Thursday 22 January 2026 – At Sea: Roger

At around 0700 the captain came over the intercom: “We are very sorry but with 30 knot winds we have been unable to berth at Basseterre in St Kitts”. It looks like this bloody ship is using a very poor form of berth control!! This is the fourth port we have been unable to berth at. This is rather annoying as other ships seem to get in ok. We had planned a dune buggy adventure too so very disappointed to miss that. Never mind!

We met Debbie and Dave for breakfast in the Terrace cafe. Later we adjourned to our cabin for a game of cards, I think called ‘Up and down the river’, which Debbie won.

After lunch we headed to deck 16 for a game of baggo bean-bag toss, tossing soft bags onto a sloping steel ramp with a hole in it. Sylvia and Dave cleaned up on that one as the ship steamed very slowly to Guadeloupe.

We then had a round of golf on the 18-hole putting course. Dave won that one although Sylvia’s score was pretty close.

A visit to the Creperie mid afternoon was followed by some relaxation. Sylvia and I skipped dinner. Around 2100 we headed to the Allura Lounge (theatre) where the vocalist Yaniv Zarif performed a number of songs from Broadway.

 

Friday 23 January 2026 – Guadeloupe: Sylvia

We were up early this morning. After missing our port yesterday we expected to arrive at Pointe-a-Pitre on time or early, but sadly we were a little late. We had arranged to have breakfast in our suite so we could disembark shortly after docking at 7am, but it was just after 8 by the time we were cleared to leave. Guadeloupe looked like a great place from the ship, despite the threatening clouds. The lush mountains were shrouded in mist but the colourful buildings stood out nonetheless.

On disembarking we arranged a taxi to take us to the other side of Basse-Terre. Guadeloupe, which looks like one butterfly shaped island, is actually two, joined in the middle by a road bridge. Basse-Terre is the larger island with more rainforest. We had decided to head to a small place called Plage Caraïbes, where we had booked a ‘self-drive’ dinghy to explore part of one of Cousteau’s marine reserves. There is something about the drivers in these French territories. Sandrine, like our driver on São Tomé back in October, drove like she was in a massive hurry, despite the fact that we had arranged to pay her for the full day. The road wound its way up over the mountains and we couldn’t have got much closer to the car in front if we had tried. From the road we caught glimpses of the waterfalls this area is known for through the thick rainforest. It was obvious that this island does not lack for rain.

Just as we arrived at Plage Caraïbes I received a call from the boat rental company checking to see if we were still planning to come, given we had left the ship late. After a quick briefing we headed out, Dave taking charge of the wee, well-kitted-out boat. We had been provided with a map, showing a number of different places within the marine reserve where we could moor to a buoy and snorkel.

We headed first to the area of sea grass, known for turtles. It was about a 40-minute ride. The rain came down in buckets as we arrived but it stayed fairly warm and we were planning to get wet anyway so we didn’t mind. As we tied up to the buoy we could see many snorkelers in the water and it didn’t take us long to find turtles ourselves. They are incredibly graceful looking animals and seemed to ignore all the people around, which was nice.

From there we headed out to Pigeon Island. Dave had hired a small sea-bob and towed Debbie along with that for a while, then Roger had a go. The area around the island had plenty of fish and while most of the coral was dead, there was enough new stuff coming through to make it interesting. Many people had hired kayaks and paddled over to the area.

We then motored around to another buoy on the other side of the island. Debbie decided to stay on the boat expecting to be able to dry out and warm up while the rest of us snorkelled, but it rained the whole time we were there. The snorkelling there was lovely – at one point we came across a large school of bright blue fish, and in another spot red-bellied rock wrasse were munching on the algae on the coral.

Heading back towards our start point, the sun came out and we snorkelled in two more spots. In one we were surrounded by what seemed like thousands of small zebra fish. In the other there were more corals. It was warm and the water was calm and fairly clear, a dream Caribbean landscape.

Arriving back at our start point on time, just before 1pm, we caused ourselves and others a bit of hilarity as we jumped out of the boat and waded to shore. There was quite a drop-off just where the waves were crashing. I had already made it safely to shore but Roger fell over, nearly knocking Debbie and Dave over too and we were all in absolute hysterics. Eventually we all got to shore. It wasn’t until I was cleaning up later, when back on board Allura, that I realised that while Roger had managed to bring a bag full of sand back with him, he had lost half his snorkel.

After a quick rinse off and changing into dry clothes, we met our taxi driver for the return trip to Pointe-a-Pitre. This time we went by the coast road, stopping for a coffee or coke at the small town of Deshaies, where the TV series Death in Paradise was filmed.

Back on board we headed to the bakery/creperie and enjoyed a mid-afternoon snack. By this time we were all pretty hungry and ate way more than we probably needed.

Later in the evening we ate at Polo Grill, the specialty steak restaurant, all having steaks with various sides as our mains. After dessert, coffee and some entertaining banter we retired for a relaxing, early evening.

 

Saturday 24 January 2026 – Antigua: David

Roger, (probably by mistake), offered Dave or Debbie to write the blog for a day. Dave decided to give it a crack, so here we go…

At 705am I awoke to find us docked at St John city, the capital of Antigua. There were three other cruise ships also docked, a P&O Cruise ship with ~5,000 passengers, MSC Explora I with ~900 passengers and another small one with 100 or so. So that’s potentially almost 7,500 people offloading into the city of St John, population 25,000. We understood this more when later we were told that Antigua’s only industry is tourism – no exports. The main tourism is from November to April and there is very little at other times due to the hurricane season.

I’m getting ahead of myself – let’s start with some facts from Lawrence our tour guide for the day:
Antigua: pronounced phonetically Antega.
Language: English but also their own dialect broken or pidgin English – we say “over there” they say “ova da”.
Currency: East Caribbean dollar – $2.65 EC to $1 US.
The main (only) industry up until 1970 was sugar cane, then it became economically unviable and now is only tourism.
Population: around 105,000.
Size: roughly 22.5km wide by 19.3km long, roughly circular in shape with harbours. 285 square kms
Highest point: Boggy Peak at 402 metres. Its name was changed temporarily to Obama Peak when Barak Obama was president of USA.
Claim to fame: Sir Viv Richards came from Antigua, (famous West Indies cricket captain).
2nd claim to fame: Eric Clapton has a house on the island – (see photo – apparently he is a musician).

3rd claim to fame: Princess Margaret honeymooned here at Clarence House – (see photo, apparently she was Queen Elizabeth’s wild sister).

Petrol price: US$6.20 a US gallon. NZ$2.83 per litre.
Vehicle registrations: Number plates for vehicles start with letters as follows: R for rentals; TX for taxis; B for Bus; A for locals from Antigua; C for Commercial and G for Government.

This country is made up of two main islands Antigua and Barbuda, with one government. It gained full independence from Britain only in 1981.

Back to our day – We met Roger and Sylvia for breakfast in the Terrace cafe at 8am and then headed off to meet Lawrence at 9. We walked the wharf area, serenaded by a live band playing “We come from a land down under”. How did they know? 99% of our boat passengers are Americans. The plan was for Lawrence to give us a full guided tour of the island and a swim at one of the 365 beaches. You should have seen the look on some faces when the first thing he said to us was, “Did you read the fine print? This is a walking tour.” Oh dear we will need to drop these bags off. I am sure Sylvia wondered how she had made a mistake with the booking 😅😅. When he confessed to the joke, the fun tone was set for the day. Soon we were in a small bus/van with 4 others, (a group from Wales), to start our tour.

Firstly we headed out of St John past the old national cricket stadium where Brian Lara set a world record for highest score for a batter against England. The stadium has now been replaced by a new stadium called the Sir Vivian Richards cricket ground, funded by China, just on the outside of town. There is now a Chinese embassy here as well. We also travelled past the only prison on the island, built in 1735 with around 250 occupants. Apparently it is not called a prison just 1735 and everyone knows.

We were warned that we may see mongoose on the island as they are prolific. They were introduced to the island to kill off the snakes. That aspect was successful as the island is snake free but there is now an abundance of mongoose who like to snack on chickens.

We noticed that there are many unfinished homes on the island. Lawrence explained the two reasons for this: one is that people run out of money because everything has to be imported and it is so expensive, and the second is the people that own them that live in other parts of the world and only work on the houses when they come to the island on holiday.

Our first stop was within the national park on the top of a peninsular overlooking where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean sea. From here in one direction we looked out across to Willoughby Bay and also Eric Clapton’s small bach, (my humour).  On the other side was English harbour and Falmouth harbour – I do wonder how it got that name? Perhaps many ships came to grief entering the harbour and bad words were spoken by various captains or perhaps it was Christopher Columbus when he found the island in 1493.

We stopped at another part of the National Park with amazing views back over the harbours.

From there we headed down into the harbour where it became obvious the rich come in their boats when visiting this area. We were taken to the area known as Nelson’s dockyards. This is where many British ships, warships mainly, were brought for repairs and the area was named after some British man, Horatio Nelson, who Roger says is quite famous in the UK to do with wars.

Lawrence dropped us off and we were told we were getting a guided tour around the dockyards with a group of others. We waited in a room at the entrance for the guide to arrive. This is not Sylvia and Roger’s thing so they decided they were going to guide themselves and started walking off into the facility. Nobody told the other 30 people waiting in the area with us what they were doing so they, like sheep, just started following Roger and Sylvia. Debbie and I just stood and watched thinking maybe they just wanted to guide themselves as well or were they just following blindly? Anyway Sylvia and Roger slipped obliviously from view, (not intentional I think), and the group had gotten 30 odd metres into the facility and stood looking like lost sheep. One of the guides  from the facility couldn’t figure it out and said “ This has never happened before – my group has just gone.” There were only about 6 of us left. We suggested they were the group standing lost in the facility and he duly spoke to them and they all returned….except Roger and Sylvia who continued on in their merry way not to be seen again until sometime later. Debbie and I had quite a giggle to ourselves. As a postscript, the guided tour was pretty much a waste of time and after about 10-minutes we quietly slipped away and guided ourselves, which many others were also doing quite successfully.

The docklands area was very very busy and would be one of the main tourist attractions for Antigua, along with the beaches, particularly for day trippers like us. The area started being used as a dockyard in 1725 with many ships repaired there. It was abandoned by the British navy in 1889.  Restoration of the area commenced around 1955 and the wharf and marina area is now well used by luxury launches and yachts, and the docklands buildings themselves have become a museum. From there we could see Clarence House on the hill above the harbour.

We carried on around the island through some rainforest, where we were told there are very few birds due to the 1990’s hurricanes which devastated the island and killed off a large amount of the bird life.  After that  we drove past West Indies fast bowler Andy Robert’s house and on to one of the famous Caribbean beaches for some food and a swim. It was a picture with lovely golden sand and turquoise clear water with a restaurant bar area opening onto the beach. The water looked so clear and inviting so no sooner had the food been consumed than I found myself in the water enjoying a cool off. There is next to no surf in any of the beaches we have been to. Yes, this is what a Caribbean holiday is all about.

Too soon the day was gone and we were back on the bus/van for our return to St John and the boat. I say van/bus because there is no way a full size bus could fit on those roads – they were narrow, rough and bumpy, with repairs on top of repairs and, as Lawrence said, people can and do just park anywhere either side of the road. I was quite surprised when Roger mentioned he had managed a quick 40 winks in the van.

The British influence here was clear as they drive on the left and use miles per hour, however the petrol is in American gallons not litres. All their fuel comes from Venezuela so it will be interesting to see that into the future. All electricity is generated by diesel generators. Come 5pm, we departed the port on our way to St Thomas. The water and the beaches on Antigua were wonderful and reminded me of our Pacific island beaches. A fun enjoyable day.