Tales of the Great Holt-Ysses - Part 5 "Antigua"

Ok so I said in my last blog that we would be talking about St. John or St. Lucia in this blog part but my wife reminded me that we went to Antigua not St. John. I'm such a guy! Anyway so we went to Antigua and although you want to pronounce it Ant-ee-goo-a it's actually pronounced Ant-ee-ga. A nice little island. It's one of those English Caribbean islands in that it was the English who threw down their flag in the sand and said "For the Queen!" Like all the other islands it too was inhabited by some peaceful natives who lived a simple life but were basically booted out and Africans were brought in to harvest a growing sugar cane industry. I forget that if you were an early century explorer you basically lived your life looking for ways to make money. They didn't just sail for the fun of it. Oh well, imagine that? So anyway, about my time there, it was nice and it was the only place we really spent laying on a beach on the ocean. Here's the catch...our beach was only 50 feet wide and 100 yards long. Allow me to explain! We get off the boat and were immediately attacked by some island sales guy who wanted to send us clear to the other side of the island to a beach that was supposed to be too good to be true. I smelled something fishy and definitely expensive so I told Amy that we would just do a beach near the boat and I was sure it would be fine. So we find this other person who hooks us up with one of his relatives and takes us on a short drive to a little party hut/restaurant on this big stretch of beach and I'm thinking that we hit the jackpot. So we get out and tell the cab driver to pick us up in a few hours and head for the entrance of the hut. We get there and are greeted by another person who wanted to sell us something and we simply say "no thank you!" We get in and three other guys run to us and offer us lawn chairs and an umbrella. We find out that each cost $10 so we just opt for just the lawn chairs. I look up and around and realize the beach that we are allowed to enjoy is only 50ft wide and 100yrds long. The rest of the beach is owned by a nearby Sandals resort. We find a little spot (and I mean little) on the beach and get to soaking in the rays. Everything is great! Peace and quiet with only the sound of the waves crashing in. It was perfect UNTIL...we get our first visit from a vendor selling beads and shells. We take the bait and buy something. This was a bad idea. All of a sudden every 5 minutes we were visited by a vendor selling something. It ranged from shells to jewelry to aloe vera to hats and handbags made from palm leaves. We said "no" so often that the message became clear and finally they simply passed us up and quit asking. Aaaahhhh! Finally we get some peace and quiet. The sun was hot and the water was perfect. Let the tans begin. Just when everything seemed to be great we hear something in the distance and we see one of the lawn chair draggers heading our way with a whole slew of chairs and bunch of kids and moms following behind. They have more beach to settle in so I wasn't worried about them crowding our space until of course they parked right next to us and crowded our space. It was like they were part of our family and as a matter of fact they acted like it. The kids scooped sand and threw it all over us and of course they were LOUD! The mothers acted like the kids were not doing anything because they too busy talking. After a few grimaces from me, the moms figured it out and told the kids to quit throwing sand and instead went into the water to swim. We decide at this time to go for a walk along our 100yds of beach, however we decide to be rule breakers and walk on the Sandals side of the beach. This was the couples resort and we saw lots of couples. Imagine that? The beach was nicer than our little beach and they had water sports to boot! I truly believe we could have grabbed a pair of Sandals lawn chairs, posed as one of the couples and been just fine. Heck they might have even offered us a cool beverage with one of those little umbrellas in it. But that's ok, that wouldn't be right and besides those little umbrellas always go up your nose when you take a drink....I guess! At this point we were ready to go on back to the ship so we head for the taxi spot. By that time the 50ft by 100yrd beach was full of people and we weren't going to get peace and quiet anyway. The drive was nice until we get to down town Antigua. This whole island of Antigua is a little underdeveloped and the downtown area is really third world. The people seem a little more aggressive too. Like they go day to day to get thier next meal. They probably do!
We got on the boat. Got cleaned up, had dinner and enjoyed a night of dancing at the disco with a rotating bar. Amy and I were smokin hot on the dance floor doing some truly classic 70's dances like the "Shuffle" and the "Bump". We also did some YMCA movements to the Village People classic song. I must say that we were so good that we the ship's film crew came up and took video of us. Ok so they were doing that anyway but let me just assume that they were filming because they admired our fancy footwork. Fred and Ginger got tired early from too much sun and fun and wrapped up the night around midnight!
Next stop St. Lucia! Funny story about St. Lucia since the boat nearly left us there!
BDH