Barbuda Day 4… Last Full Day

Well,  we woke up this morning to the clearest water we saw all week.

 So the snorkeling was on!

There were some grass beds, but most of the dark spots you see are live coral. This is the most coral I've ever seen. Bailley and I snorkeled most of the morning and saw lots of fish.

Cindy and Bailley spent some time making our last sandcastle while Abigail 'supervised'. 

We tried to arrange a boat to the great frigate bird sanctuary while we drove into town for lunch. We actually ate street food cooked on a grill under a tent (how exciting :). Afterwards we ended up just driving back down the coast to the cottage as Bailley had developed a rash and Madison (noticeably absent from the above shots) has enough sand fly bites for this adventure.

Barbuda… the Mayberry of the Caribbean :)

Barbuda Day 3

Today we had our Thanksgiving lunch. It was good. Two things different from our typical holiday meal... We had a chilled sorrel drink, which they only have now and Christmas, and Johnny cakes. We then drove to the other side of the island.

Here you can see the caves that the Arawak Indians used as shelter. 

This is straight up Atlantic Ocean, just beautiful, clear, and _very_ rough.

Here's everyone with Two Foot Bay, just past the caves, as our background.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. We are so lucky and thankful for so much!

Jim

Barbuda Day 1 and 2

OK… our first full day on Barbuda. Looked a lot like the pic below.

Just miles of deserted beach. Like really miles. I was going to walk to Palmetto point off in the distance. I walked for what felt like an hour and wasn't even to the Pink Sand beach or ferry landing which appeared like the half way point.

Lunch was at Uncle Roddy's which is next door. Nice and convenient, we just have to order a day in advance so that he knows what to buy and cook. This is us before the massive fly attack on the lobster.

Yeah… it's stressful.

 Like I mentioned, there's a beach north of us with pink sand. It actually was way more pink than I expected, especially the sections of shells left in patterns by the waves. The surf was really rough, so we left to drive into town. We were told Codrington has only one road, and it's impossible to get lost… well, we did the impossible :)  We drove through that small town _a lot_.

We stopped for lunch at The Palm Restaurant… it was very good and reasonable priced. The girls made reservations for Thanksgiving lunch there.

I think we are going to try for a family picture tonight before dinner at Uncle Roddy's. The internet just came back to us today, so posting is very hit or miss. I hope everyone is well and has a great Thanksgiving in case we can't get anything sent tomorrow.

Jim

Antigua-Barbuda Travel Day

Today was the last day in Antigua as we traveled to Barbuda. Today was quite an adventure… yes, even more so than our first day. Cindy found a rainforest canopy tour and wanted to do it. I'm not sure she knew it was a zip line tour from her hesitancy off the first platform. It also took me a couple of lines to warm up to it, but we all had a blast!

Then on to buy groceries, _try_ to find snorkeling gear to rent, and to the airport. I was told the plane was a small prop plane… hey, that's not _that_ small...

 cause it wasn't our plane. Our plane was on down the taxiway. The pilot and 7 of us filled that that thing to the brim. It was a nice flight, but I was very happy to be back on the ground.

Then a long taxi ride to the middle of nowhere… our cottage :) This is the view off the porch.

 And nothing but miles of deserted beach.

Well… we are here. So not a lot in store now but rest and relaxation for the next few days.

Antigua Day 2

 OK… Our first full day in Antigua. We went to the beach at the resort at Nonsuch Bay and just relaxed. That doesn't mean that there wasn't an awesome display of sandcastle building.

We then retired to one of the pools, just below our rental.

We decided to do something more local for lunch and see another beach too. Here are me and Cindy at Smiling Harry's. The fish and chicken and peas and rice were really good and we ate a lot… didn't stop Harry from critiquing how much each of us ate or didn't eat :)

Here's the beach at Half Moon Bay. Just stunningly beautiful… the girls *and* the beach. It is on the Atlantic side, so the waves were pretty large.

And finally… a sunset from our balcony… not too shabby.

Antigua-Barbuda Travel Day 1 and 2

Well… this Thanksgiving we decided to go to Antigua-Barbuda. We decided to stay in Antigua first, then make our way to Barbuda.

First things first… grabbing a quick Schlotsky's sandwich before our flight to Atlanta.

Atlanta, for an overnight stay…what? Unlike our original tickets we bought from Delta, our newly changed tickets had a night layover in Atlanta. Thank you Delta (NOT).

What'll ya have? We had to hit the Varsity in the airport. I wanted to take Abigail, our Chick-fil-A fanatic, to the Dwarf House… but we got to the hotel late and it was cold and rainy, so we decided against it.

Two days in and we finally see the Caribbean Sea. The airport immigration took well over an hour (a British Airways 777 landed just before us). But what really took so long was the drive to the resort. Man… right hand drive car, left side of the road, at night, no roadsigns, minimally useful maps, did I mention gravel roads?… the 30-45 minute drive took _well_ over an hour. I made more wrong turns than right for sure. But we made finally made it… had a nice dinner at the resort, and hit the beds.