Overview

Antigua’s sugar-white beaches and fabulous coralled waters have drawn tourists in ever-increasing numbers over recent years. Now its luxury resort hotels are a further reason to visit.

The gentle inland scenery might not be so dramatic as that found on other Caribbean islands, but Antigua more than compensates in other ways. If we focus on beaches alone, then Antigua is hard to beat. This is a place for serious relaxation, water sports, or a pleasant combination of the two. Despite jumping firmly into the big league of Caribbean tourism, the pace of life on Antigua remains deliciously slow and fishing is still the primary occupation of islanders.

Replace football banter with cricket, and the Antiguans will love you: the major legacy of the island’s colonial past is a national passion for cricket and Antigua has rightly earned a name for itself as a nurturing ground for international players.

If you can tear yourself away from the beach, the inland landscape is rolling and rustic, dotted with the crumbling brick chimneys of old sugar mills, which bear witness to the long colonial era under the British. Since colonists first settled the island back in the 1600s, the islanders have produced rum, molasses and sugar to send back to Britain.