Dean &
Ginny's excellent adventures... Main
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Antigua--09/08:
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Along one side of the bay and within the resort,
time-share villas are arranged like a European village up the
slope and connected with narrow cobble-stone roads. There's
a small general store and Piccolo Mondo, an Italian-style restaurant, in the
center of the villas. We dined there a few times during our
stay--no shorts allowed.
Below, the view from Piccolo's in the daylight
toward Mamora Bay, and below left, the view from the pools up to this open-air restaurant.
Very romantic in the evenings.
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series of pools were interconnected with spillways.
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All this is inside the St. James Club guarded gate.
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We
did some sight-seeing around the island over the course of several days. I've labeled this map
to help you get a feel for the area. The island is about 11 by 14 miles in
size, which doesn't seem large. But our
forays, just getting from one place to another, were adventures. Many of the roads are narrow and in bad repair.
Local drivers, especially taxi drivers, are crazy. The signs are mostly absent,
but those that exist are sometimes pointed in the wrong direction.
If we go again, we probably would not rent a car, but take taxis.
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Below a man sits in the shade as he extracts the conchs from
their shells. We did have some conch for dinner one
night. Nearby two older gentlemen cool their heels in
their shelter that overlooks Falmouth Harbor. >>
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poses next to a mural of Antiguan scenery next to the buffet bar
at Coco's, the restaurant near to our room at the St. James
Club. On our tours of the island, we saw how true to
life the mural is.
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Dean has a real-life encounter with
a patient burro overlooking Falmouth Harbor.
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Goats roamed the island and also showed up on
the menu. 
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Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbor was used by the British
sailing fleet during the 18th century and has been mostly restored
and is located just above the "m" in my Falmouth label
on the map above. Shirley Heights is a national park at the
top of the hill behind this harbor and is open for a barbeque on
Sunday evenings. We didn't go to the barbeque because of a
heavy thunderstorm that night. For more details: www.antigua-barbuda.org/Agharb01.htm Below
Half-Moon Bay is beautiful from afar and up close. Not a soul
around: it's a park.
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Some other resorts. Most are west of the airport, but
some, like ours are more remote.
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We thought resort above did well to make use of its
sugar mill house as its lobby. We saw many of these stone cones
abandoned out in fields. This painting, offered for sale in
our lobby, shows the original configuration.
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Every once in a while we came across an
interesting house like this art deco model to the right or
an odd railing painted with bright Antiguan colors.
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Churches are built with materials on hand,
making for some interesting architecture. Below a
Catholic church atop a hill in a village. To the right,
a Methodist church next to a school that just let out the kids.
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<< We saw
some interesting wading birds near Dickinson's Bay to the west of
the airport including these black-necked stilts.
This man offered us a ride on the
beach.
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Interesting road-side stands were sometimes full-fledged stores,
others appeared to be shops at the fronts of people's houses.
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Below is the center of Bethesda: it's a typical village with many houses
in poor repair and hard-to-navigate roads. People make
no effort to get out of the drive lane when they stop to pick
something up at a store or stand.
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While this is a tropical island, there were many
cacti amongst the other vegetation. >>
Wadadli is the island beer. We had some and
it's pretty good. Wadadli is the ancient name for the
island before the Spanish came in.
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