Ginny & Dean's Excellent Adventures: Antigua 09/08

Dean & Ginny's excellent adventures... Main Adventure Page

Antigua--09/08: Part 1 Part 2 >> Part 3 >>

We've stayed at Patrick before and we always enjoy the scenery and the great sunsets over the Banana River, which is part of the Intracoastal Waterway.

The show time for the three-hour flight to Antigua is early Monday morning, but it departs later in the day. The return flight is each Wednesday, so we planned for a nine-day stay.

We drove three hours south to Patrick Air Force Base and camped one night before our flight left for Antigua. Patrick is the supporting military base for Cape Canaveral and sends a weekly flight to Antigua and then to Ascension Island to man and supply the tracking stations.

We enjoyed a great sunset at the Patrick campground.

Antigua--Map by Google First a little orientation: On this Google-supplied map, the "A" indicates Antigua. It's at the northern end of the Lesser Antilles and east of Puerto Rico. Since September is hurricane-prone, it's the low season, but we had the luxury of waiting until the last minute to decide because of the nature of space-available military flights. When we saw that Josephine, the only tropical depression in the Atlantic at that time, had dissipated, we made our plans to go.

To get a military discount and not to have foreign currency charges, we booked the rental car and our room the resort at Patrick AFB travel agency once we knew we had seats on the plane. And then we were off...

Antigua is in the same time zone as Florida during daylight savings time. We landed at 5pm or so and picked up the rental car at the airport. Dean did all the driving--a disconcerting experience to drive on the left side of the roads, especially when the roads are narrow and unfamiliar.

The St. James Club located on a remote peninsula offers both ocean beaches and bay-side activities. There are four restaurants if you include the Mamora Grill on the bay-side beach, several pools, a fitness center, and more. Each day at 4pm a British-style tea, with iced or hot tea, sandwiches and cakes, is offered at the gazebo by the main pool.

The bay-side view from the road approaching the club. >>

<< Our ocean-front room offered wonderful sea breezes and a fabulous view of the sunrises. It was on the second (top) floor at the end of the unit next to a restaurant (Coco's) and a small pool.

Morning swim

<< Most mornings started with a pleasant walk (about 1/3 mile) down to the large pool and a few laps all by ourselves. Then we'd walk back to our room, get dressed and walk back down to the lobby area (near the pool) to check our email. The WiFi there offered us access to the Internet.

Then we had breakfast in the Rainbow Garden restaurant.

<< The birds provided entertainment as they helped themselves to the leftovers or dipped into the cream. We learned to cover our glasses and cups with our napkins when we made a trip for seconds at the buffet.

Some general shots around the St. James Club... Below, our room is the end unit on the second floor.

Our room is at this end of the photo.

Some of the wildlife around the club: The cats are feral and avoid human contact. The Asian mongoose (to the right) was introduced by sugar plantation owners to control the African rats that came over on the slave ships. The small detail of the rats being nocturnal and the mongoose being diurnal meant that the mongoose did little to control the rats. Mongooses have wrecked havoc on the native birds and snakes. The same thing happened on Hawaii.

The weather kicked up into a tropical depression that was later known as Kyle. For two days we hunkered down, but there were breaks in the downpours and wind so it wasn't too unpleasant. The wind knocked down a couple of palm trees and some of the Tiki umbrellas on the ocean beach. The staff is quite efficient and the next day, the palms were chopped up and hauled off and the umbrellas were being repaired.

After the storm went by, we decided to sail one of the Hobie Cats in Mamora Bay. We had the underwater camera with us--a good thing because it was wet and exciting. Note the villas behind Dean's shoulder, both near the beach and on top of the hill--we'll go there next.

three hobie cats