way out) and got back to St. John's at about 3:30.

ISLAND SAFARI

Our Island Safari showed us more of the interior of this 108-square-mile island. It left me with three enduring impressions. One: Antigua's roads are in deplorable shape. Even the main ones have potholes and undulations so severe it's like off-roading. I'm appalled that with all the port fees they must collect from cruise ships, nothing's been spent on such basic infrastructure. Two: Even though there hasn't been a major hurricane in years, it looks like one just came through. A third of properties seem abandoned, another third seem under construction. Our guide explained that property taxes are very high but are only assessed on completed buildings, so many locals live in places with derelict or unfinished bits. The result, sadly, makes much of the island look like a third-world charity appeal zone. Three: The stone towers of the old sugar mills are the most enduring things on the island. You'll see scores of them. Some are integrated into new buildings, one that we saw (at Betty's Hope Plantation) has been restored, and many stand as overgrown, roofless ruins around the island. Sugar is no longer produced here but its architectural legacy is strong. 

And maybe there is a fourth: Hell is other people. John Paul Sartre would have found copious illustration for his philosophy in the two children on our eight-person tour. About nine and seven, New York-raised daughters of English expats who seemed unfamiliar with concepts like "boundaries" and "discipline", these two took the stereotype of "spoiled brat" to new heights and could slip from happiness to screaming rage in a nanosecond if displeased. We waited for our tour driver for more than half an hour at the farmers' market from which we started and through it all, the younger shrieked at a pitch and decibel level I didn't think a human voice could sustain for that long. They were, quite simply, the most awful children I have ever been exposed to throughout my life. Fortunately they improved a bit once we were under way, but there were still traumatic explosions throughout the day.

Our remarkably patient guide and driver, Sherwin, carried on with aplomb. We crossed through several small towns, saw some of the island's earliest churches, skirted around Antigua's impressive cricket ground and paused above Falmouth Harbour for a gorgeous view, with a much needed rum punch. We stopped at the donkey sanctuary, which ... inexplicably to me ... is one of the island's big tourist attractions. There's a wild community here who often get into trouble, so they're brought to the sanctuary to recover. It's basically a muddy yard about the size of a football pitch occupied by 20 or so donkeys who nudge against you to request attention from the brush you've been given on entry. Perhaps exciting for city kids who like the idea of animals but never get close to them? Not the case for our little new New York fiends, who whined vociferously at the mud and flies.

Lunch saw us at the high ground of Betty's Hope Plantation, a partially restored sugar mill.  You'll see one restored mill (top photo) and the foundations of the barracks where British army officers once lived. There's an old barn with a small museum inside featuring a diorama of the place as it would have looked when functioning and display boards explaining the history of sugar and slavery in Antigua. The stop was too short to consume all the content and it's a shame that the displays are so basic. This is important history. But Betty's Hope is really just a pretty picnic spot for a variety of tour companies, who all converge here to dish up barbecued chicken, salad and beans and rice (the inevitable Caribbean excursion lunch) to picnic tables arranged under the trees. No culinary satisfaction for the little demons; the family were staunchly vegan. No wonder they were so bad-tempered.

Next was the departure point for Stingray City, which also fed our snorkelling and mangrove swamp tour.

The speedboat zipping us past promontories and offshore isles was great fun, and ended up at tiny, uninhabited Bird Island. Here you'll find a small, pristine beach within easy swimming distance of plenty of reefs. Even with changeable weather and lots of chop, this was the best snorkelling I did in Antigua and probably the best I've had in the Caribbean in the past two trips. The fish weren't large and there's still a lot of dead coral, but variety was wide and fish were swimming in big schools. I would have happily stayed here for the afternoon but part two of the aquatic bit of the safari was kayaking through mangroves.

I had anticipated the problems long before we arrived. Balance. I don't have any. Simply sitting still in the damned kayak and keeping it from tilting over was terrifying. Adding movement was infinitely worse. We made it about one hundred metres, with me constantly wobbling and desperately trying to adjust my weight to balance the boat's precarious rocking, before I tipped the damned thing over. I didn't have enough upper body strength to haul myself back on board, especially when there's nothing to push off from. (If you step on the "bottom" of a mangrove swamp, you immediately sink up to mid-calf in soft mud.) I swam to the dock, while Piers managed to get into the kayak and paddle back. We prepared to sit it out and enjoy the view while the others explored the swamp. Unfortunately, the beastly children didn't like kayaking either, so we had to share our dock with them and their parents for half an hour. If I'd spotted anything carnivorous I would have thrown the little shits off without a moment's remorse. No such luck.

It is no surprise that Sherwin dropped the Anglo-New Yorkers off first, making the last half hour delightfully quiet as he brought the rest of us back to our hotels. Safari verdict: if you like both kayaking and snorkelling, this is a fun day. We should have gone straight for Stingray City, combined the rays with snorkelling and skipped the land-based exploration.

MIGUEL'S MAGIC

Our third excursion might have been the best, had the weather been better. Calling the destination Prickly Pear Island is being generous. It's more accurately Prickly Pear Rock, stuck in the middle of a fine stretch of reef, with a small beach and a wooden shack providing bar and shade. It was clearly visible from our hotel, and hard to ignore as visitors shuffled past us every morning on their way to the beach where the boat to ferry them over would pick them up. 

Though Prickly Pear is owned by the government and open to all (as are all beaches in Antigua), local legend Miguel and multiple generations of his family run the excursion and own the shack. They are wonderful hosts, giving us the warmest and most authentic experience we had on the whole trip. Our bargain package, just US$36 per person, included transport to the island, a cooler with snacks and drinks, and access once we were there to Miguel's open bar, with cheerful and well-behaved grandchildren (the antithesis of the New York brats) passing around trays of snacks. You can buy a different trip that includes lunch provided by Miguel's family. The hook-shaped beach is an idyllic stretch of powdery white sand, the view back towards the main island is fine and the reef is a 100-foot swim away.

Sadly, this was the worst weather day of our trip. Clouds and squalls didn't pass, but resolutely hovered in the area. Winds were strong and water choppy. I'm a confident swimmer and an experienced snorkeller. These conditions make snorkelling hard work, but you can see things. If they bother to come out. The fish were too smart for that. It was a bare reef. And the swells were big enough that you risked getting slammed onto the coral just below the surface. If you've ever had a coral cut, you won't risk getting another. So I let wisdom prevail and returned to Miguel's shack, wishing I hadn't waited until the last day of our trip to discover this little piece of magic. It's the only memory in Antigua that's really calling me back.

Overall, the island delivered the R&R we were looking for, but nothing extraordinary enough to cast a spell. Bonaire, the BVI or even a return to Puerto Rico would beat it on a list for the next Caribbean trip. Unless, of course, I happened to win a break at a little place called Hermitage Bay. For that extraordinary tale, check out my next post.