30 Days in Antigua and Barbuda

Woke up feeling great today.  I hope its not another "false" better!  Don't know if its the antibiotics or not, but I'm going to keep taking them just in case.  What do I have to lose besides "biotics"?  Right?  At this point, I'm not going to risk stopping!

We managed to hit two beaches today.  We had read that Jabberwock beach was a great place to snorkel, so we set out to find it.  Jabberwock isn't on the map of Antigua, but we found a description of where it was online.  It didn't take us long to find it.  As promised, it seemed to be full of sea grass and rock croppings that are perfect for snorkeling.  The beach itself was quite long with the center being pretty rough and the edges being much calmer waters.  We headed off to an edge.  There was quite a lot of debris on the beach.  Mostly seaweed and grasses.  It didn't make for a "pretty" beach, but the water was clear and blue.  The sand was kind of chunky, but light colored.  There were some ruins right on the beach with interesting grafitti and some really neat crooked old trees with fishing net hammocks strung between them.  We found refuge in the shade of one of the trees.  Liem set out to scour the water for new and exciting sea life.  Cohen and I maneuvered our way around the patches of sea grass out to the blue waters.

While swimming out in the water, we met a woman from New York who had just retired here.  She moved her about a month ago with her Antiguan husband.  She is originally from Jamaica.  She spoke about the hardships of customs and the cost of "taxes" for items brought into the country.  Her advice was to make sure our car was at least 3 years old before shipping it here to avoid really high taxes.  It was interesting.  After about an hour, we headed out to a nicer swimming beach...back to Royal Palm Beach.

We planted ourselves at Royal Palms for a few hours.  This little gem of a beach has the more tan colored, chunky sand, but the water is clear and the palms are nice.  Liem and the kids snorkeled a bit while I swam and chatted with a local girl who was very proud of being 9 years old.  She told me she'd been 3 places in America; Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.  She had played in snow and loved it.  She was cute.

We headed home after a few hours, with a quick stop at the Epicurean to pick up some additional breakfast items.  We made chicken burgers for dinner, with fried potatoes and pineapple.  Yes...I was able to eat and actually enjoy it!

After dinner, we got sucked into the movie "27 dresses".  As soon as it was over, we headed to Sweet T's for a cold treat.  Being that its a 4 day holiday here in Antigua, the place was super busy.  Tons of locals, some dressed up, some dressed down.  It's interesting to see the fashion here.  These poor girls, with their "bodonka donk butts" try to fit into the low rise jeans we wear in the States, and it doesn't work.  The tops of their cheeks and a good portion of butt crack hand out the top.  Most do a good job of covering it up with a long top that almost covers the entire butt, but a few have shirts that ride.  Of course, the bodonka donk butt is very popular with the men here, so I guess its no worse than showing a bunch of cleavage at home. =) 

Sweet T's had an outdoor screen tonight playing local Caribbean music videos.  Most of it was kind of a cross between calypso and rap music.  The low budget videos are interesting to watch. After some ice cream and hanging out a bit to watch videos, we headed home to call it a night.

Jouvert is tomorrow morning (or tonight)...at 3am!!  I'm going to skip it this year since I've been fighting this whatever.  We went a few years ago...it was ok.  It would probably be really fun to join a troupe, but I'd rather take it easy and get to enjoy the rest of my trip!