Grandeur of the Seas - Day 6 - Antigua (Part 1)

Day 2 of our 5 ports had arrived with us docking in Antigua. Dad woke up with less swelling but now large purple bruises had started to show on his left forearm and right upper arm. He still had no limitations in movement so he decided not to bother visiting medical either this morning.

Over several days, the bruises eventually became dark gray and merged together to the point that I began to refer to him as having tattoo sleeves. He seemed to enjoy the pseudo celebrity status showing off his "tattoo sleeves" to everyone we chatted with. Nothing left to do now but chuckle when other passengers would turn to their friends and point out that Dad was "that guy" from the Battle of the Sexes game and ask him to show his arms to their friends. Thankfully my arms never looked like that but I think we'll both be remaining spectators during any future Battle of the Sexes games.

When your sailboat has a baby

Today, we had booked a private tour with Barry from Barry's Taxi. We had previously looked into the also recommended private company of Gordon Antigua Tours for a simple few hour highlights tour. We even used Gordon's list of tour stops to send to Barry as places we wanted to see. After doing further research, I discovered an interesting destination in Antigua known as the Donkey Sanctuary. Donkeys to them are as common as stray cats here and often get hit by cars while they roam freely on the roads. This place rescues the donkeys (as well as cats and dogs which then can be adopted out) and gives them a safe place and care for the rest of the donkey's life. There is no admission to the place but they accept donations either in straight donations or in the form of you adopting a donkey (in name only) and/or buying a T-shirt or even from their small book shop (a 3 foot tall bookshelf tucked in a corner) where they sell donated books to raise funds. I sent another email to Gordon asking if we could add this stop to his tour stops. He wrote back and said no because the road leading up to the place was in too bad of a condition to send his vehicles on it. We reached out to the sanctuary who emailed back and said "Don't know why he'd say that, our road was just redone and is fine." Posed the same question to Barry and he said sure we can go there too. Barry threw in a couple other historical landmarks to make up a five hour tour for just the two of us at $200. I found it pleasantly surprising that both companies with which we booked privately this trip required no money paid by us until we arrived and finished our tour. No harm no foul if something caused us to miss port that day. Click here to check out Barry's Taxi & Tours' website.

I think this guy fishing next to the cruise ship was hoping to catch a buffet lunch

Spotted the bridge officers stepping out on the wing to watch us dock

Given that we had to meet Barry outside the Heritage Quay area at 9AM and were expected to dock at 8AM, we were planning to take advantage of Carlington's escort. However, we had arrived, docked, and been cleared to get off the ship all before 8AM. When we have early tours, we don't like to eat a lot beforehand so we skipped Chops in favor of doing what I came to call a Windjammer drive by. As expected, the buffet was packed but I just took advantage of our quick 5 minute proximity to run upstairs, speed walk through the crowd, fill a plate with bananas, donuts, milk, and juice, and speed walk back down to our cabin. Moses was great about rushing over whenever he saw me do this so that he could open the door for me. It was mornings like this that I spotted the real reason behind Dad's trouble in finding chocolate milk. I encountered the fruit and cereal (dispensers but no little sealed boxes?!) section first and spotted 1 carton of chocolate milk in the tray with several cartons of various white milks. I grabbed it and moved on to find the donuts. Came back around to see if more chocolate milk had been put out and noticed a crew member putting out one single chocolate milk carton and then pulling out the white milk cartons by the handful to put in the tray. I couldn't believe he was literally rationing the chocolate milk by putting out only one carton at a time. 

Once we'd had enough breakfast and sufficiently prepared ourselves for fun in the sun, we headed off the ship without much in the way of crowds. What I've seen in many other ports but not to such a degree was the huge amount of people who tried to offer us their tours or taxi rides as we tried to walk the long stretch of shops in order to get out of where the cruise ship docks within Heritage Quay. No sooner did you extend a polite no thank you to one did another walk up to offer. Several would even fall in step walking with you trying to give their pitch. Thankfully they all backed off when we'd answer that we already have something booked but it made for a very uncomfortable walk.

Our directions were to meet Barry just outside Heritage Quay across from the city pharmacy and our early arrival into port got us standing there about 20 minutes before 9AM. Unfortunately, there was still a few earnest salespeople on the street that we had to keep turning down as we waited. Barry came right on time with a nicer van than yesterday so soon we were on our way. We stopped just up the road as he told us about the history behind the churches and schools nearby. He continued his history lesson as we drove through town and his deep voice made me feel like I was curled up listening to an audio book. Our first place to get out of the van was in a hospital parking lot at the top of the hill which provided a great overlook of the city as well as of our ship.

Barry told us that they get a lot of imported cars from Japan and I couldn't help but notice the instruction panel on the back of the front seat:

Our next stop was to Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Stadium where the fan seats were decorated in the colors of Antigua's flag. Barry asked us to try and explain why each color was part of their flag and we got the common sense answers of red for blood and yellow for the sun. It took some prodding to get us to realize the white was from white sand beaches as I was thinking metaphorically for purity. When asked about the blue, I said water but Barry said "No of course not, water's clear!" I resisted the urge to add "unless you're trying to get it from our cabin faucet." We hesitated when he asked our thoughts on the black color not wanting to say something potentially rude or offensive but Barry proudly proclaimed that it was for the "black people of the land."

This sign was posted by the concession stand:

We drove through several towns before arriving at the ruins of Betty's Hope, a former sugar plantation. Barry waited in the car while we went in to view what was essentially a one room museum full of informational plaques on the wall and some old equipment.

There was a box next to a guestbook on a table with a sign urging you to deposit $2 each in admission into the box. We thought all admission costs had been covered for this tour but Dad deposited the money anyway. I wondered whether anyone was around to even enforce that but Dad says he saw a woman making the other group of people pay as well. We opted not to go walking all the way up to see the windmills even though Barry said he'd drive up to meet us if we did. As we left, a few other taxi style tour vans showed up so it was good timing that we got out before that one room museum got too crowded. It rained a bit intermittently but for the most part, we were inside the van during those times.

Our next stop was Devil's Bridge where Dad opted to stay near the top as Barry led me down to walk along the rocks. A woman at the top who had a table of souvenirs kept yelling at the people walking on the rocks not to do so because the rain had made everything so slippery. She gave us the same warnings.

Barry showed me the different sides of the area including a space off to the side known for spouting blowholes. Nothing ever really spouted but standing by it you could hear it gurgling in the crevices like it could blow at any moment.

Barry showed us the setup they have here for holding a kite festival and just as we head back to the parking lot, several buses show up bringing school children to fly kites as a field trip. The heavy winds we had today bringing the occasional rain were perfect for kite flying.

Our next stop was to the donkey sanctuary where we discovered that their version of repaved road meant that the holes got filled in and the top smoothed out. It was still an entirely dirt road compared to the paved ones we'd been driving on through the towns. We had to be buzzed in to drive through the entrance gates and soon after parking a woman came out with brushes we could slip over our hands to use on the donkeys. The donkeys are enclosed in a large gate surrounding most of the sanctuary with a few structures to provide cover scattered throughout.

There were large troughs within the grounds for the donkeys to get water and they ate from the grassy areas surrounding a winding path. You do however have to watch your step since both the grass and the paved path were dotted with the remnants of the donkey's good meals. They had donkeys there that ranged in age from babies to newly received 3-4 year olds. We learned that donkeys can live up to 50 years. One donkey they had that was older than the rest was Stevie and he was blind. The woman let us into the donkey area and gave us a little explanation of the sanctuary before leaving us alone to interact with the donkeys and take pictures.

One of the 3-4 year old donkeys decided he'd just stay there standing across the path and if you wanted to brush him, he'd put up with it but wasn't going to move or otherwise acknowledge your existence.

Dad started brushing him so I moved on to Stevie who was standing nearby on the grass and jumped when I reached out to pet him. I have a deep love and respect for animals so I apologized for surprising him and he was very receptive to my attempts to brush him. When I stopped to look over at Dad, Stevie decided I needed to pay more attention to him so he rubbed his head up and down against my leg until I went back to brushing him.

Finally found someone with longer eyelashes than me

Once he'd had enough, I gave Mr. Indifferent some brushing time since none of the other donkeys felt like giving us the time of day. While I was doing that, Dad decided he'd had enough and walked out to where the woman was waiting for us. He stood there waiting so long, I looked over at one point and he was petting a smaller donkey outside the gate. When I decided it was time to move on as well, I told Mr. Indifferent that I was leaving and started to walk away. I got a few steps up the path when I hear clonk, clonk, clonk. I turn around and realize that Mr. Indifferent is actually following me.

I tell him that no, you can't come with me. He stops so I turn again to continue walking. Clonk, clonk, clonk, he's following me again. I gave him some extra loving and brushing and he rubbed against me too. I said goodbye once again and turned to go. He continued to follow me almost all the way back to the gate but finally stopped when I told him the cruise ship wasn't going to let him back on with me. The woman chuckled at the sight of him following me as I joined her and Dad back outside the donkey area. 

She next led us to where the adoptable dogs sat in cages and stayed outside while we went in. A couple dogs were very scared cowering in their cages while the bulk came right up to the doors to get some attention. This was one of the few drawbacks of the facility because I had the impression that they let you interact and play with the dogs, not just walk past them in their cages. We also didn't come out and ask if we could so for all I know that could have been granted if we'd asked.

Next was a more enclosed space that was part cat cages and part indoor cat playground. The woman was careful as she let us into this space because she had let a couple kittens out of their cages to run around the play area. I wasn't sure if we were allowed to interact with these cats either so we stuck to talking to them and taking pictures.

The woman sent us to the nearby shack style building to wash our hands (very important to do when handling any animal before you do anything else especially eating) and we were relieved to find that the sinks were inside separate bathroom stalls so we could take care of both needs at this point. 

Dad came out of his bathroom first and had found out from the woman that we could adopt any donkey for a single $25 fee which was slightly different than I'd read about it being an annual fee you had to keep paying. He was also interested in buying a T-shirt so they were both waiting for me to come out of the bathroom to give my opinion. I said yes to adopting the donkey and I was shown the wall of pictures and names to choose from.

I asked about the name of the donkey who'd tried to follow me home but was told that he wasn't old enough yet. Instead I chose to adopt Stevie (probably one of a million people who have) and we were given a certificate with his name and picture on it. Dad came up with the idea of  adopting Stevie in our neighbor's name since she is a teacher and might like to share the certificate with her students. We had her name written on the certificate and the woman took down her email address presumably to send updates. We both wondered later how soon our neighbor was already receiving requests to pay for next year too. There was two T-shirt designs to choose from, both white shirts which I never buy for myself since apparently I'm as attractive to stains as I am to donkeys. One shirt just had the sanctuary logo while the other had a design made to look like the donkeys were part of an Andy Warhol painting. I thought Dad was asking my opinion on which design to get for himself but then I realized he was picking it out for me when he made a big deal over getting the larger size. The shirts, as the woman freely admitted, were made of Spandex so they run very small. The shirt cost $20 and honestly, I'll probably never wear it because even this larger size looks like it's meant for a child/teen's size. It threw us for a minute when she handed us a sales receipt that said 52.00 but she explained that that was the proper $45 amount we'd agreed to when written in Antigua's currency. We paid her in US dollars that we'd budgeted out for this day expecting to buy something here. 

Much like it was when we visited a family's home in Costa Rica and got to have capuchin monkeys come down from the trees to climb on our arms and eat from our hands, I would have happily ended the tour right then. But alas, we hadn't even seen the famous dockyard that several tours included. We had even considered booking RCL's "Amazing Antiqua" which was a tour of the dockyard's naval history before finding private options. We encountered a few roads along the way on this tour that weren't great and Barry drove purposely slow as molasses over them to protect his tires resulting in a bit of a jerky ride until we found asphalt again. Once we arrived at the dockyard, both Dad and I had decided to forgo actually walking around inside so Barry pulled up at an overlook and gave us a brief history pointing things out from afar.

To get us back to St. Johns, Barry drove us along the coastal area he called the rainforest. Early in the tour he had told us about the national fruit being the Antiguan Black Pineapple and how it was referred to as the Antigua Black because of the people and not the color of the pineapple. As we drove through the rainforest, he stopped at a roadside stand and bought us a pineapple to try. Dad's never really liked pineapple but I made him try a piece. I tried a couple pieces and found that while the ends that were close to the center were tough, the rest of the pineapple was so syrupy sweet it reminded me of those little cups of diced fruit in juice. Barry was anxious to hear our thoughts but was surprised when I described it as such. Barry pulled up outside Heritage Quay where we paid him and left the remaining pineapple for him to enjoy. 

There was less of the pushy tour guides on our walk back to the ship but plenty of shop vendors calling out to try and get those last minute sales before cruisers made it back to the ship. Just like St. Croix, port security here didn't care about anything other than your cruise card and we were back onboard at 2:15PM.