Antigua and Barbuda

St John’s — the capital of Antigua and Barbuda (a twin-island nation in the Leeward Islands, 280km², 100,000 people) with the St John’s Cathedral (the twin-towered Anglican cathedral built 1845, replacing two earlier structures destroyed by earthquakes, with the figure of St John the Baptist brought from one of Napoleon’s ships captured by the British and installed in the cathedral porch) and the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda (in the old colonial courthouse).

💡 Antigua was one of the most important British sugar colonies in the Caribbean from the 17th to 19th century. At its peak, the island had 150+ sugar mills (more windmills per square mile than any other place on earth — the hilly topography and constant Trade Winds made Antigua ideal) producing sugar for the British market. Emancipation in 1834 ended the slave-based industry; the ruins of the mills dot the island’s hillsides.

English Harbour — Nelson’s Dockyard National Park (the only functioning Georgian-era naval dockyard in the world, built 1743, used by Admiral Horatio Nelson 1784–1787, restored and operational as a working marina and heritage site with the Copper and Lumber Store Hotel, the boat house, the sail loft and the original capstans — UNESCO World Heritage 2016) and Shirley Heights (the clifftop battery with the finest panoramic view in Antigua).

💡 Horatio Nelson served at English Harbour from 1784 to 1787 as a 26-year-old captain — an unhappy posting during which he enforced the Navigation Acts against American traders (making himself deeply unpopular with both the Americans and his own superior officers) and fell in love with Frances Nisbet, whom he married in Nevis in 1787. He described the harbour as a “vile spot” and was so unpopular that he was confined to his ship for months to avoid arrest.

Shirley Heights (the 18th-century military lookout and battery above English Harbour — the finest view in Antigua: English Harbour below, Falmouth Harbour, Montserrat and Guadeloupe on the horizon) for the Sunday Steel Band Barbecue (from 3pm, the most famous weekly party in the Caribbean, with local barbecue, rum punch and live steel band and reggae music as the sun sets over the harbour below).

💡 Steel pan music (the only acoustic instrument invented in the 20th century, developed in Trinidad in the 1930s from discarded oil drums — the steelpan is made by hammering the bottom of an oil drum into a concave shape and tuning individual sections to specific pitches by hammering and heating) is the defining music of the eastern Caribbean. The Sunday jump-up at Shirley Heights is the best weekly steel band performance in the Leeward Islands.

Half Moon Bay (the finest beach on the Atlantic side of Antigua — a 1.5km horseshoe of pale sand exposed to the Atlantic swell, with body-surfing waves that contrast with the calm leeward beaches, accessible by a rough track through the national park and often deserted) and the Devil’s Bridge (a natural limestone arch at Indian Town Point, carved by the Atlantic surf over centuries, with blowholes that spray sea mist 10m into the air).

💡 Devil’s Bridge is associated with one of the darkest aspects of Antigua’s history — enslaved Africans who could endure no more are said to have thrown themselves into the pounding sea below the arch. The bridge is a natural limestone arch formed by the constant erosion of the Atlantic surf over thousands of years; the blowholes are created by waves forcing air through fissures in the rock.

1h ferry or 20 min plane. Barbuda (a flat coral island 40km north of Antigua, population 1,800 — devastated by Hurricane Irma in September 2017 which destroyed 95% of all structures and forced the entire population to evacuate for 8 months) with the Frigate Bird Sanctuary (the largest nesting colony of magnificent frigatebirds in the Western Hemisphere, 5,000+ pairs on the mangrove lagoon, with the males inflating their brilliant red throat pouches in mating displays visible by boat at close range).

💡 The Barbuda Frigate Bird Sanctuary (the largest magnificent frigatebird colony in the Western Hemisphere, on a saltwater lagoon on the western side of Barbuda) contains approximately 5,000 breeding pairs of Fregata magnificens. The male’s red gular pouch (inflated like a balloon during courtship display, reaching the size of the bird’s body) is one of the most dramatic mating displays in the bird world. Frigatebirds cannot land on water (their feathers are not waterproof); they steal food from other seabirds in flight.

Dickenson Bay (the most sheltered swimming beach on the northwest coast), Jolly Harbour (a marina complex with restaurants and accessible sand) and the Great Bird Island day trip (an uninhabited island 20 min by water taxi from the north coast, with a rare Antiguan racer snake — once the world’s rarest snake, reduced to 50 individuals by mongoose introduction, now recovering to 1,100+ through conservation efforts on the offshore islands).

💡 The Antiguan racer (Alsophis antiguae — a harmless, slender brown snake endemic to Antigua) was reduced to approximately 50 individuals on one offshore island by 2000, making it the world’s rarest snake at that time. A conservation programme by the Antiguan Racer Conservation Project has removed mongooses and rats from the offshore islands; the population has recovered to over 1,100 — the most successful snake conservation recovery in the Caribbean.

Falmouth Harbour (the main charter yacht base and the venue for the Antigua Sailing Week in late April — the most prestigious regatta in the Caribbean, held since 1968, with 150+ yachts racing five days on the water around Antigua while 5,000 spectators watch from Shirley Heights and the dockside) and a final rum punch at the Admiral’s Inn in Nelson’s Dockyard. Fly from Antigua (ANU).

💡 Antigua Sailing Week (first held 1968, now one of the top five regattas in the world by prestige, attracting 150+ yachts from 30+ countries to race in the waters around English and Falmouth Harbours for five days in late April) is the Caribbean’s most important yachting event. The combination of consistent Trade Winds, well-protected racing waters and the Georgian backdrop of Nelson’s Dockyard makes it uniquely atmospheric.