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Antigua and Barbuda

Caribbean

A twin-island nation in the eastern Caribbean, Antigua and Barbuda is defined by its deeply indented coastline, said to hold a beach for every day of the year, and by a sailing heritage centred on English Harbour. There the Georgian-era Nelson's Dockyard, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still shelters yachts as it did the Royal Navy in the 1780s, and each April the island hosts Antigua Sailing Week, the Caribbean's flagship regatta. Beyond the water, St. John's throws one of the region's great summer carnivals, and the reefs and wrecks off the leeward coast draw divers year round.

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What you can do in Antigua and Barbuda

Kitesurfing

Nonsuch BayJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecNonsuch Bay is one of the Caribbean's most forgiving kitesurfing spots. On Antigua's windward east coast, a long outer reef breaks the Atlantic swell and leaves a broad, shallow lagoon behind Green Island where the water is often waist to chest deep and glassy flat. The same easterly trade winds that make the island a sailing centre blow side-shore across these flats from November to April, steady and clean, so a learner can stand up and try again rather than being washed into deep water or shorebreak. The far north beach of Green Island is the launch, reachable only by boat, which keeps it quiet and uncrowded compared with the busy kite beaches elsewhere in the region. There is space for beginners to practise their first water starts on the inside and flat water for freeriders and freestylers to carve on the outside, with the reef keeping everything calm. Warm water, reliable wind and a shallow, protected lagoon add up to a spot that flatters new riders and still rewards the experienced, in a corner of Antigua most visitors never see.

Museums & Galleries

English HarbourJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecNelson's Dockyard is the only working Georgian-era naval dockyard left in the world, and it is the reason English Harbour carries the weight it does. Britain's Royal Navy built the base in the 18th century to guard its Caribbean sugar colonies, and a young Horatio Nelson was stationed here in the 1780s. The stone capstan house, sail lofts, officers' quarters and pillars that once carried a boat-house roof have been restored rather than rebuilt, and in 2016 UNESCO inscribed the Antigua Naval Dockyard and its related archaeological sites as a World Heritage Site. The Dockyard Museum, in the former Naval Officer's House, lays out the story across two floors, from the brutal economics of the sugar-and-slavery era that the fleet protected to the daily life of sailors in a malarial tropical station. Walk up to Shirley Heights above the harbour and the whole defensive landscape falls into place, gun batteries, cisterns and lookouts strung along the ridges. It is history you move through rather than read about, still full of masts and rigging.

Music & Culture Festivals

Antigua CarnivalSt. John'sJul AugAntigua Carnival is billed as the Caribbean's greatest summer festival, and for twelve days in late July and early August it takes over St. John's completely. Unlike the pre-Lenten carnivals of Trinidad or Rio, Antigua's festival grew out of emancipation: it was staged in its modern form in 1957 to celebrate the 1834 freeing of the enslaved across the British Caribbean, and that history of release still runs through it. The days build through calypso and soca monarch competitions, the Panorama steelpan contest, a teen and a national queen pageant, and children's mas, before exploding into two weekends of road march when the mas bands, feathered and sequinned, parade through the capital behind music trucks. The pre-dawn J'ouvert, when revellers cover themselves in paint, oil and mud and dance through the dark streets to steelpan and iron, is the rawest and best-loved moment. It is a participatory street festival rather than a spectator show, run by the national Festivals Commission, and visitors are pulled straight into the bands and the fetes.

Sailing

Antigua Sailing WeekEnglish HarbourJan Feb Mar Apr May DecEnglish Harbour is where Caribbean sailing has its spiritual home. This deep, hurricane-safe inlet on Antigua's south coast was the Royal Navy's Georgian dockyard, and the restored stone warehouses and sail lofts of Nelson's Dockyard now shelter superyachts and classic wooden boats instead of frigates. The steady 15 to 20 knot trade winds, warm water and a coastline of coves make it a natural racing ground, and every April the island stages Antigua Sailing Week, first run in 1968 and still the flagship regatta of the eastern Caribbean. The five days of racing out of English and Falmouth Harbours draw a huge fleet, from grand-prix maxis to bareboat cruisers crewed by visitors, and the shore scene at the Dockyard and the Antigua Yacht Club is as much a part of it as the windward legs. For anyone learning the ropes, the National Sailing Academy runs lessons from the same water, so you can go from a first dinghy session to crewing a keelboat in one of the world's great sailing settings.

Scuba Diving

Jolly HarbourJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Nov DecJolly Harbour is the practical home of diving in Antigua. Sitting on the leeward west coast, it is shielded from the trade winds that stir the Atlantic side, so the water is usually calm and clear and the boat rides to the sites are short. The signature reef is Cades Reef, a long protected ribbon off the south-west coast with coral heads, sponges, parrotfish, barracuda, turtles and the occasional eagle ray in easy 12 to 18 metre depths. For structure there is the Andes, a three-masted British merchant barque that caught fire and sank in Deep Bay in 1905 and now sits upright in shallow water as an artificial reef you can circle on a single tank, plus the dramatic Pillars of Hercules rock formation at the harbour mouth. The conditions are forgiving enough to learn in and varied enough to keep certified divers interested, and the two long-running PADI centres at Jolly Harbour run the full ladder of courses as well as daily two-tank guided dives. This is warm, low-stress Caribbean diving with reef and wreck within the same morning.

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Kitesurfing
Museums
Music Festivals
Sailing
Scuba Diving

Upcoming events in Antigua and Barbuda