ANTIGUA 2015:
Wed:
Red eye then connection, by the time we arrived at hotel we had been up 26 hours.
For some reason my pants are setting off the metal detectors at security in YYC and YYZ so did the big X-ray scan and it showed up as back of my legs. Nothing there after getting groped several times. WTF?
Hotel is clean but old and kinda run down... The bathroom door fell off its rollers the first time we moved it, The sliding door to the balcony (we're on third floor) fell off the tracks too! The main door still uses an actual metal key, the bathroom "vent" is simply a design through the brick side wall of the bathroom to the outside hallway which is always open so you can hear everyone outside and they can hear you too of course (poop quiet!). Everything is cement. Since vent is always open, the birds are loud and clear at 6:30am and there are lots of them, you WILL be getting up. At night the “squeak bugs" make endless noise, perfectly timed, perfect pitch and continuous…one night I was awake for over two hours and I thought it was an old farm pump of some sort (for the toilets?) with a bad bearing, big screech every second and it’s loud too…endless…squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak for the entire 12 hours of sundown...so birds shut up at night and squeak bugs come out, squeak bugs shut up at sunrise and birds come on….wow…
Not sure what the point of the screen on the main door is when the door has gaps of 3/4” around the edges in a couple spots…it was all screen and louvers, no way to shut out noise there either...surprised it stayed on the hinges.
Ceiling fan blades are drooped badly. Pillows are thin and hard. Bed is hard too. First night toilet stopped working. Flushed it by using ice bucket full of water to make it flush.
We are literally 100 feet from the beach. Beach is nice, bigger waves onto shore water is not very warm but still nice…
Liquor is free, bottled water 2.00 each. Buy for the bottles and refill at water machines for free.
Radio alarm clock is missing digits so made crazy things like F3 c, etc. Helpful.
Single ply toilet paper sucks, and should be illegal.
Thurs:
So we fly thousands of miles and spend a lot of money so I can find a perfect spot on the beach to relax back under the shade umbrellas, I hear a noise and look up out from under my hat to see a MINI-VAN driving past on the beach. WTF.
After our room was cleaned, we only got one towel. Dawn called about that and the toilet, it was never delivered. She talked to front desk later again and then next day when room was made we got one towel again!!! She was not impressed and went to desk again and we finally got our two towels….
Hey toilet kinda works though. Awesome.
Steel band was great, they played for 3 hours straight that night….loved the brake drum dude…:)
Discovered island has lots of mongoose. They were brought there to fight the snake problem. Now the dogs are here to fight the mongoose problem, not sure it’s working because the dogs all looked starved. On our island tour there was a dog sleeping in the middle of the road. Wandered around a lot just checking things out.
Beach is awesome.
Fri:
At lunch coffee machine plug-in caught on fire right by our table in the little drinks cove.... Guy tried to pull cord out no dice, then a real fire started...young people started video recording...LOL because that will fix everything!! Then as one person kept getting his pop from machine beside the fire despite the two foot high flames licking up the wall... I asked if anyone had a fire extinguisher just as the Chef who had cooked my hamburger came strolling over with a fire extinguisher, played with it for a bit, put out the fire and walked away. He looked so bored with it all....LOL
So then no drinks at bar as power was turned off…
We left everything in our room unplugged after that unless we were sitting there. I noted locations of extinguishers. New process from now on.
Wow lots of bug bites this trip, so now lots of bug spray. Never had issues before.
Food is good. Great variety. Eating bit too much I find. Went for a walk to the wharf. Abandoned monster casino building by resort/marina. Ran out of money (that must be a first). The cats use the place to sleep now, hanging out everywhere, seems everyone and everything is on “island time”…
Discovered spray disinfectant is perfect for keeping the tiny Caribbean ants away. Light spray on desktop and they stay away for a day. Have to be careful where you set your drink, they get into everything, do their little “convoy” march and obliterate anything food related, then march off and all gone. Weird.
Staff runs the gamut from funny and friendly to very standoffish.... In general Antigua people seem to be quite quiet but friendly once engaged...lots of the guests are not too friendly... probably Americans (no offence guys).... Others are great…
One British family though with loud and obnoxious kids left today (finally!), entire resort is much quieter (they were running up the halls, yelling at each other, slamming doors, stepping on Dawn’s feet to order at the bar, yelling at the bartender, asking me about my food, and today they descended on our beach area like a bunch of seagulls onto French fries… loud and blabbing and twirling about over nothing, I gave them my best WTF look (I mean seriously a couple were actually under our umbrella for a bit) until finally the dad figured it out said “let’s move and let these people enjoy themselves.”... (thank you for figuring it out!)...
Friday night coffee machine fire area is still burned, everything up and running though. New cord looks kinda rough (ie, I can see wires on the plug in!!)…LOL keep that extinguisher handy!
Played pool.
Band was good again.
Fire-eater dude was crazy. Burned a couple holes in his pants during the act. How does a guy limbo under a bar on fire literally 1.5 feet off the ground (where there is another fire)? Toasted buns for sure…
Sat:
Went into town for market day on bus. Note resort would not give us bus info, or price as they wanted to us to use their “shuttle service” for 20.00US…the bus cost us 2.00 each return. Crazy amount of people, music playing everywhere, and everyone jamming to the music, young and old….lots of stuff to look at. Had to be careful, typical foot deep rain gutters, sidewalk crumbling away in some places into that foot deep rain gutter, streets full of people and cars and then the cruise liner unloaded too…bus ride was fun, lots to see, overall island looks really run down (on this route anyway), buildings are old, dilapidated and straight up abandoned. Lots of times saw cars up on blocks with wheels and/or suspension off, not sure what’s going on there. One abandoned old brick building we went past had large ball just sitting on the very edge of the brick swaying in the breeze...how it stayed there is beyond me.
Lots of interesting plants. Bananas, some bread loaf looking things hanging in trees (weird), also some giant “pods” looked kinda like a human brain, squishy too…
200 year old church under restoration is amazing. Seats 3500 people….they are rebuilding it as per original so the woodworking is crazy. Got stuck in the souvenir hut to escape a downpour so ended up buying a few things and making a donation.
Food is excellent at buffet as always. Bartender Neil is new best buddy... He was outside the bar chatting up women while the other bartender did all the work…..entertainment was dance school girls… Wow! They were amazing……also later on freaky Amazon woman guest dancing with one friend and had bunny ears on.... Band playing had female singer when the singing was over Amazon Woman's friend walked over and kissed her..... not sure who was more surprised, the singer or people watching!! LOL
Sun:
Watching pelicans dive for food is awesome. Wingover and straight down into the water…crazy….
Went to book tour and room phone has gone dead dead. Told front desk. Then used lobby phone.
8 hours on the beach. Some mild rain. Funny people scatter like crazy with a bit of rain but they were just in the ocean 10 minutes ago and hey we’re sitting under big umbrellas anyway!!! Its still 28 C after all…..
Got sick Sunday night. Chills, then headache, skipped supper and just slept 12 hours until the next morning. Woke up with terrible headache, slowly went away, the Advil helped as did the beach. No idea.
Mon:
Beach in the morning then 4 hour tour of island with Caesar in his Toyota minivan (horrible thing), pretty interesting stuff, took a few pictures. Interesting place, lots of beaches, lots of hills, another big church. Land of contrasts….multi-million dollar yachts parked in marina, turn 180 degrees and people living in shanty towns across the street. Some of the people you could see out in their back yards because there are no doors left on their houses….The giant sugar cane mills were impressive, very old (late 1600s), wind drove giant windmills with massive gears that ran a crusher set of drums that extracted the juice which then ran out the bottom and drained to inventory. Crazy, and dangerous as it was all hand fed into the machine and some was re-fed back through twice as well. The remnants of the house was there too, but not much left.
Back at the motel phone still dead. Toilet still works. Clock still messed.
Bonfire party on the beach crashed when it started to rain…
Giant cat fight (real cats) in the middle of the night. Guess they woke up. For once you couldn’t hear the squeak bugs!!!!
Tues:
Great breakfast and then more time on the beach, swimming, wandering around, watch the sunset, another band at night.
Wed:
Just before it was time to head back to the room and pack, a large white crane landed in the palm tree right above me. Crazy thin legs on those things…it took off after a while, but what a neat looking bird.
Checked the phone just before we left…yup, still dead… :)
Back in Canada we were sent to secondary at customs in Toronto, we were still waiting to be checked there as the boarding time for our connecting flight home came and went….CBSA guy was disappointed I think, we were just tourists, nothing to see here, move along...LOL...But we always have something happen in YYZ every trip...not sure why...Then after that had to run to get through security again and guy ahead of me has a KNIFE in his carry on (DUH!) and he had to come back, more discussions, more delays, then on my turn my pants set off the metal detectors **again** so another x-ray and more delays, and finally run to gate just in time to hear our flight had been delayed one hour and was just boarding. Thank goodness for that or we would have missed it!!
Always good to be home (Thursday now). It’s very quiet in here, the toilets and clock work too...
By the numbers:
9 number of flight hours one way
18 number of bug bites I got
7 number of nights we stayed
2 number of holes burned in fire eater dude’s pants
53 number of podcasts I listened to on the beach
80,000 number of people who live on island
365 number of beaches on the island
?? number of drinks Dawn and I had on the beach
1 number of minivans on the beach (1 too many)
Top seven comments:
1 “What are the black birds called?”-“Blackbirds” "What about the yellow breasted birds?”- “Yellow breasted birds”
~knowledgeable waitress at the buffet
2 “Well I’m gonna go smoke a duobee, might as well do something today”…
~seadoo operator on the beach
3 “There ya go daaarrrrllling….”
~Joyce the bartender
4 “I smell marshmallows.”
~Guest while watching the fire eater act
5 "It's a holiday, everything is closed, it will be you, 7 people and the dogs walking around….”
~Concierge on going into town on a holiday. He was right.
6 “Oh yeah baby, rub it hard….”
~Old large black lady (never got her name but she was funny and sweet) selling t-shirts on the beach while I was putting lotion on Dawn
7 “The new minister is a great shot…”
~How the minister took care of the bats in the church
Picture quality is all over the map, some are frames off video but you get the idea.
Tim
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