We spent yesterday touring around the island with the local chap we got to know at the beach a couple of weeks ago. It was an interesting day seeing us visit Fort James just north of the capital, Devil's Bridge on the east coast (the sea was incredibly rough making this natural bridge all the more dramatic), Halfmoon Bay in the south and also having a typically Antiguan lunch at a roadside restaurant owned by a former Antiguan fast-bowler, now also a reggae star soon to be touring the UK with his group. All in all an enjoyable day.
I have to say everyone we have met in Antigua, and the wider Caribbean, has been very friendly and welcoming and all seem to share a very relaxed philosophy to life, something we could all possibly do to adopt ourselves. Typically they have far less materially than do we in the western world but yet they appear contented with their lot.
We're approaching the wind-down phase for our trip now with the haul-out of Pandora planned for the end of next week in time for all the servicing and repairs to be arranged, and some completed, prior to our return to the UK. We'll be staying at an hotel in English Harbour when the boat is in the storage yard, neither of us fancying the heat and mosquitoes associated with boats on land! It will certainly be novel to sleep in a proper bed again, on a floor that is stable, and will be interesting to see whether or not we have lost our "land legs"after 6 months afloat. I suspect we'll have no problem as any time we've spent ashore has felt perfectly normal but we'll have to wait and see.