Tuesday, February 4
I awoke early and went out to watch the sunrise. Caribbean sunrises don’t come along very often in my life, so I was determined to enjoy it. We were heading almost directly East, toward the island of Antigua, so I made my way to the very front of the ship and simply took it all in. It was spectacular.
Manina had stayed in bed, and I had forgotten all of my mounting equipment, which made taking some photos more work than it should have been. Still, it was well worth all the trouble.
During the Battle of the Sexes game the previous night, the assistant cruise director Jeremy had given us a tip to take the public transport bus to Jolly Harbour or Valley Church beach for $1 instead of hiring a taxi. That was the plan when we walked onto the island of Antigua, but we were almost immediately accosted by taxi drivers.
They split up our group, each driver pitching a sweeter deal as we neared the end of the cruise port. We managed to stay strong until about 10 feet to the gate, when Ben’s guy got him to commit. We had ourselves a driver. He drove us to Jolly Beach for $5 each.
It is hard to describe the experience of walking out onto Jolly Beach. The first thing I noticed was the color of the water. Where the sun was shining the water almost glowed. It was an iridescent turquoise color that I’ve never seen before. The deeper waters were a much darker blue, and the contrast was striking. It was one of those “wow” moments just seeing the water.
When we reached the beach we felt smooth, white sand under our bare feet. The sand was unbelievably soft, like walking on butter almost. We set up chairs and umbrellas and enjoyed the beach. Manina and I took pictures, went for a walk, and watched the jet-skis and sailboats cruise around the bay. I swam for a bit too, but I could have used more time on Jolly Beach. It was a little piece of heaven. 
I don’t think anyone was in a hurry to leave that beach, but we were all looking forward to our afternoon excursion with WCT Antigua and their “Reef Riders” (just little two-man dingys with a 25hp outboard). We walked a short distance from the beach and met Jan, a nice lady from England who gave us a quick safety briefing and introduced us to our guides who would be leading us out and giving us a couple easy instructions.
We threw our gear into the reef riders and cruised out of Jolly Harbour. When we got to open water, we opened them up and cruised along at a pretty good clip. The little boats beat us up pretty good, but it was cool cruising along the coast of Antigua. We followed our guides to a reef where they had us come in single-file because the reef was dangerously close to surface of the water. We tied up to the guide boat, got out our snorkel gear and jumped in.
The guides had us go check out a shipwreck, which was pretty cool, but we spent more time exploring the reef looking for cool creatures. We saw lobsters, lots of different kinds of fish, a turtle, and one of our group even saw a shark. It was good snorkeling, but my snorkel gear wasn’t very good, and a leaky mask makes snorkeling much less fun.
We got back on the boats and went to a small site where we could do a bit of cliff jumping. Everybody got their GoPro cameras and we messed around for a bit trying to get some good shots.
Manina captained the reef rider on the way back as we headed toward Jolly Harbour. I spotted two pelicans diving after some fish. We pointed out some houses along the hillsides that we’d like to purchase. We’d fallen in love with Antigua. We eventually made our way back to Jolly Harbour and then back to the capital city of St. John’s where the Jewel of the Seas was docked.
Our group had a few problems during this leg of our journey: the Bergerons misplaced their new GoPro camera (it wasn’t recovered), and the Denneys bought something at a store which only gave change in Eastern Caribbean dollars (which would be useless on our next leg of the journey). But, even these setbacks didn’t make Antigua any less awesome. We boarded the boat and went back to the Windjammer cafe and ate a little snack (OK, it was more like a pre-dinner) as the boat departed St. John’s. We met before dinner to take some group pictures and enjoy the sunset.
The after-dinner entertainment plan looked like this:
- 8pm: 80’s music trivia contest
- 9pm: “West End to Broadway” singing and dancing spectacular !!!
- 10:15pm: The Love and Marriage game show (the Newlywed game with cruise ship folks)
None of these things held the slightest interest to me, but Manina wanted to stick with the group so we agreed to divide and conquer, and arranged to meet at 10:15 for the game show. I went back to the room to watch TV and do some laundry (yes, to me, even doing laundry is better than suffering through cruise ship entertainment). But I quickly grew bored with that so I put on my swimming trunks and went to find a hot tub instead.
In the hot tub I met a very nice young couple and chatted with them for a while. They were from Vermont and were a group of ten all on a company-sponsored trip they’d earned as a job-completion bonus. We talked about our Antigua experiences (they had taken a booze-cruise) and then started talking about our next port, Martinique. When they told me they tried to rent cars and were having all sort of problem getting something for their group, I started to get concerned about our plans for Martinique. We’d planned on renting a car (but we didn’t have one reserved) and driving quite some distance to hike les Gorges de la falaise, a scenic rain forest hike along a river bed. But if this couple and their corporate-sponsored group was having problems, what chance did we have?
I met Manina and the others for the game show, which Ben and Marianne got suckered into doing. They were good sports, but cruise director Dennis was at his cheesiest.
When we got back to our room, I told Manina about my concerns about Martinique. But, when trying to coordinate a meeting spot, she didn’t relay those concerns to the rest of the group. Unfortunately, that would lead to some logistical problems the next day.
MightyJohnsons 
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