St John's Antigua

There’s a frequent bus service from English Harbour to the west bus station at St John’s and on Tuesday 11 December we jumped on board one and enjoyed the ride north and west.  The roads in Antigua are not the best and so progress was not fast.  Progress further impeded by our bus driver’s keenness to pick up all potential fares, even at one point going so far as to stop, reverse about 50m back up the road, then reverse across into a side road on the far side of the ‘main’ road plus a further 100m or so up the side road to collect a lady who had been walking down to the bus stop on the main road!  An impressive customer service even if it did make for slow progress.

Four, yes four, cruise ships in!!

The west bus station is close to the cruise ship terminal and when we arrived we saw that there were four (yes, 4!!) cruise ships in port.  We were flabbergasted – where on earth did all the passengers go?  Well, a lot of them visit English Harbour (by organised taxi of course) and we had passed a good number on our way into town.

Typical street scene

We headed out of the bus station looking for either a tourist information office or a Digicel shop (Digicel being one of the largest telecoms operators in the E Caribbean).  The road into the centre was that of a typical E Caribbean large town, pot-holed, busy with vehicles and pedestrians and with street stalls blocking the roadside, where pedestrians might have expected to walk. We found the Digicel shop before the tourist information and, after an hour’s wait in a queue and 30mins with one of the staff members, we walked away as proud owners of a Digicel 4G data and voice sim card.  We got a great deal: 20Gb of data lasting 30 days and free Whatsapp calls and messages all for the princely sum of US$46!!  Admittedly, that price usually only buys 5Gb of data plus the Whatsapp calls and messages but we certainly weren’t going to turn down the Christmas special offer – we still have lots of blog entries to post.

Redcliffe Quay

From the Digicel shop we wandered through some of the main part of St John’s commenting on how much it reminded us of Bridgetown in Barbados albeit on a much smaller scale.

Viewing the cruise ships from St John’s tourist centre

We reached the tourist centre, all gentrified quays, duty free shops and over-priced cafes.  Redcliffe Quay is where the slaves were brought ashore from the slave ships and sold.  Their labours were the source of the island’s wealth in the 18^thand early 19^thcentury so it’s rather appropriate that the source of much of the island’s wealth today (the cruise ship passengers) also alight in the vicinity of Redcliffe Quay, though one can safely say the surroundings are far more upmarket now.

Heritage Quay – cruise ship passenger tourist trap.  Overpriced duty free shops and cafes abound, as well as taxi drivers, keen to take us to English Harbour!

St John’s Cathedral

We headed up the hill in search of St John’s Cathedral, which one of the books said could be seen from all over the town.  Actually, we found that it can’t easily be seen from much of the town but there are some good views across St John’s from the front steps.

The interior of St John’s Cathedral is in the final throes of a renovation project

Inside, the cathedral is in the final stages of an interior renovation.  Lots of new (soft)wood, stained a suitable colour – it all looks very smart.

(Top left and right) exterior views of St John’s Cathedral.  (Top right) Note the small trees growing through the building’s stonework. Perhaps the renovation project should have started with the external fabric of the building…….  (Bottom) View across St John’s from the cathedral

The outside, however, is in a sorry state of disrepair and in places, on the front façade at least, there are small trees growing on the horizontal surfaces.  Sadly, the interior refurb will not last with the exterior breaking open to wind and weather. 

Hungry, we headed back into town for an excellent curry lunch at Indian Spice, conveniently located close enough to the cruise ship dock to get passengers through but also far enough from the dock to be a part of the town and the local economy too.  We had an excellent meal, our first curry meal out for a very long time and with food worthy of some of the better Indian restaurants in which we have eaten.

And the bus trip back – far busier than on the way out, all the seats, including the folding aisle seats were taken as we squeezed onto some of the last available.  So, as with the Turkish dolmuş, every time someone wanted to get off, we had to play a convoluted game of (nearly) everyone off the bus, everyone on the bus until we had emptied sufficient passengers to have the aisle free once more.  All fun and games and you do meet an interesting cross-section of people…. The only thing we hadn’t achieved on our visit to town was to find the supermarket but, given how crowded our return bus was, that’s probably no bad thing.

St John's, Antigua