March 24th-Antigua

Christopher Columbus sighted Antigua on his second voyage to the Americas in 1493. He named the island Santa Maria de la Antigua at that time. The British mispronounced the name as “An-tee-ga” and it has remained so ever since. Sir Christopher Odrington, a sugar planter, came from Barbados in 1674. The islands sugar economy was dependent on slave labor so when slavery was abolished in 1834 the economy was hit hard. Despite the collapse, sugar remained an important industry in Antigua. In 1967, led by V.C. Bird, Antigua achieved Statehood with Britian. On November 1, 1981, Antigua achieved full political sovereignty, with V.C. Bird as Prime Minister. Antigua is 108 square miles and has a population of about 70,000. They speak English and use US currency as well as the Eastern Caribbean Dollar.

Woke up early again this morning and watched the ship dock in Antigua. The water isn’t very deep and the ship is really stirring it up a lot. We got ready and rushed up to breakfast. We only had about 20 minutes and then we had to meet in the Princess Theatre for our excursion. We got into a taxi and drove across the island to the North Coast where we got onto a speed boat. The speed boat then took us across the water through the mangroves to a floating platform. We were excited to go kayaking for our first time! We had some brief instructions and then we got on our two person kayak. Ladies in front and the guys in the back….. They said that the guys would be doing the work and steering but I’m not quite sure that’s how it went! First of all I couldn’t see Mike back there so who knows what he was doing and second of all he couldn’t see in front of me! I think we worked well as a team since he did what I told him to do!! We kayaked for about an hour and saw different kinds of sea creatures. Then we went back to the platform and got back on the speed boats where we headed over to “Bird Island”. Mike went snorkeling and I hung on the beach with some other people. When they were done snorkeling we all hiked up a hill and saw one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. It looked like a fake background. We saw two blow holes and took some pictures. We hiked back down and boarded the speed boats to go back to the departure point where we took the taxi back to the ship.
It was a long day but so much fun. That was a lot of exercise and now Mike is sound asleep. Poor guy!

It is 3pm now on Wednesday and I am doing another load of wash to get us through the rest of the week. We should be leaving Antigua in a couple of hours and heading for St. Lucia.

We got ready for dinner early tonight and went to the lobby and watched the juggler. He was really good. Then we went to one of the bars and played cards for about an hour. We decided to eat alone tonight and got the same table that we had last week with bad service. Anyway, we didn’t get done with dinner until late but they had wonderful biscotti and amaretto cookies for dessert.
We went into the casino for a bit but didn’t win anything, then we went to our room. We are both exhausted and have to get up early tomorrow for another wonderful day.

Until then,
Mike and Cathy