Chapter 5 - Island Tour

We spent days close to home, taking walks on the beach, shopping at Epicurean, the supermarket shown in the following photo with red-tiled roof just down our hill, swimming at the Sugar Ridge Resort pool and enjoying a pina colada.

Then there were days of exploration;  an island tour by car with Chemoy.  We stopped by this lovely octagonal Italianate church, St. Peter's Anglican, with an amazing ribbed ceiling, and beautiful stained glass windows. Complete with musical instruments.  It was designed by Thomas Weekes and built during the 1840's to replace the original 1711 wooden building, which burned down.  It is considered the fairest church in the West Indies.

The next stop was Betty's Hope.

Betty's Hope in Antigua and Barbuda was a sugarcane plantation which provided livelihood(?!) for many generations of Antiguans from the time it was established in 1650 during the British Colonial rule. It flourished as a successful agricultural industrial enterprise (because the workforce, being forcibly imported African slaves, were unpaid), the first large-scale sugar plantation to operate in Antigua, starting with Codrington family's ownership in 1674, which lasted till 1944. Sir Christopher Codrington (1668-1710l, born in Barbados) Governor of the Leeward Islands in 1674 named the estate "Betty’s Hope", after his daughter.

The Plantation buildings are now in ruin, but the iconic windmills which provided the power to crush the sugar cane, have been restored.  The history of the place, as shown in the small museum, is devastating.  

The darkened areas above are people, packed like sardines into the hold of the ship.  

Atlantic Triangular Slave Trade

The first leg of the triangle was from a European port to Africa, in which ships carried supplies for sale and trade, such as copper,cloth, trinkets, slave beads, guns and ammunition.  When the ship arrived, its cargo would be sold or bartered for slaves. On the second leg, ships made the journey of the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. Many slaves died of disease in the crowded holds of the slave ships. Once the ship reached the New World, enslaved survivors were sold in the Caribbean or the American colonies. The ships were then prepared to get them thoroughly cleaned, drained, and loaded with export goods for a return voyage, the third leg, to their home port,  from the West Indies the main export cargoes were sugar, rum, and molasses; from Virginia, tobacco and hemp. The ship then returned to Europe to complete the triangle.




The next place we visited was much more cheerful, The Donkey Sanctuary, which takes in stray donkeys (which are plentiful on the island) and gives them a home.

Half Moon Bay, on the eastern side of the island, where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic, is a more remote, but very beautiful beach, so many mostly deserted beaches which beckon oh so invitingly.  We had lunch here and then walked the beach to where it curved to meet the Atlantic Ocean.

Chemoy then drove us along Fig Tree Drive to the small rain forest where we were surprised to find a lovely art gallery, hidden in the lush foliage.

Fig Tree Studio and Art Gallery
Sallie Harker, the owner and artist

Sallie has been in this location for 30 years and it is a delightful spot to view some lovely art work and other craft pieces.  We, needless to say, left with some of her wares.  We had such a good time in this beautiful place.

An artful piece if ever there was one!

We stopped for another coconut from Gina's produce stand.