Wednesday 28 February Antigua 2007

Our 2nd Week Anniversary. We were picked up from the Grand Royal Antiguan Hotel, apparently once owned by the government; it is a huge 1980's sky scraper type building, quite dated and ugly, so glad we are not staying here. Our Xtreme Circumnav Adventure speed boat collected us; the owner is Eli Fuller and was an Olympic gold medallist Windsurfer at some stage. He does two tours, this fast paced one and the Eco-tour on a catamaran, which are both themed on the history and ecology of the island. According to the Times, the Rough Guide etc. his tours are not to be missed. This boat is a 45 foot off shore racer and we had decided that it would be more fun. We did a bit of the Miami Vice stylie racing around the island, JD our captain veered and zig zagged across the sea. It's really exhilarating, I love it, and Andrew now fancies getting more into speed boats. Our first stop was Stingray City, a lovely quiet area where you disembark on to a floating raft then descend a ladder into the sea. The stingrays here are gorgeous; they swim up to you and all around you sliding their bodies across your legs, so soft, like silk. If you hold out your hands they come over to you to see if you will feed them, we really enjoyed our time here, the rays are used to people visiting and feeding them, I could have happily stayed all day. We eventually moved on, and sped over to Green Island, a millionaire's paradise island, where you have to be extremely wealthy and have enough connections to be voted in by a board of governors to be allowed the privilege of holidays here. We however just stayed for lunch, chicken salad with pasta and plantain followed by banana loaf. It is a very pretty island, but has almost no shade, so we needed a constant slathering of sun block. We sat under a tree with our lunch and watched the lizards running about, they come up incredibly close, one even sat on our towel with us. They liked the pasta, it was fun watching them play and chasing each other. Onward on our journey around the island, we slowed down around Falmouth Harbour and Nelson's Dockyard whilst JD gave us a potted history of the island and we looked at the huge yachts again. We sped round passed a few more bays; Antigua has 365 of them, one for every day of the year. Trevor pointed out a huge sprawling house up on a hill and built to look like an old fortress, this is Eric Clapton's newest house on the island, he sold the last one, also pointed out later, which I thought was much prettier. He spends a lot of time out here and has had a drink and drugs rehab centre built here too. We stopped next at the lovely Pillars of Hercules which have eroded over time and are a natural phenomenon; you can see its volcanic boulders just below the surface. I took some photos of Andrew swimming here. On then to our last stop of the day at Rendezvous Bay, another incredibly beautiful beach where we could swim. We didn't this time, as on all the places we have visited today there is no shade, both of us are sunburned although we have used an entire tube of sun block and sat in the shade onboard the boat. We are glad we stayed onboard as a small herd of cattle run along the beach to come for a swim. I had read about them, but hadn't expected to see them. If we'd swum ashore as almost everyone else had we would have no photos of them either. As we zoomed back towards the Grand Antiguan JD pointed out Galley Bay and Giorgio Armani's house, one we'd walked up to look at on our daily perambulations. We were tired and sore when we reached the hotel again, but had really enjoyed our day. I wouldn't have wanted to miss it. We gingerly showered, plastered each other in after sun cream and went to drown our pain with alcohol. We enjoyed our cocktails, ate an excellent meal and went straight to bed.