On Antigua, a year’s supply of beaches

Section: TRAVEL Page: B14

They’ve turned the traffic lights on in Antigua. And the May 1 event may be the first sign that this quiet Caribbean island is gearing up to enter the battle for serious tourist dollars.

Antigua has the raw material for big tourism success. The island claims to have 365 beaches, some with hotels and resorts, and others that are quiet and virtually unpeopled. The water is warm, the sand is sandy, and the Caribbean sun is hot enough to melt away the everyday worries you brought from home.

Despite its natural resources, Antigua (the name is pronounced An-TEE-ga by most of the natives) is still for the most part an undeveloped island. In some ways, that lack of commerical savvy is part of its charm. In others, Antigua is a jarring contrast to the North American visitor. The roads are atrocious. Often, the roadsides are lined with cans and bottles and other rubbish. The city of St. John’s, the capital, is a collection of ramshackle shops and offices. Outside the small downtown area, the streets have no sidewalks but have open storm drains or gutters in which flow murky fluids.

It’s easy, however, to forget all that when you stretch a towel out on the sand. Many of the more popular beaches are lined with hotels, ranging in price and service from budget-rate to luxury. On the beaches, one can windsurf, jet-ski or parasail. There are several outfits that offer sailing and snorkeling excursions to nearby islands. Their representatives comb the beaches for willing customers. There’s plenty of scuba diving to be done, too.

The more expensive hotels, such as the St. James’s Club and Half Moon Bay Hotel, tend to be found on the island’s southern or eastern Atlantic coast. More hotels are found on the calm western Caribbean coast. The greatest density is at Dickenson Bay northwest of St. John’s, with nine or 10 hotels strung out in a line one can walk in a half hour.

Some hotels offer special attractions. For example, Jolly Beach is an all- inclusive resort, providing meals and accommodations, and caters to families. Hawksbill Hotel offers a special cove for fans of nude sunbathing.

Vacationers should take at least a day to get out of their hotel and into the countryside. The interior of the island is filled with striking high hills and a picturesque variety of vegetation from desert cactus to tropical palm and sugar cane. The best way to get around is by rental car, available from any of several agencies. Rates are $66 for one day or $115 for two, including insurance and a mandatory temporary driver’s license.

Driving in Antigua is one of the more popular death-defying sports. Antiguan roads give new meaning to the phrase “the challenge of the open road.” The island maintains the British convention of driving on the left side of the road. However, the potholes are so bad that most drivers use the full span of the road unless another car is coming. Drivers toot their horns to alert pedestrians to get out of the way, to alert other drivers that they plan to pass them, to say hello to friends in passing cars, and seemingly just for the pure joy of it.

When driving around the island, one notices the abundance and variety of Antigua’s churches. All sorts of Christian denominations can be found. We saw Catholic, Latter-Day Saints, Seventh-Day Adventists, Baptist, Methodist and Moravian. The competition among them has gotten so bad, one taxi driver claims, that the churches will now send a driver out to pick up churchgoers, in order to attract worshipers.

Although it was discovered by Christopher Columbus, who named the island after the church of Santa Maria de Antigua in Spain, Antigua was first colonized by the British, in 1632. Its small native population of Caribs was driven off by the British. Today’s natives are mostly descendants of slaves brought over to work the sugar trade. Though no longer used, the squat truncated stone cones of the old sugar mills dot the countryside.

Antigua today boasts a unique piece of history. At English Harbour on the south coast, one finds the only existing example of a late-18th-century British dockyard.

Horatio Nelson, later Lord Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar, arrived at the dockyard as a British naval commander in 1784, and remained there for 3 years. Today, Nelson’s Dockyard has been partially restored. It houses an inn, several souvenir shops, a working bakery in the old dockyard kitchens (the banana cake is not to be missed), and a small museum.

The most interesting site on the island is Fort Berkeley, pronounced the British way, Barclay. The fort is connected to Nelson’s Dockyard by a steep and winding path of crumbling reddish soil, lined with cactus and aloe. Goats forage in the underbrush near where you pass. At the end of the path are the crumbling battlements of a genuine Georgian fort, completed in 1744.

There are no guides at Fort Berkeley, nor has the site been restored, making it doubly interesting. The visitor can discover for himself the lone cannon still pointing out to sea; the pink flowers growing up from between the stones in the walls; and the stone cross inlaid on the ground at the highest spot in the fort, with no one to tell what its significance may have been.

The island’s greatest resource is perhaps its people. They are almost without exception friendly, courteous. Even the taxi drivers are in good humor. They’ll arrange a time to pick you up after dropping you off for a meal, if you want, or wait for you while you shop or tour.

One of the friendliest people we met was Walter. He first approached us on the beach to solicit us for a booze cruise. After a little chit-chat, he dropped his work and joined us for the rest of the afternoon, telling stories about his family from Montserrat, his work at a nudist camp in St. Martin, and places to see in Antigua. He later rode with us in the taxi back to our hotel, and in the evening came along for a night of hotel barhopping.

The beat on the island is reggae, with a dash of calypso. We heard reggae versions of “Angel of the Morning” and “Johnny B. Goode.”

One thing one doesn’t come to Antigua for is the shopping. Cotton clothing is one of the few native crafts worth bringing home. Most of the stores carry either everyday necessities for residents or souvenir trinkets. The two major shopping areas in St. John’s are Redcliffe Quay (pronounced “key”) and Heritage Quay, located on the edge of the harbor. Both are overloaded with clothing stores, which are themselves overload with T-shirts. Heritage Quay, which opened only last November, has all the character of an air-conditioned suburban shopping mall transplanted to the Caribbean. One can also purchase jewelry, clothing and conch shells from vendors who walk the beaches.

But it’s quick little snapshot memories that convey the most about Antigua:

- The livestock everywhere — chickens, cows, goats, donkeys and a few pigs. The cows are often left unfenced, but are tethered by a short rope to a metal spike driven into the ground.

- The festival atmosphere at the weekly concert of a steel band and a reggae band at Shirley Heights, overlooking English Harbour.

- The hand-painted slogan on a vending truck parked outside of Redcliffe Quay: “You try me yet / Don’t forget / Coconut water / good for your daughter.”

- The taxi driver who, after we were caught in a sudden tropical shower together, drove me back to my hotel and refused to take any money for it, saying, “Everything you can’t do for money.”

Antigua today is quiet, comfortable and affordable. One can only hope that it doesn’t move into the modern world too quickly.