Tuesday 27 February Antigua 2007

I woke up with a jump at about 5.42am, within a few seconds the bed was shaking quite violently. Andrew woke up too, but after less than a minute the shuddering stopped. After breakfast, where no one mentioned the night's occurrence, we went to reception to pick up the Rav4 that we have hired for the day. We set off with a map to explore the island, this is great fun if you don't care where you go, we have all day to see the area but as navigator for the day I found it quite disconcerting that the map and the roads don't seem to have anything in common. I think Andrew was getting slightly irritated by my "map reading" until he pulled over to read it himself, and couldn't do much better. We stopped to ask for directions and eventually found Half Moon Bay, apparently one of the five most beautiful beaches in the world, so we had to see it. We parked up and went for a drink at Harry's Bar, he had the largest range of British beers that we have ever seen abroad, we settled for a Wadadli, which is very nice and much like the Piton beer in St. Lucia. We strolled down to the beach to go for a swim, but although the water looked calm we discovered that we'd inadvertently taken up surfing - without the use of a board! Having spend more time underwater than not, I retired to film the area. It really is absolutely stunning, with amazing coral reefs, I am so glad that we found our way here. Later we drove on in the vague hope that we may find the Devil's Bridge, a National Park area since the 1950's it is situated on the extreme eastern point of the island on the road to Long Bay. Apparently the Atlantic breakers culminate here from 3,000 miles away in Africa, producing enormous waves which have carved out a natural limestone arch - called the Devil's Bridge and created blowholes that the waves crash up and through. I read about warnings of walking across the bridge, as when the surf is high you can be washed over the blowhole and killed on the rocks below. Thankfully we did eventually find it, as it really is a stunning place to be. We spent quite a lot of time here filming, taking photos and just sitting on rocks watching the sea. We drove around the island, not caring where we ended up now that we'd found the two places that we really wanted to visit, we saw a lot of tropical rainforest areas, banana plantation and incredible beaches. We eventually parked up at English Harbour, where the famous Nelson's Dockyard is located. According to the books on the island, this area is not to be missed. It is the only existing Georgian naval dockyard in the world. The museum and the other restored buildings are a memorial to Horatio Nelson. It still works as a leading yacht service centre and is the headquarters for the annual regatta. It is a lovely area, huge yachts are moored up, and there are beautiful pillars and several of the restored buildings house shops and restaurants now. The restored Copper and Lumber Store is now an hotel. We sat at the Galley Inn, which I'd seen on the website at home and had a Wadadli beer, watching the boats. We strolled around for a while and later dined at the Trappas Bar a sort of Thai/Caribbean Tapas restaurant where we shared calamari, coconut shrimp and hummus. I went on to eat blackened mahi mahi (fast becoming my favourite fish) and an angus beef burger for Andrew - this was definitely the best meal we've had on Antigua, everything was perfect. We set off back to Galley Bay in the dark, half wondering if we would see bed before the morning, judging by our failure to follow the "map" earlier, and the fact that there are no road signs whatsoever on this island. We were really lucky as English Harbour is diagonally the opposite end of the island to Galley Bay and we were back within about 35 minutes, due to some lovely people along the way, giving us good directions. This is something we've found all over the island, all Antiguans are very friendly and helpful, they will happily stop to chat and we have not once found anyone begging or hassling us in any way. We retired to our room for some wine before bed; we are up early in the morning to go speed boating around the entire island.