Greetings from Dickenson Bay in Antigua, like all foreign trips we have the testing worry before leaving.
Antigua have realised that many people fake the home testing so understandably insist you go to a clinic and get a supervised test, in our case that means a trip to Boots in Shrewsbury a few days before departure. You then have a worrying wait, not just that we might test positive but also that the lab will not get the results out in time. It is surprisingly stressful as you have no control on the outcome. Having had the tests I then read a letter in the paper saying Boots service was awful and then read the Trustpilot reviews, almost all were terrible, no results = no holiday! So I had a sleepless night of worry and guess what? Our tests were fine and the results were back in 24 hours so what was I worring about?
As we had to fly from Gatwick it seemed like a good idea to spend a night in London, see the Christmas Lights and go to the theatre. We picked the Book of Mormon, an irreverent musical about the Church of the Latter Day Saints. It was very funny, one of the catch phrases was “I’ve got maggots in my scrotum” so Mary Poppins it was not!
Did you know that until 1978 the Mormon Church banned non whites from preaching, not a great idea when you are trying to promote the Church in Africa which is what the story was about. It was written by the same team who wrote South Park so if you like the TV programme then the Book of Mormon is for you.
As you can see from the map the island is only 12 miles across so everywhere is in walking distance should you be so inclined. We aren't so we have a hire car which will enable us to explore all the beaches, supposedly there are 365 of them, one for every day of the year.
For the first couple of weeks we are staying in a self catering apartment in Dickenson Bay, a bit touristy but hopefully we will be able to find somewhere selling rum punch to keep us cool in the 30 degree heat.
We then head down to the other end of the island (better get up early for the long journey) and are staying in Nelson's Dockyard which is a sailors paradise, plenty of restaurants and trendy bars and a safe anchorage so you don’t have to take your boat out into the nasty rough sea.
We are booked to return on 12th January but of course if like last year travel gets put on hold we might be stuck here for months, I do hope so.