The Rough Guide to Antigua & Barbuda

Famous for its beaches and its cricket players, tiny Antigua is rapidly becoming one of the Caribbean’s most popular destinations. Quiet, unvisited and little- known just a generation ago, the country has taken full advantage of the publicity gained from its independence in 1981 – and the remarkable success of its cricketers since then – to push its name into the big league of West Indian tourism alongside Barbados and Jamaica.

Antigua’s early European settlers came from Britain in the sixteenth century. They brought African slaves to clear the native vegetation and plant sugarcane: for centuries, the island was little more than a giant sugar factory, producing sugar and rum to send home to an increasingly sweet-toothed mother country. Around Antigua, the tall brick chimneys of a hundred deserted and decaying sugar mills bear witness to that long colonial era. Today, though, it is tourism that drives the country’s economy; dozens of hotels and restaurants have sprung up around the coastline, there’s a smart new airport, and people offer boat and catamaran cruises and scuba diving and snorkelling trips to the island’s fabulous coral reefs.

If all you want to do is crash out on a beach for a week or two, you’ll find Antigua hard to beat. The island is dotted with superb patches of sand - look out for Dickenson Bay in the northwest, Half Moon Bay in the east and Rendezvous Beach in the south - and, while the nightlife is generally pretty quiet, there are plenty of great places to eat and drink. But however lazy you’re feeling, it’s worth making the effort to get out and see some of the country. The superbly restored naval dockyard and the crumbling forts around English Harbour and Shirley Heights are as impressive as any historic site in the West Indies, and there are lots of other little nuggets to explore, including the capital, St John’s, with its tiny museum and colourful quayside, and the old sugar estate at Betty’s Hope. And, if you’re prepared to do a bit of walking, you’ll find some superb hikes that will take you out to completely deserted parts of the island.

Antigua’s sister island Barbuda feels a world apart from its increasingly developed neighbour, even though it’s just fifteen minutes away by plane. Despite its spectacular beaches and coral reefs, tourism is very low-key; for the island’s tiny population, the pace of life seems to have changed little over the generations, and fishing is still the main occupation. Even if you can only manage a day-trip, you’ll find it thoroughly repays the effort involved in organizing a tour.