Fifteen minutes. Fifteen brief minutes aboard a Boeing 777 represented a record for our shortest flight on the largest plane.
It will hardly be beaten. The main route was Saint Kitts – Gatwick, London. It was stopping in Saint John's, Antigua, to pick up more passengers destined for England. Brief as it was, the flight forced the Boeing 777 to remain at a low altitude that would allow it to land at VCBird international airport.
We were still adjusting to our seats when they announced disembarkation. We are the only passengers leaving in Antigua, at night. The house we are staying in is in the east of the island, the opposite side to the capital.
Once we got there, it quickly proved to be an epic epic at the height of caricature when, as we stopped the recently rented car to go shopping in a shabby mini-market, we realized that the owner of the rent-a-car had left us the car. turned on, but took the key with him.
Finding the house results in another film. After twists and turns, we finally settled in, got some peace and the rest we needed to explore Antigua.
The next day brings the need for a local SIM card, an unavoidable reason for us to go to Saint John's. The telecommunications company is located a short distance from the seafront.
Saint John's: a Capital in the Shadow of Cruises
Curious about what the marginal had in store, we decided to start there.
As we walked along the port's Promenade, we came close to a few catamarans and small boats.
Further away, on either side of one of the long cement jetties, are two huge cruise ships.
Access to these jetties that would provide privileged views is controlled, restricted to passengers and crew.
Worsened by what we had seen in the capital of Saint Kitts, the operation of cruise ships occupied the most valuable spaces in front of Saint John's.
Like what happened in Basseterre, it had been imposed an artificial and commercial domain suitable for welcoming and retaining passengers in consumption mode.
The Heritage Quay Complex and the neighboring Historic Redcliffe Quay occupy a good part of the bay in which the city was nestled, their structures built again or restored, polished and bright.
The Historic City beyond Heritage Quay
They contrast with the center of the surrounding capital, made up of old buildings with two or three floors, almost always raised above arcades that allow better ventilation of homes and the circulation of pedestrians safe from the rain.
On an island exposed to frequent storms, humid and saline winds, tropical storms and hurricanes, his paintings wear out quickly.
This wear and tear highlights the antiquity and colonial density of the place.
As always with cruises, the Heritage Quay Complex marked a protected area from the unknown Afro-Caribbean that a communal ethnic fear led passengers to fear.
Those who left the cruises did so as part of organized excursions to the monuments Nelson's docks, ordered to be erected by the famous admiral. Or to the nursery of “Stingray Antigua”, maintained to enjoy an intimate experience with dozens of Atlantic rays offshore.
And yet, Saint John's proves to be one of the busiest and most authentic cities in the Antilles.
Incomparably safer than many cities in the United States, where almost all cruises come from.
Fed up with the port area, we embarked on a spontaneous tour of the long Thames Street.
Shops, many Boutiques and Countless Mannequins
At that time, students in an assortment of uniforms passed each other, hurriedly, indifferent to the street windows they passed day after day.
This was the case of Johan Mansoor – Top Fashion Store – saturated with light and colorful dresses hanging from a grid, or adjusted to the shapes of clashing mannequins (because white), which cohabit competing establishments.
Black pools, left by recent water bodies, reflect them.
They generate visual works of art that delight us.
In a nearby alley, a pair of teenagers turned open-air barbers had set up little more than two benches and two mirrors.
They profit from the accelerated hair renewal of Antiguans.
We continued to wander. Back at the heart of the urban grid, we are surprised by a children's parade, prolonged by successive groups of school gardens.
The Flag and the Youngest Antiguan Generation
At the front, educators display posters that identify and promote the nurseries.
In their footsteps, the children hold plastic flags of the eccentric flag of Antigua and Barbuda, created by Sir Reginald Samuel, a teacher from the archipelago who triumphed in a selective competition contested by more than 600 competitors.
We analyze it with due curiosity. A sun over a black section symbolizes the dawn of a new era rooted in the population's African ancestry, its energy represented by the surrounding red.
The blue and white beneath the sun, expressions of the sea and the coral sands that the Antiguans were gifted with.
The flag has remained consensual, the name of the territory, not so.
The Colonial Genesis of Antigua and Barbuda
When Christopher Columbus passed through the island, on his journey in 1493, the discoverer named it in honor of one of the churches in Seville that he most venerated, that of Santa Maria de Antigua.
By that time, the indigenous Caribs had long called the island Wadadli.
Also due to a certain anti-colonial stance, this is the name used by a large part of the inhabitants, descendants of slaves exiled there from Africa, in the service of local sugar cane production.
As is usual in these Lesser Antilles and the Caribbean, the term also names the most popular national beer brands.
But, let's return to the flag that we found time and time again.
The people of the archipelago adapted it in 1967, when they gained self-government, fourteen years before independence from the United Kingdom.
British Prevalence, Even After Independence
Although Antigua and its “sister” Barbuda still remain within the scope of the Commonwealth. They have Charles III, their distant monarch.
As you would expect, both preserve a prolific British legacy.
In Saint John's, here and there, we come across the typical red telephone booths.
We see them at Historic Redcliffe Quay.
And also, among coconut trees, on the idyllic seafront of Siboney Beach Club.
Dickinson Bay ahead is three or four coves north of the one that welcomes cruises.
Some except the peninsula and the beach of Fort James, which the British built there, in order to protect their envied capital from colonial powers, privateers and enemy pirates.
When we finally found it, the fortification revealed little more to us than part of its measured walls and a battery of cannons aimed at the Caribbean Sea imminent.
Access to the remaining space is blocked by a series of container bathrooms, intended for an event taking place that night.
When we realized that we were the only ones there, we slipped between two of them and took a look at what stood out around us: an inverted view of The Cove and, further away, the top of the capital's centuries-old houses.
We see it topped by Saint John's Cathedral, the Anglican temple that blesses the city of the same name, although its previous versions were seriously damaged by powerful earthquakes in 1683 and 1745.
The fact that it is based on a fossilized coral reef, at the highest point in the city, is no stranger to this.
We returned from Fort James.
Saint John's: the Busy Capital that Praises the Nation's Founder
We find ourselves in the city's authentic and bustling shopping area, the open-air fruit and vegetable market, a whole world of stalls and stores selling much more than just food.
Where the people of the island cross paths, interact and negotiate under the often scorching tropical heat.
A lady sings some traditional song that deals with the slavery past of those parts.
On the opposite side of the road, a statue with the look of a wax museum pays homage to VC Bird: Vere Cornwall Bird Snr., a figure idolized for his role in the financial and political emancipation of young Caribbean countries, the inaugural prime minister, considered the father of the nation of Antigua and Barbuda.
As the day drew to a close, we remembered the old plan of exploring an island that, for unusual volcanic reasons, we considered even more of a priority than Antigua itself.
We walked along Long Street. We parked as close to Bryson's jetty as possible.
We bought tickets for the ferry that would take us there. Two days later, very early, we set sail for Montserrat.
A whole other “story” that, due to the mechanical collapse of the same ferry, ended with the plane returning to Saint John's and Antigua.
