We'd been wanting to come to the Caribbean for a while but we aren't people to simply stay put on a single stretch of sand or location for a long
period. We knew we'd get bored of one island or even several islands which were all the same. We also had our doubts about how to do the Caribbean with the difficulty and
poor reliability of inter-island flights, bad sea conditions for ferries and our general unwillingness to join a cruise ship.
After a very thorough planning exercise we'd mapped out a few choices of three different Caribbean countries where the start and end island we could fly direct home, and the
middle country would be difficult to reach from the UK. From our list of countries we'd chosen Antigua to be our first one, even if we knew it would likely be slightly
expensive it was dubbed as having some of the beaches and highest number of beaches of any Caribbean island. It would also allow me to plan the surprise helicopter tour
of the neighbouring Montserrat island. We had considered visiting the supposedly amazing island of Barbuda while we were here, but we'd heard that it had not fully recovered
from the hurricane in 2017 and that it required a very unreliable flight or horrendous ferry crossing the Atlanic ocean to reach it. On top of this we knew on arrival it'd
be hard to find any form of transport to explore the few areas we'd be interested in.
The food was a surprise to us though on arriving as we'd expected a lot of bbq and jerked meat, rice and beans but what we found was much more americanised foods e.g. super
sweet sticky glazes french fries. While the food wasn't bad it just wasn't really to our expectations. Antigua was also a lot quieter than we'd expected in terms of shops, ATM's,
restaurants, bars etc but with that being said though we all managed to eat relatively easily even if we had to drive home at night.
The western coast of Antigua aka the Caribbean side had some of the calmest waters on Antigua and was therefore a popular side with tourists. We were
staying on Turner's beach towards the southern end of the western coast. We had explored the entire coast line up to Dickenson Bay in the north. Dickenson bay was the biggest
resort area and jam packed with tourists, we hadn't expected it as we'd enjoyed pristine beaches all the way up the coast with relatively little tourists. This wasn't really
our thing so we turned and left immediately. Nearby runaway beach though we fantastic and seemed popular with the few expats. It was also a very long beach meaning it wasn't
hard to find your own area of sand.
Jolly harbour was also on the western coast and this port town had a good mix of nice, but busier beaches and supermarkets, shops and the best restaurants including a mexican
restaurant looking out right over the harbour which again seemed to be popular with expats and people from the boats as the sun set over the ocean. Our preference though of beaches
was definitely Darkwood / Turners beach for a mix of services, calm waters and ease of access.
For a video showing the calm waters at Runaway Beach, see below:
One of the most iconic things to do in Antigua is to traverse the island over the hills using the fig tree drive where you can see the
figs and bananas growing on the trees. Fig tree drive also takes you to the zip-lining area. We took this road to access the southern coast of Antigua some of the
more pompous and pretentious areas of the island including Nelson's dockyard which is full of millionaire's yachts.
Our first stop on our route was Morris bay a very quiet local beach but still containing a shower block, toilet and changing area. We tried to also access the nearby Carlisle Bay
beach but as with a few areas in Antigua resorts had tried to stop you accessing them with barriers despite them all being public access beaches. This time we gave it a miss. From
here we headed overland towards Falmouth where we expected to find the track leading to access to Rendezvous Bay beach. We'd read online that this was a steep walk down for about
45 minutes of a 4x4 drive down, due to the heat and the fact we had a capable Suzuki Jimny with 4x4 low range we decided to drive down after some initial checks, the track however
was in very bad shape in certain places and it was a very bumpy ride down. Eventually about three quarter of the way down we reached a very rough and steep section that I didn't
believe the Jimny's track width would've been able to manage without us catching the undercarriage and I was even more concerned about us getting back up so we used a slight clearing
in the jungle to park up. Rendezvous Bay was a deserted beach with the only other people having arrived by boat and we had to share the long stretch of beach with some wild cows.
The water here was noticeably rougher though even on the end protected partially by rocks, I went for a swim but I am a very strong swimmer, visibility is bad here due to the roughness
and a sandy sea floor. The constant bobbing also made me quite queasy.
Next we continued our drive over to English Harbour and visited the Nelson's dockyard. You have to pay to get in and I really wouldn't recommend it, really you are paying to visit some
souvenir shops and stare at expensive yachts, it was quiet when we were here but Jolly Harbours free and much better. We ended our day in the South by spending some time on the small free
access section of Galleon Beach until the sun was setting and we had to head back to our hotel over the fig tree drive. We celebrated our evening drinking imported wine and local Antiguan
rum.
For some videos showing the driving track down to Rendezvous Bay, see below:
The weather had turned slightly on our last day in Antigua, however that didn't stop us enjoying Turners beach in the morning before we set off on route to Landing Bay for our island Jet Ski tour. Several of our group had never been on a Jet Ski and this was the proper way to introduce them by exploring up and down the western coast of Antigua. In advance the tour company had tried to re-schedule us, probably because of the weather, but in the end we went ahead but with a shorter tour. This in fact proved to be long enough. The Jet Skis were quite worn, the tour expensive but everything in the Caribbean is, our guide didn't speak much English, however they rode well with plenty of power even in the rough open waters that came with the heavy rain storms we had. Everyone involved had a lot of fun and it was a good experience for everyone to have and gave a good sight of the islands many beaches from the water.
Next destination on our exploration of the Caribbean was to be an airbourne tour of Montserrat.
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