Enchanted Princess in Antigua
Antigua is an independent country as part Antigua and Barbuda, which also includes a tiny uninhabited island called Redonda. This small island country is part of the British Commonwealth, like Canada and Australia. Antigua is the largest of the three islands with an inactive volcano called Mount Obama rising 1319 feet (about 400 meters) above the sea. Antigua has secluded bays and coral reefs and is called the land of 365 beaches for a beach for each day of the year, though I was unable to confirm if there are actually that many beaches. While many sites say there are, lists of the named beaches don’t even reach anywhere near half that. However many there are, beaches in Antigua are generally public. In contrast to mountainous Antigua, Barbuda is a flat coral island with a large lagoon.
snorkel trail sign at Pigeon Point Beach
At the port in Antigua there are lots of people offering taxi tours or taxi rides to various beaches. On our first port stop in Antigua on our Enchanted Princess cruise we made a brief stop at Pigeon Point Beach on an island tour. While I would have liked to go to there because that one is supposed to be good for snorkeling, it is 40 minutes away from Saint John’s where the ship docks and we all wanted something closer to the ship. The friends we were traveling with looked up where it would be best go and found Dickenson Beach. We all decided before even going out to get a cab that was where we would go because it is near to the cruise dock so we wouldn’t spend a lot of time or money getting there and back. The city of Saint John’s where the ship docks in Antigua is not the same place as the island of Saint John near Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
Dickenson Beach
Dickenson Beach was supposed to have swimming and snorkeling, but like most beaches on our Enchanted Princess cruise the water was too murky for snorkeling due to recent storms. At this one it was so murky even my own hand was only visible if it was within about 6 inches of my face. There were waves with pretty powerful breakers and a definite undertow, but they weren’t huge. A few people got bowled over when not being careful to time their entry into the water for when they could pass through between breakers, but if you paid attention to the waves they weren’t that hard to avoid.
beach view looking toward the breakwater
The beach looked like pure sand, but there were actually big rocks lurking just underneath the water near the shoreline in the area where our beach chairs were. They were in maybe a foot or so of water, but could not be seen due to the amount of sand churned up with each wave putting visibility through the water at the shoreline at 0 – you would never know the rocks were there until stepping on one. Or tripping over it or cutting a foot on it. Further down the beach more distant from a little breakwater it was more of a sandy bottom, but even there the sand had dips and hollows so you could go deeper on one step and then shallower the next one farther from shore. Again nothing under the surface could be seen that day.
phone booth at the beach
Our group of 4 people found a taxi that would take us to the beach for $5 each, then come to pick us up for a return to the ship at whatever time we specified again for $5 each. We did not have to pay for the taxi ride until the return trip, ensuring that it would return, which it did right on time. We should have asked the guy if his taxi was right there at the port before going with him though because after following him to where his taxi was supposed to be he called his wife and said she was coming to get us. Only she was stuck in traffic. After yelling at her over the phone a few times because she couldn’t beam her car to where we were Star Trek style he led us to his van, which actually was nearby.
Apparently he wanted to send us off in her smaller car and gather a larger group for the van. We went a short distance, then pulled over at the side of a busy street, crossed through traffic, and switched to her car. Both her and the car were far nicer than him and the van. She was cheerful and friendly. Her car was fairly new and clean while he was all business with us, not so nice on the phone to her, and the van was kind of old and smelly. We would have preferred she pick us up, but he came instead. Definitely would have gotten a bigger tip if it had been her. He didn’t seem to0 happy to have to make that trip in his van for just 4 people and drove like a maniac back to the port.
beach chairs
When we first got there the taxi pulled up and stopped in a little patch of dirt beside the road next to either a giant mud puddle or a small pond with a dirt trail running through it. There was no beach in sight. We wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. The driver said she would lead us to the beach, but then a guy showed up from the beach so we ended up following him instead. There are groups of beach chairs with umbrellas set two by two along the beach. Different ones are tended to by different people so of course we were led to some of his chairs. The going rate was $25 for a pair of chairs with an umbrella, but we paid $20 for each set.
things to do at the beach
The beach is lined with little resorts and hotels, though the area where we were was just beach chairs and a tiny bar. There was a restroom somewhere nearby. The people manning this particular area had a shipping container where they kept beach toys including wave riders that people could rent. A sign above the container listed quite a variety of things available to do on that beach.
floating beach bar
There was a swim-up bar out a ways into the water. It wasn’t open yet when we first got there. I tried snorkeling even though the guy with the chairs said it wasn’t a good day for it due to the visibility. He was right. The visibility was pretty much zero so I didn’t stay out long. On the way in and out of the water I found the big rocks under the water near the shore by stepping on them as nothing was visible. As mentioned previously, out in the water I couldn’t even see my own hand unless it was right in front of my face so if there were any fish in the area I could swim right over them and never know they were there.
putting gas in the waverunner
We rented a couple wave runners, which normally go for $60 each per half hour each, but since we were the first customers of the day for those we got the pair for $100 for the half hour. They roll them into the water by hand on a tiny trailer with big tires to launch them. They got our friends off and going, but ours had to be filled with gas before they could launch it so it took awhile. Once it is out in the water you walk out to it and then get on from the back, driver first. There weren’t any hidden rocks at the shoreline in that area, but the water got deeper then shallower on the short approach to the wave runner. We could go anywhere out in that bay after getting out past the swimming area, but not beyond the bay, out to a little island or near the swim-up bar.
on the waverunner
The wave runners came with required life jackets. Too bad they didn’t come with goggles as well. Goggles would have been extremely useful on that ride as our glasses were soon covered in salt spray and when we went fast so much salty water came pouring behind my glasses into my eyes that I had to keep them closed when going through an area where the wind direction and currents really kicked up the spray. Apparently John could see well enough to drive because he would have had to slow down to reduce the spray if it was hitting him the way it hit me.
view of the beach from the waverunner
We had a lot of fun on our half-hour ride. Sometimes we went fast, but we also went slow for a bit to see what was along the beach beyond where our chairs were. Out at the far end there was a mansion on an eroding point and a little area of beach without anything on it other than some people riding horses. From where we were out pretty far in the bay it looked like the horses actually went far enough out in the water to swim for real. We could only see the heads, which is all that would stick out of the water if they were actually swimming. Beach horseback rides through cruise ship excursions just trot around in the water where maybe your feet get wet and people think they’re swimming, but really the horse’s hooves never leave the ground. We booked a ride through a private stable in Jamaica once where they went out really deep and were definitely swimming. The ones we saw on Antigua were from a private stable at one of the nearby resorts.
After our half-hour on the wave runners ended we came back to shore. There was a boat heading our way and I asked if John was watching out for it. He hadn’t seen the boat so it was a good thing I said something. Probably the first time I ever saw something he didn’t see first. It came from out to sea while he was watching for where the people were in the swimming area since we had to slowly make our way through there back to shore.
view from the beach chair
As soon as we were done there were other people waiting to go so giving the first people a deal to get someone out there really worked for them since it got more people wanting to go for a ride. That probably kept the waverunner rentals going for the rest of the day. Definitely for the rest of the time we were there. We had a fairly early all-aboard time that day so we couldn’t stay too long.
I went for a swim to kind of test the waters to see if I wanted to swim out to the floating bar. After going partway there It looked do-able and there was hardly anybody out there so I went back to get some money before swimming all the way there. I didn’t have any way to keep it dry, but figured a bar out in the sea would take wet money and if I swam all the way out there I’d want to buy a drink.
little beach bar
The guys got some beers from the bar and I was going to swim out to the swim-up bar with the other lady, but she hit one of those unseen rocks under the surface just wrong on the way into the water and cut her foot so we went back to our beach chairs. It was a pretty deep cut so she couldn’t go out in the water again. By the time she was all patched up a little boat had made several trips to the floating bar and brought so many people out there that it was way too crowded to be any fun for me to swim out there then. It looked like pretty much the whole thing was packed with people, standing room only. Just a small area of it over the bar had any shade so I just stayed in my lounger on the beach. The boat went faster than anyone could swim so if we had made it out there it probably would have been too crowded by the time we arrived anyway.
crowded floating bar
Other than the unfortunate foot injury it was a fun day at the beach for all of us. We made it back to the ship with plenty of time to spare. There were a couple other ships in port that day, Aidaperla and a big one from Norwegian.
Our ship left first. Instead of just tooting the horn like they had at all the other port stops they tooted the love boat theme – probably to show off to the other ships. Previously they had only done that when we left port in Fort Lauderdale at the start of the cruise.
Going to the beach on your own definitely saves money over booking a beach day through the ship. On the first half of our back-to-back cruise when there were more people in our group a couple of them did the beach thing through the ship at a different port. They paid $70 each for the excursion and still had to pay another $20 at the beach for chairs. So it cost them $160 for two people just for going to the beach. We paid $40 for round trip taxi, $40 for the 4 chairs, and $100 for two wave runners so a total of $180 for 4 people, but that included the wave riders. The comparable total just for going to the beach would have been $80 for 4 people instead of $160 for two or half the cost for double the people. Not to mention the amount of time spent on the beach was at our choice rather than a scheduled excursion time. None of those prices include tips. We did leave tips, but I did not include them since that is not part of the set cost. Any drinks or tips would have cost them extra too.
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