Antigua snorkeling and kayaking

Day 8   Sunday, January 27, 2019   St. John's, Antigua

Kind of a boring sign, but at least you know where we were! We went on a fabulous excursion to hike, snorkel, kayak, and drink rum punches.

What a stunning scene out our window when we opened our curtains! It looked like our bow was right up on the land in St. John's. Or at least hitting those catamarans in front of us.

Antigua and Barbuda was our first island visit to an independent country. Pronounced an-tee'-guh and bar-bue'-duh. They got their independence from Britain in 1981, and, based on our tour guide's narrative, they are extremely proud to be independent. Barbuda to the north was so damaged by Hurricane Irma that all 1800 residents had to be moved to Antigua. It was left totally uninhabited until they could restore power and clean up.

This country has several smaller islands as well, including one to the west which we passed on our approach to St Kitts many days later, Redonda. Total population is 82,000. As with so many of the other West Indies, it was discovered and explored by Columbus in 1493.

Our tour took us east from St. John's to Willikies. We boated right past Crump Island on our way to a tiny island to hike and snorkel.

Our tour didn't begin until 10:15, so we had time for a nice breakfast at Margaritaville on 17th.

This ship had LOTS of Jimmy Buffett. As usual, I had already been there earlier, following my fitness room cycling when I got our coffees.

We had a little extra time, so we explored the far aft on level 17, in an adults-only area called Spice H2O. It was quieter than poolside, so we decided to try lounging there in the future. We knew that every night, this was where they had their big dance parties, but they always began at 10:15, so it was always too late for us. We did not attend even one of them.

Spice H2O had this cave, with a little waterfall. Later when we were there once, there was a guy just sitting in there letting the waterfall flow onto his head.

As we returned to our room on the 17th level, we had this view again of St. John's, with its 1845 cathedral towers dominating the skyline.

We usually had music whenever we departed our ship.

Walking to our van. Given that every one of these islands has tourism as its #1 industry, all the ports have a mini-city of tourist shops as soon as you walk off their piers. The tours make sure you are "forced" to walk through them either both on the way to your excursion bus and when you get dropped off at the end, or only at the end. Janet and I occasionally looked inside some of the shops, but we never did purchase anything.

This was the only picture I got as we drove to Willikies, and we're almost there. That is Crump Island, and we later zoomed across that bay to reach our snorkeling spot.

Our bus driver, Toby, talked non-stop about his country's history and landmarks. He pointed out some of the old sugar mills. He showed us the new cricket stadium named after Viv Richards, "the best cricket player in the world". Sure enough, Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards, born in St. John's in 1952, was voted the best cricket player of the 20th century.

Not a great picture, but it's the only one I took before we sped out at high speed to reach our little island.

After the thrilling speedboat ride across several bays, we reached this island, called Bird Island. The very first thing we did was hike up a steep and tricky path to the top, where I took this picture. A little while later, our snorkeling was just a few yards to the left of the little cove below.

However, Janet couldn't hike up because the rough path was too hard on her ankle.

Not too much to see up there. Here is the Atlantic Ocean!

Here is the other direction, looking back to Antigua.

There was a blow hole.

And a second one. You can see the water way down at the bottom.

We then did our snorkeling and kayaking, but no more photos. The fish and coral were wonderful. My highlight was seeing a large sting ray, and I was able to follow it for quite a long ways, watching its graceful "flying". We then loaded back on the boat and went in fairly rough water to a nearby bay where they had their kayaks tied up. Once all loaded up, two to a kayak, we paddled around, following our leader. He was able to spot and pull out for us a large star fish, and later a conch. In both cases, we passed them around to all of us to inspect them up close.

We then climbed out of the kayaks, back into the boat, and sped back to the start. There, we lounged around under their pretty citrus and pomegranate trees, drank rum punches, and chatted. The garden was quite pleasant.

On the drive back, Toby stopped talking and we just looked at the scenery.

Toby dropped us off at the end of the tourist village, of course, so we had to walk through it to reach our ship, which you can see at the back of the photo. Once onboard, we took our showers and had lunch, and then decided (I don't think Janet really wanted to, though) walk back up to the cathedral to see inside.

Being a Sunday, I really thought it would be open, but alas. All gates on the edges of the grounds were padlocked. The first church here was built in 1681 but was destroyed in an earthquake in 1745. They built a larger church a year later, and it lasted 96 years, but also crumbled in an earthquake in 1842. This current cathedral was finished in 1845.

Since we walked all the way back up the hill to see this church and it was closed, I stole this photo from the Internet so that we could get a glimpse of its interior. There! It was not a completely wasted hike.

Here is one of the many padlocked gates to the cathedral grounds. But this entrance is famous. Erected in 1789, the bronze statues are St. John the Divine and St. John the Baptist. It's said that they were confiscated by the British Navy from the French ship HMS Temple in Martinique waters in 1756 (during the Seven Years' War) and moved to this church.

Wow, the streets sure were crowded on our walk back to the ship!

We passed by this museum, which used to be the colonial Court House (1747). It's the oldest building still in use in St. John's.

We also passed by a literal "chain link fence". Look at the size of those chain links!

LOL. On all three occasions that we walked through the port tourist village, we saw lots of stray dogs lying around. But only on our final walk-through did we see this one being given the royal treatment on the red carpet!

Back onboard, we again did what we enjoyed, relaxing with a drink (or two) on Deck 8 to watch our departure. (Full disclosure: That shot glass was mine, not Janet's.) We were on the north side (port side) of the ship to get the shade.

In this photo, the ship has backed up and is halfway turned around, turning clockwise. But then, to avoid the direct sun, we went to the other side of the ship.

 From there, we could see old Ft. James (1706) on the point as we departed the deep harbor.

There's a wider shot of Ft. James and the land to the north.

But then the ship turned south (to sail way down to St. Lucia), so we played musical ships and went back again to the port side so that we could watch the shoreline.

We could see tourists standing on top of a large stone structure. I zoomed in...

It was what remained of Ft. Barrington, dating to 1751.

That's Jolly Harbor back there. Hi Ted!

After we sailed farther away from the island, we headed in to dinner at the Supper Club. The act was a singer whom we didn't think much of. It seemed no better than any decent karaoke performance. The food was good, though! We then watched JR for a bit before retiring to our room.

 In bed and watching MSNBC, I again uploaded photos, and this time also did a Facebook posting.