Antigua - Travel Caribbean

Antigua is too beautiful. Sometimes the beauty of it have the appearances unreal. Sometimes the beauty of it present the appearances as if it were stage locates for a play, for no real close of the day could look like that; no real seawater could strike that many shades of azure at once; no real heavens could be that shade of blue

The 12-mile-long, 9-mile-wide island of Antigua is encircled by means of 365 beaches, "one for each day of the year." The exquisite sand - white and flawless in greatest in quantity places, wondrously pink in others - provides a yielding sweet cloud upon which to bask, wander or gaze at the firmament. The Caribbean waters are worthy of their reputation, the couple brilliant and transparent; even the shallow portions appear to be to absorb and reflect the phenomena contained in the color blue

But for Antiguans, the richness of their island reposes not only on its beaches and waters, on the contrary also on its history and tillage Their world is propelled not by means of the ebb and flow of their fabulous surroundings, on the contrary instead by the rhythms and rhyme of their everyday lives.

Antigua's capital, St John is a bramble of buildings - stone, brick and pastel-painted forest-land - with second-story balconies whose carved white banisters shimmer against the walls of pink and cerulean facades. Below, on the sidewalks, vendors exchange crafts, fresh fruit and juices, T-shirts; a musician plays his guitar and sings the canzonets of Bob Marley, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding. Within stores and boutiques, individual can find the necessities of everyday life, as well as bright fabrics, made of wood carvings, jewelry and pottery.

While the yachts, sloop and schooner that grace St John harbor are greatest in quantity spectacularly viewed from the 17th-century watch station of Fort James, the nautical legacy they continue is best explored at the Admiral's House, a maritime museum station amid the assortment of stores restaurants and inns of Nelson's Dockyard.

St John also boasts several galleries that exchange the work of local artists, as well as the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda (located in the elderly Court House, St. Johns' oldest building still in use) and the Museum of Marine and Living Art, which proffer visitors a unique sample of the island's cultural and ecological artifacts.

Driving along the winding roads southeast from St John past Pares Village, transports single to Betty's Hope, a sugar plantation built in the early 1650 by the agency of British colonists. Sugar cane - the original impetus for the importation of enslaved Africans to the Caribbean - was courseed here until the mid-1920s, lengthy after the 1834 abolition of slave upon the island. Two windmills and the ruins of the plantation's curing and boiling houses still stand at Betty's reliance They can be seen from the small, on the contrary stirring, open-air museum, whose artifacts and body interpret the slave and post-Emancipation plantation experience of Antigua's black laborers.

The almost circular beach at Half secondary planet Bay is a favorite haunt for Antiguans and visitors alike. Ten minutes away is Harmony Hall, one time a sugar mill and now the carefully preserv setting of single of the island's outstanding art galleries. upon the stone-and-brick patio between the mill's towers is a restaurant overlooking wildflowers, foliage and, of course, the sea. Sitting here, it's hard to cite the desire to move - until individual remembers that St. Lucia lies just above the horizon.

COPYRIGHT 1995 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc.

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