Day 8: Wednesday, March 8 ~ Antigua

(Eddy’s pronunciation: ant – IG – you – ah*)

*I haven’t really mentioned much about the Cruise Director Eddy.  He was very funny and we really enjoyed him as our CD.  One of his shticks is that he mispronounced the name of all of our ports. We didn’t really catch on to it at first, so neither of us remembers how he pronounced St. Maarten, but when we heard him say Antigua, we caught on.  Part of what made it so funny was that he is from Wales and does have an accent, so between his normal accent and his mispronunciation of these island names, we couldn’t help but chuckle.  I’ll include Eddy’s version of the island names for all the rest of our ports.  Emphasis is on the capitalized syllable.

Antigua was one of the ports on this itinerary that I was most looking forward to (along with the 3 ABC islands, of course!) because it was the only new port for the first week of the cruise.  Antigua is famous for having 365 beaches- one for every day of the year. I briefly considered using today as a beach day, but then decided against it because we were using St. Maarten and Barbados as beach days and I wanted something more adventurous for today. Antigua Adventures receives a 5 star rating on Trip Advisor, and also gets great reviews on Cruise Critic.  We decided to book their Eco Tour, which would take us out on a boat for 6 hours, including stops for snorkeling, hiking, a visit to Hell’s Gate Island, and lunch on the beach.  They offer a 10% discount if you pay a deposit online with a credit card, so I paid $23.50 per person online and was instructed to pay the remaining $80 per person in cash in US dollars on the day of our tour.

We woke up to an overcast and cloudy sky as we sailed into Antigua this morning.  The temperature felt much warmer and more humid than it had been so far this week, so we crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t rain during our tour!  We put the room service breakfast tag on our door last night, and it was delivered promptly at 7am.  As I had done yesterday, I requested smoked salmon for our bagels, but when I divided up all of our food, there was no plate with salmon. I just assumed they ran out or forgot or whatever, but it wasn’t a big deal.  We took our breakfast out onto the balcony to watch as we sailed into port.

Good morning Antigua!

Just as I finished eating, I heard the phone ring inside the cabin.  It was the room service manager calling to check up on us and make sure our breakfast was to our liking.  I’m not sure if he does this for all the cabins or if it was because we spoke with him last night during dinner, but I thought it was a nice touch.  I told him everything was great, but since he called, I asked if it was okay that we were writing in smoked salmon on the order form. I explained that we had ordered it yesterday and it was delivered, but it was not delivered today so I wasn’t sure if we were allowed to order it.  He said that was no problem at all to order the smoked salmon, apologized that it was forgotten with today’s order, and offered to send it up to the cabin right away.  I told him not to worry about it since we were already finished eating and needed to leave for our tour soon.  He told me to make sure to write down any other special requests when I order room service for the rest of the cruise and he would make sure that we got it.  I was quite impressed at the level of service and concern for our happiness.  Well done, Celebrity!

We packed up our beach bags and headed off the ship at 8:15am to meet our tour group.  We were instructed to meet at 8:45am at a boutique located just a 5 minute walk from the cruise ship, but I always like to give us a little extra time just in case we get lost and to make sure we are not late.  These guys were playing the steel drums when we got down to the pier.

When we got to the base of the pier, I immediately saw our meeting spot for the tour.  The instructions told us to walk across the wood bridge to the Exotic Antigua Boutique, so it was a relief to see a huge sign on their roof labeling the building so I could see it from right next to the cruise ship.

Now that I saw how close we were to the meeting spot, and since we were still a bit early, we walked past the bridge and continued straight towards the shops.  I have never been to this port before and I was curious to check out the port area, but I almost immediately regretted my decision.  It wasn’t a particularly pretty port area, and honestly it looked a bit run down.  

On top of that, the locals were extremely pushy. Every time we took a step down the street, another vendor approached us trying to get us to go into their store to buy something, or to book their tour or get in their taxi and they would take us to the beach.  I answered “No thank you, I already have a tour booked” which is usually enough for the vendors to back off, but they still kept pestering us.  I felt very uncomfortable and after just a few minutes, I told DH I had enough and we turned back to go wait at our meeting spot for the tour.  That didn’t give me the best first impression of Antigua, but I was hopeful that things would improve once we started our tour.

At 8:40am, we spotted our tour boat, clearly labeled with “Antigua Adventures” painted on the side of the boat.  There were already a few people on the boat who were staying at a hotel on the island, and the rest of us boarded after they tied up on the dock.

When I booked the tour, they said there was a maximum of 31 people on the tour, but the guides told us there would only be 22 people on our tour today with 3 guides, so there was lots of space to spread out.  The boat had a big canopy over the back half of the boat for shade, and it had a lower level with space to store our bags to keep them dry, as well as a bathroom. Once everyone was settled, the guide came around to collect our money to pay for the tour, and we left the dock promptly at 9am.

We spent the first hour of the tour speeding around the island, making occasional stops so the guides could point out the landmarks along the shoreline.  The guides also explained some of the history of Antigua.

This was an old navy fort… if you look closely about a quarter of the way in from the left side, you can see one of the canons still perched on the edge of the cliff.

Antigua has some very expensive, high end houses, so the guides pointed it out as we sped past them.

I think this was at one of the hotels

Our tour was called Eli’s Eco Tour, but the tour company Antigua Adventure also offers an Xtreme 360 tour which circumnavigates the entire island in a much faster speed boat.  At some point, that boat sped passed us and everyone looked like they were having a great time.  I did notice that the boat looked much more crowded than our boat, so I was happy to be on our slower boat with more space to spread out.

Our first longer stop was at Long Island, which I thought was funny because I was born and raised on Long Island in New York.  This section of the island has beautiful turquoise water, soft white sand, and lots of very expensive houses.  The guides spent a few minutes explaining about how sea turtles lay their eggs on this beach and the island requires the residents here to help facilitate that process and protect the eggs.  Something I found really interesting is that the guide told us that the turtles always return to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs. If a turtle was born here, but then swims over to St. Lucia for a few years, it will swim all the way back to this beach to lay it’s eggs.  Crazy!

While we were listening to one guide, one of the other guides served us fruit juice or water, but no rum punch just yet- we had to wait for the end of the day after snorkeling before they would serve the good stuff!

We stayed at Long Island for about 20 minutes, then made the 15-minute journey over to the mangroves.  When I went through the mangroves in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, I spotted lots of interesting animals and birds.  These mangroves weren’t quite as exciting and we didn’t spot any animals, but maybe they were just deeper inside and not visible from our boat?

Our next stop was at Pelican Island, where we saw tons of pelicans
perched up on the hill.  There were so many of them, and it was interesting that they all stay close by this one island.

Look closely and you can see lots of pelicans hiding in the bushes.

After leaving Pelican Island, we traveled less than 5 minutes to reach our next destination: Hell’s Gate Island.  This was the first time we could get off the boat, and we had the option of snorkeling, swimming in the natural jacuzzi, or going on a hike though a cave and up to the top of the bridge to see the views.  The guides explained that we only had about 40 minutes to spend here, so there was only time for us to do one activity.  They warned us that the last option was the most adventurous option, so of course that is what we picked to do!  

Approaching Hell’s Gate Island

Lots of coral and rocks just below us

That’s the bridge we were climbing up to

As we approached the island, the water was very choppy so I was a bit nervous about swimming over there from the boat.  The guides had life vests and pool noodles that we could use to float, so that did make the swimming a little easier, but be careful!  There are rocks in the water that come up close to the surface.  I was getting tossed around a lot and it was hard to control my direction with the current, and I scrapped my knee on the top of one of the rocks.  That scrape is still not fully healed today, over a month later, and I am fairly sure I will end up with a scar on my knee.  

Yay! We made it!

The guides were wonderful about helping everyone swim over to the island from the boat.  If anyone wasn’t a strong swimmer, the guides were there to help out.

As tough as that swim was, it was totally worth it!  The island is really unique.  There’s a small patch of soft sand forming a small beach with crystal clear bright blue water washing through the opening in the rocks.  That’s the area they referred to as a natural jacuzzi, and I could see it being a lovely place to sit and relax if you don’t want to hike through the cave.

Looking back towards our boat, you can see that the rocks which form the island are very sharp.  This natural landform is made of porous limestone rock, and there were lots of sharp jagged edges sticking out.  I would definitely recommend wearing water shoes to protect your feet if you are going to take the hike here.  We have our own aquasocks, but the guides had little booties for us to borrow if needed.

This photo shows where we entered the cave… do you see the vines hanging down from the top of the bridge?  There is a dark opening on the left side towards the bottom of the vines- that’s the cave we walked through.

The guides gave us very specific instructions for how to climb up the rocks, and they pointed out where to turn and how to maneuver safely through the narrow cave opening and up through the middle of the rocks to reach the top.  

It was really fun to climb up through the cave, but you need to be careful of your footing and be aware of what is around you. Some parts had a lower ceiling so you had to be careful not to bump your head, and some of the rocks were slippery. I did my best to snap lots of photos, but it wasn’t the greatest lighting conditions in there so I apologize that some of these came out blurry.

The last part was the steepest, but one of the guides stood at the top and told us where to step, and then reached out his hand to help us climb up to the very top.

Looking back down at the water flowing through the middle of the rocks

The views from the top of the island were stunning! It was totally worth the effort to hike up here as we had unobstructed panoramic views of the whole area.  

Notice how my hair is blowing all over the place? It was very windy up there so you had to be careful not to lose your footing while gazing out at the views.

When time was almost up, the guides helped us climb across the top of the bridge, and back down to the beach where we started the hike, and then we all swam back to the boat.  Hell’s Gate was one of the highlights of this tour.  The scenery was amazing and it was such a special experience to see this natural land formation.  I was a bit nervous going in because the guides did say it is a challenging hike, but I am so glad I did it and I would highly recommend giving it a try if you take this tour.  Yes, it was a little difficult to climb through the narrow spaces, but it was very doable with the help of the guides, and every one of the 15+ people in our group who attempted it was able to complete the hike.

Once everyone was back on the boat, we made another short 5-minute ride to our next stop at Bird Island.  The guides mentioned that the islands in Antigua have very simple names (Pelican Island, Bird Island, etc).  They pulled the boat into a little alcove with crystal clear aqua blue water and told us it would take them about 15 minutes to set up for lunch so we could do some swimming or walk around on the beach.  There was a small boat here when we arrived, but they were just getting ready to leave so we would have the whole island to ourselves.  

I liked the name of their boat… Do It Tomorrow

DH decided to go out for a swim

I took a little walk along the beach

This is what happens when I leave DH to hold my camera for a few minutes…

The water was so clear!

Lunch was served buffet style and included pasta salad, BBQ chicken, garden salad, and fried plantains.  They also had water, Coke, Coke Zero, beer, and rum punch to drink.  All of the food was delicious, and I was very impressed that they served lunch on real plates and with real silverware (ie: not disposable)!

There were a few picnic tables along the beach, and the trees helped provide some shade.

There was more than enough food, and anyone who wanted seconds was welcome to help themselves.  When we all had our fill, we cleared our plates and got ready for another little hike along a small trail that climbs up to the top of the hill on Bird Island.  Definitely make sure to wear good shoes for this hike.  Even though it only takes about 10 minutes to reach the top of the hill, it is steep and slippery in spots so it’s important to have good traction.

This is a map of the island and some of the animals that live here

As expected, the views from the top of the hill were beautiful.  We could see the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and many of the islands around
Antigua.

I love how this photo came out!

We found a little friend in the bushes

On the way back down the hill, we walked passed another beach on the opposite side of the island

After the hike, we all climbed back on the boat and motored about 5 minutes off the shore of Bird Island to the coral reef to go snorkeling.  The guides divided the group into 2 groups- the beginners stayed close to the boat, and the advanced group went out further from the boat with one of the guides.  We went with the advanced group and had no trouble keeping up with the guide despite the choppy current.  Unfortunately, all of the heavy winds really churned up the water so visibility was limited. We saw lots of rocks and coral, but not many fish.  I thought the snorkeling here was okay, but not great.

The guide dove down to the ocean floor and came back with a surprise… a conch shell!  This was the first time I have seen one of these while snorkeling!

He handed it to me to get a closer look…

That was the highlight of today’s snorkeling trip! It was also around the spot where we turned around to swim back towards the boat.  Swimming out was against the current, so the rest of the time we just floated and let the current gradually drift us back towards the boat.

I was out in the water snorkeling for about 20 minutes.  When I got back to the boat, the guides were ready and waiting with a special treat. They served us fresh baked banana bread, water, fruit juice, and very strong rum punch.  The rum punch was so strong that I actually asked for a cup with half punch and half fruit juice to dilute it to make it more drinkable haha The snack was much-needed after all that swimming!  

After that, we made the 45-minute journey back to the cruise port.

We docked back in front of the Exotic Antigua Boutique at 2:45pm.  Overall, I enjoyed the tour and thought the guides did a great job.  Antigua is a beautiful island, especially as seen from the water, but I would definitely recommend doing some research and picking a tour in advance. The locals at the port are incredibly pushy and I would not recommend trying to book a tour right there when you arrive, nor would I recommend spending too much time walking around the port area.  Our itinerary had many islands that are better for shopping where you don’t have to deal with the pushy locals.  Sorry Antigua, but you were not my favorite island of this cruise. 

We thanked our guides and went straight back to the ship, happy to find our
afternoon cheese plate waiting for us in the cabin.

Yay!  We finally got real crackers instead of saltines!  Call me crazy, but it really did make the cheese taste better.  After some quick showers, we headed down to the Gastro Bar because DH wanted to try some new beers (and we kind of needed a break from the Martini Bar lol)  DH had a beer and I tried some champagne.

We could see a beautiful sunset through the windows, so we went up to the outside deck on deck 5 to get a better look. This is what cruising is all about!

Such a perfect night to lounge on an outside deck, watching the sun set over the ocean with some drinks.

At 7pm, we went down to the MDR for dinner.  Here is tonight’s menu:

My favorite treat on cruises is escargot.  I never eat this any other time besides on a cruise, so I love that Celebrity offers it as an every day appetizer.  I ordered this many times over our 2 week cruise, but I’ll only post the photo this one time.

Spiced Duck Rillettes

Celebrity Signature Crab Cake

Penne Primavera

Oven Roasted Chicken Saltimbocca (this was the only dish from the entire cruise which I thought was a miss… it just wasn’t what I expected and I didn’t really enjoy it.  We had planned to share the penne but I ended up eating most of it on my own.)

Dessert Menu

I don’t have a photo of the dessert but I am fairly certain that I ordered the Apple Tart.  After dinner, we went upstairs to watch a few minutes of the evening hot glass show.  We never got to do this on our 2016 cruise, but I really liked seeing the shows at night. The hot glass seems to glow brighter at night, and it was much cooler watching the show in the evening air instead of in the daytime sun.  We only had a few minutes to watch the show because we needed to get to the main theater by 9pm, but it was worth it to see them make one piece.

Tonight’s featured performer was Savannah Smith, backed by the Eclipse Orchestra.  She is a singer and performer in Las Vegas and she put on a wonderful, entertaining show.  She sings songs by the famous female divas, and her voice is very strong.  We really enjoyed it.

After the show, we went straight back to the cabin, tired from a busy day in Antigua but looking forward to tomorrow in St. Lucia!

Step Tracker Daily Total:  4367 steps; 1.671 miles