Antigua for the Holidays

 December 2024 we headed to a new island: Antigua. I chose a small resort hotel on Dickenson Bay called Siboney Beach Club.  Renowned for it's red phone booth on the beach which is a photo op for just about everyone passing by.

Siboney Beach Club is a small resort with a nicely sheltered beach area but part of a bigger bay with soft sand beaches where you can walk from end to end in about 30 minutes. There are other resorts and restaurants so when you tire of the food, you have other options in walking distance.

Antigua is definitely a place you need a car if you want to see more than wherever you are staying. Road are so-so and they drive on the left and Google maps can take you some interesting directions. Once you get the hang of it, it's fairly easy and people there are not insane. 

As we are a dive family, we of course had to find a scuba shop. There are not many outside some of the bigger resorts but we ended up using DiveCarib in Falmouth Harbour. It was almost an hour drive from our hotel but while my peeps went diving, I checked out the historic English Harbour site which was just down the road.

English Harbour has tons of history and is a cool place to visit just to see what mega-yachts are parked at the dock. It's a site from the 1700s with a naval history museum, restored buildings with shops, restaurants & bars. It's a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site. The cool thing is when you pay to enter the park, it also gets you into Shirley Heights which has an old fort and several buildings undergoing restoration. Not to mention the absolutely fantastic view of the Harbour and other parts of the island, including a house on a promontory owned by Eric Clapton.  

The town of St. John's can be pretty hectic, especially with a cruise ship(s) in port. It's downtown area is easy to walk around but it is congested and they cater a lot to the cruise passengers. 

If your adventurous, head to the NE part of the island to Devil's Bridge National Park.  The NE side of most islands tends to be more rugged and Antigua is no exception. Beautiful place to walk along the cliff and watch the waves break over the "bridge" and along the coast.

Jolly Harbour on the west side of the island is what I'd call a work in progress. There were a number of hotels under construction on a large, long white sand beach. There were other smaller properties on one end and some larger, older resorts as well. It was mostly adults vs. Dickenson Bay which had many families. Nice beach and clam waters but there was clearly work being done to make it more upscale. 

And I can't forget Stingray City, it was the one thing I really wanted to do.  It was really cool but what I would call organized chaos. We made reservations in advance (which they couldn't find even with my confirmation) and arrived early (which was a good thing).  They check you in, send you to a waiting area and then load probably up to 200 people into boats to go out to the sandbar where the rays congregate. (AKA they show up because they know there will be food). If you have your own mask & snorkel, take them vs using what they provide. The rays are huge and very gentle but it's busy with probably 30 rays and 200 people. They do get you lined up for a photo while holding a ray (for a price) and that is kind of cool. You definitely need to know how to swim and this is not an adventure for really little people. If the tide is in, even for someone over 5' you are bouncing on your toes.