We’ve been on Antigua almost a month, and it’s time to go. Much like St. Martin, it’s a seductive place to stay with beautiful weather, nice places to go and decent services on land.
Tonight we’re getting ready to leave Antigua to head South. Time is running short for our visit in the Caribeean and there is still much to see.
Highlights of Antigua (outside the last blog post) include:
Shirley Heights BBQ
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| The view from Shirley Heights |
Shirley Heights as an old fort location and part of the Nelson’s Dockyard National Park. Every Sunday night they have a great barbecue up on the bluff overlooking Falmouth and English Harbours. They have two bands – one incredible steel drum band that starts out the night, followed by a local caover band that plays reggae and dance music. The food is reasonable and good, the music great, and the view from the heights at sunset…absolutely unbeatable. Everybody loved it!
We didn’t actually get to Shirley Heights as a park visit, as it is not really a walk from town and you need to take a cab…just never did that. But we did head up with some friends for the BBQ night and it was well worth it.
Donkey Sanctuary
Antigua has a donkey problem, sort of like the Monkey Problem on St. Kitts and Nevis. Original settlers brought donkeys to help with the work on plantations and farms. When the sugar plantations collapsed, all the donkeys were left behind. Many of them roamed free and now may be found all over the island. The trouble is that the donkeys are frequently involved in bad car accidents when they wander in the road, and they tend to annoy people by doing things like eating their gardens and knocking things over.
The humane society has helped create a sanctuary for the donkeys. They have about 150 donkeys there, they neuter any males that come in but a lot of females come in pregnant and deliver at the sanctuary. It seems the goal eventually is to get all of the wild donkeys into the sanctuary eventually to control the problem. They aren’t really “wild”, nor are they indigenous or endangered as a species. So controlling the population and eventually reducing it may be the humane thing to do.
The donkeys themselves are quite friendly and seem to enjoy human contact when they get visitors. They will happily crowd up to you for ear scratching and petting, even going so far as to lean into you and rub against you almost like cats. We were surprised how friendly they were, given that many of them were captured from the wild. Pleasantly so, they are cute charming little creatures if you are into that sort of thing.
Provisioning / St. Johns / Buses
Maybe this was less of a “highlight” than an “ongoing adventure”. There is a decent bus system on Antigua, like many of these islands it has “routes” more than schedules, you get on the route…and the bus shows up. Eventually. You really see very, very few white tourists on the buses – mostly other cruising types like us, way too cheap to take taxis to get around. But you can get to the capitol, St. Johns, from Falmouth for $EC 3.75 (about $1.38 US) each way versus $30 or more for a cab ride. And you see a lot of the island this way.
From the bus you can, in theory, get almost everywhere. In practice it is sometimes a little more challenging as the maps of the island we’ve found sometimes bear but a passing acquaintance with the reality on the ground. And shopping by bus? Let’s just say it is to the bus driver’s advantage to pack as many people as he can in the bus…so you get really intimate with your grocery bags. Almost as intimate as you get with your seat mate.
Some of the “newer” (and I use that term loosely) buses even have some entertainment on them. One bus added to the memorable experience by showing a locally produced, very low budget…I think it was a soap opera. They were speaking the local island dialect, not English, so I couldn’t understand it. But it had the beauty of being shot from a single handheld video camera. From what I could see it was mostly about a churlish woman that looked a lot like a man in drag with very bad taste in clothes, who ran around yelling at people and beating them with her bag. Occasionally she pushed someone in a river in one extend waterfront yelling scene. I missed the other, more subtle emotional overtones…not speaking the language and all.
Antigua Yacht Club
Once again a local yacht club has a great setup to attract visiting yachtsmen. In this case you can join monthly and it’s not unreasonable, and they’ve got a fleet of boats from Optis up to some day sailors around 19 feet that members can use free of charge. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday there is Laser racing which Will joined in on more than a couple of occasions. Both children took out some boats and had a great time sailing around the harbor. We never made it in for drinks or dinner though…seemed nice, but we just never got in for it.
Falmouth & English Harbours
The pluses here are numerous. Good services, some decent restaurants, a couple of grocery stores and vegetable stands with good local fruit and vegetables, and easy trash disposal. You can’t appreciate how important “easy trash disposal” is until you’ve lived on a boat and you can’t find someplace to take your stinky garbage. It’s also on the bus line, there are always cabs available and there are some good happy hours. The only downside is the daily fees to anchor in the harbor make it…not free…but you do get some decent value with the trash services and it’s a pretty clean place.
