Three hundred and sixty-five beaches. You get about ten days.
Which reef boat actually anchors long enough to swim. What the Sunday climb to Shirley Heights costs once the taxi is in. Whether Barbuda earns a whole day of your week.
A boat day, a Sunday on the hill, a kitchen, a sandbar.
Most first weeks here end up built around these four. Prices, timings, and what the people who went say about them.
01The whole island by seaAdventure Antigua – The Xtreme CircumnavigationA full lap of Antigua by powerboat, through Bird Island and the north-east cays. The day everyone else on your flight is also trying to book.
02Sunday on the hillSunset party at Shirley Heights – SHARE round tripSteel pan at Shirley Heights, with English Harbour and the whole south coast laid out below. Go for the six o’clock light, not the queue at eight.
03The jerk lessonNicole’s Table – All about JerkA hillside kitchen above Jolly Harbour, an afternoon over the drum, and lunch you cooked. Small classes, so it goes early.
04Standing in the shallowsStingray City Antigua for all the ages – ROUND TRIP INCLUDEDA sandbar off the north-east coast where the rays come to you in waist-deep water. Book the morning boat before the wind gets up.
Sandbar, reef or the whole coastline. Pick your kind of water day.
The trade wind blows across Antigua from the east all year, which decides everything: calm mornings on the leeward side, chop by mid-afternoon on the windward. Four kinds of day on the water, what it costs to get aboard each, and which coast it suits.
Six ways to spend a day on Antigua.
A beach with nobody on it. A sandbar full of rays. The reef off the south coast, the Georgian dockyard at English Harbour, the capital on a quiet cruise day, and the long lap of the island by road. Six starting points, each with its strongest day out.
The days out most travellers to Antigua take.
Every Antigua review →What fills up first on these two islands, and what each one does to deserve it.
1
Adventure Antigua – The Xtreme Circumnavigation
Review of Adventure Antigua’s Xtreme Circumnavigation, a fast island tour with stingrays, snorkeling, beach lunch, rum punch, and history.
From · $221
Read our review →
2
Turtle Beach Power Snorkeling Adventure
from $132
3
Scenic Full Day Tour of Antigua
from $142
4
Snorkel – Lobster Lunch Cruise to Bird Island and Paradise Reef
from $185
5
Adventure Antigua – Eli’s Original Eco Tour
from $142
6
Antigua Round Island Tour
from $93
7
Antigua VIP Tours – Private Platinum Tour
from $170
8
Private Snorkeling and Sightseeing Tour of Antigua
from $125
What a day out on Antigua actually costs.
Antigua has a reputation for being expensive. The sea does not care about that at all — here is everything on the site, grouped by what it costs.
Shared transfers to Shirley Heights, town walks, the shorter beach runs and a seat on somebody else’s boat.
The standard full day: reef snorkelling, the Stingray City sandbar, round-island minibuses and the cooking classes.
- 1Turtle Beach Power Snorkeling Adventurefrom $132
- 2Scenic Full Day Tour of Antiguafrom $142
- 3Adventure Antigua – Eli’s Original Eco Tourfrom $142
Circumnavigations, private drivers for the day, chartered sailing and the Barbuda crossing.
English Harbour: a working Georgian dockyard, and the hill above it.
Everything at English Harbour →
Nelson’s Dockyard is the only Georgian naval yard on earth still doing the job it was built for, and yachts still tie up against its stone. The road climbs from there to Shirley Heights, where the whole south coast opens out. These three carry more travellers than anything else on this side of the island.
Shirley Heights, and how you get up there
The barbecue and the steel band run from four, the light goes at half past six, and the road up is single track. A shared round trip costs less than the taxi you will otherwise negotiate at the bottom.
Georgian stone, still in use
Sail lofts, the capstan house and the officers’ quarters, all restored and all still working around a marina. Worth a guide: without one it reads as pretty buildings rather than the yard that kept a fleet at sea.
Fig Tree Drive and the east coast
The rainforest road cuts across the south-west under mango and breadfruit, then the coast road runs east to Devil’s Bridge where the Atlantic has chewed a limestone arch out of the headland.
Antigua turns its back on the road and faces the reef.
The south coast reef runs two miles off Jolly Harbour in water you can see your own feet in. North-east, the cays scatter towards Bird Island and Great Bird, and the sandbars come up warm at low tide. Almost every good day here is reached by hull.
The beach count is a tourist-board number. The emptiness is real.
Half Moon Bay on the Atlantic side takes a battering and is worth the drive for it. Darkwood and Ffryes on the leeward coast stay flat all morning. Dickenson Bay has the bars, and the north-east cays have nobody at all. The wind decides which of them you want on any given day.
Every beach day on the island →
A dockyard, a hill and a sandbar you will not find anywhere else.
Sun and sand are the whole Caribbean. A Georgian dockyard still full of working yachts, a hemisphere’s worth of frigatebirds in one lagoon, and a Sunday hill party older than most of the hotels are not.
The Shirley Heights Lookout
The gun battery above English Harbour was built to watch for the French, and since the 1970s it has been a Sunday barbecue instead. Steel pan first, then a brass band, and below you the whole harbour with the masts of the yard sticking up out of it. Locals arrive late and stay; the tour buses come at six and leave at eight. Go up early, take the wall on the western side, and let the light do the work.
- 1Sunset party at Shirley Heights – SHARE round trip★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 71 reviews
- 2Antigua Sunset Catamaran Cruise From St. John’s★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 63 reviews
- 3E-Bike Historical Sunset Tour in Fort James★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 24 reviews
Nelson’s Dockyard
The only Georgian naval dockyard anywhere still doing the job it was built for. Sail lofts, the capstan house, the pillars of the boat house standing roofless in a row, and modern yachts tied up against two-hundred-year-old stone. It was built to careen and repair a fleet in the lee of a hill that hid it from the sea, which is exactly why the harbour still works.
- 1Historic City, Fort and Beach E-Bike Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 58 reviews
- 2Antigua Historical Sites Island Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 41 reviews
- 3Historic Island Tour(Historic Barbuda tour also available))★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 34 reviews
The sandbar off the north-east
A shallow bar a mile offshore where southern stingrays have been fed for long enough that they now come to the boat. The water is chest-high at most and warm all the way down, and the rays move like heavy silk against your legs. Morning trips are calmer: by early afternoon the trade wind puts a chop on the bar and the visibility goes.
- 1Stingray City Antigua for all the ages – ROUND TRIP INCLUDED★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 196 reviews
- 26-Hours Tour East Coast of Antigua: Stingray City, Lunch & Beach★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 109 reviews
- 3Stingray City experience, Devils Bridge and Long Bay Beach★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 59 reviews
Barbuda is an hour away and about forty years behind.
One village, no traffic lights, and a beach that runs seventeen miles with pink sand at the southern end. Codrington Lagoon holds the largest frigatebird colony in this hemisphere — in the breeding months the males sit in the mangrove with a scarlet throat pouch inflated to the size of a football. Boats and the small plane both go and both come back the same day, and both stop when the crossing gets rough.
- 1Historic Island Tour(Historic Barbuda tour also available))from $128
- 2JTAT Private Transfers & Tours, Saint John’s, Antigua and Barbudafrom $160
- 3Nightlife Tour of Antigua and Barbudafrom $80
Jerk over a drum, rum off the still, lobster on the beach.
The food here is Creole with a hard West Indian accent — saltfish and fungee at breakfast, ducana, goat water, pepperpot. Book the cooking class before you land, the rum tasting for a ship day, and lunch anywhere the boat happens to stop.
Four things you cannot leave until you land.
Most of this island can be sorted the night before from a bar stool at the dockyard. These four run on one day of the week, a boat timetable or a table that seats eight, and none of them care what time your flight lands.
- 01Sunset party at Shirley Heights – SHARE round tripThe lookout party is a Sunday fixture and the road up is single track. Seats on the shared round trips go days ahead in high season.
- 02Nicole’s Table – All about JerkThe class runs at one table in one kitchen. Eight seats, a couple of afternoons a week, and no way to squeeze a ninth in.
- 03Adventure Antigua – The Xtreme CircumnavigationThe full lap of the island only runs on set days, and it is the single most booked thing on Antigua. In season it fills a week out.
- 04Historic Island Tour(Historic Barbuda tour also available))The crossing is a ferry timetable, not a taxi. One boat over, one boat back, and rough weather cancels the whole day.
Four cruise ships alongside, and St John’s stops being a small town.
Heritage Quay can take four ships at once, and on those mornings the capital, the nearest beaches and the sandbar tours all fill at the same hour. The answer is to go the other way: east and south, into a kitchen, or onto water that leaves before the tenders do.
The biggest lists on the site
Water, town, kitchen, road: pick the kind of day
Beach, sandbar, capital, dockyard, Barbuda: the week most people end up doing.
English Harbour
BarbudaThe newest Antigua and Barbuda reviews.
Everything else we have just written up →
Shore Excursion: City of St John’s Sightseeing Tour
Read our review →
St. John’s City Private Tour including Fort James
Read our review →
Private Round Trip Transfer From Antigua Airport to St. James’s Club & Villas
Read our review →
