With its serene tropical landscape and sheltered pristine beach, Antigua?s Carlisle Bay is worth the flight fare alone, writes Claudia Dudman
It was with some trepidation that I left for a trip to Antigua in early November, since hurricanes Irma and Maria had recently inflicted their worst on much of the Caribbean. I?d been told that the island, although battered for two days, had escaped relatively lightly, but I still couldn?t get away from the images on the news that had beamed from my television, laying bare the devastation for all the world to see.
Barbuda, Antigua?s sister island, was completely flattened and its population had been rehoused there, initially in the cricket stadium, and then in temporary housing.
Hustle and bustle But as soon as I touched down and made my way through the arrivals hall, my mood lifted and my conscience eased. The area was a hive of activity: hotel employees were jovially meeting guests; taxis and buses were loading up tourists and their suitcases, fresh off the carousel, and ferrying them off to their destinations.
The hustle and bustle of the place, I realised, meant that for the Antiguans, life, even with all that a fierce hurricane can throw at them, carries on. I had also forgotten how the West Indians are a people with such a convivial and relaxed disposition that you can?t help but be carried by it. It?s infectious.
Our hotel Carlisle Bay was situated on the south side of the island, roughly a half-hour drive from the airport....