It had been six years since my last trip to Antigua and while I wasn’t planning on visiting before 2024, sometimes unexpected things come up and here I was, seated on an 8-hour British Airways flight, heading ‘Home’ due to a family emergency.

I was unsure of what to expect; a lot could change in that time, and indeed, many things had. Most of the friends I used to hang out with either have ‘adult’ kids, are living abroad like I am, or we’ve lost contact.

Upon landing in Antigua, I was randomly the first person off the plane due to my seat and was greeted with a friendly ‘Hello‘ after clearing immigration and going through customs. Honestly, I was surprised. My recollection of previous trips home was always underpinned by ‘miserable-looking‘ immigration officers who acted as if you were an annoyance interrupting their day of doing nothing. But this time was different, or so I thought…

I rented a car from a local company and arranged for them to meet me at the airport at a specific time. The price difference with the multinational rental companies was negligible, so I thought it best to support locals. Before and during the flight, I kept them informed of the flight schedule. However, even after I arrived, cleared immigration, and waited 35 minutes for my bag, he was not there. After contacting him, he advised that the driver was on the way, would be there in 10 minutes, and proceeded to send me a picture of the vehicle that the driver was arriving in…

Being tired and needing a shower, I relented and jumped into the truck. The driver reeked of sweat and drove the truck like he was unsure of how to drive a manual. I swore I would have had whiplash from rocking back and forth every time he needed to change gears. We finally reached the ‘business place’, which was being run out of their living room. His mother came out to complete the paperwork, but she had a handful of nuts and took her sweet precious time filling in eight lines on the A4 sheet of paper that represented the rental contract. By the time she was done, 30 minutes later, her son, the guy I was dealing with throughout had arrived.

To his credit, he apologized and refunded me the cost of a day. But I kept thinking and asking myself if this was how he did business with all customers or just with people deemed as locals. While I was appreciative of the apology and discounted fee, the careless way of doing business has resulted in him losing my future patronage and that of anyone whom I would have recommended.

After the painful encounter with his mother and getting my keys, I jumped in the car and headed ‘home.’ I was shocked while driving through the city. It was run-down and resembled something of a shanty town, with shacks and loads of wooden pallets used by street vendors stacked on the sidewalks. It wasn’t the vibrant St. John’s I remembered, or maybe that was me holding onto the nostalgia of my youth. Locals blamed the influx of immigrants for the shacks that lined the streets of the city. I was too embarrassed and a little bit angry to snap any pictures.

The government, headed by a wannabe dictator (who only clung on to power by 6 votes!), spent a king’s ransom to install a third cruise ship pier in the harbour but nothing on the aesthetics of the city itself. Tourists would disembark at a shiny new cruise terminal and then have to dodge open manholes, cars and everything in between while walking in the city.

The next few days were spent between working and family. However, I kept randomly bumping into old work colleagues or people who knew me but were unsure if it was me or not. Some people hadn’t seen me in 20 years, others not in 6!

Driving in Antigua is something else; it’s more stressful than driving in the small cities in Spain. But like the Spanish, no one seems to use an indicator when driving, or worse yet, driving with anything resembling courtesy. I even managed to get into a fender bender with another driver!

After 5 days, I needed a change of scenery and took a drive to the southern end of the island. It was surreal and felt like a completely different country from the ‘hot mess’ that was the capital. Whereas I was constantly tense and shouting while driving in the capital, the countryside had a calmness and a vibe of idealism that lessened the road rage. Being able to drive up to the shoreline of a beach and just look out into the vastness of the Caribbean Sea was well worth the drive.

In the blink of an eye, I had 48 hours left and tried to pack as much as I possibly could, which included the beach and catching up with the few friends that I could fit into the tight schedule. A highlight of my trip was lunch with my “virtual travel buddy” Lou.

She’s ‘virtually’ been everywhere with me for the last 4-5 years, either through a call while I’m travelling or through unannounced photo dumps clogging up her WhatsApp. She’s regularly one of the first persons I inform when I am travelling or send pics/blog posts to before publishing.

Lou and I graduated high school together; back then, we were friendly but weren’t really friends. But we developed a friendship over the years to the point where I could say that we have a pretty strong bond.

After lunch, I took another drive through the rainforest onto English Harbour, a naturally sheltered harbour that housed the British Navy back in their heyday, when pillaging the islands of their wealth in the name of the crown.

English Harbour is home to Nelson’s Dockyard, the only working Georgian dockyard remaining worldwide. Captain Horatio Nelson arrived in Antigua in July 1784 as the senior officer of the Northern Division of the West Indies Station, commanding HMS Boreas. Rumour has it that he never set foot on the island, even though a house was built to house him and remains to this day as a museum. Until his departure in 1787, Nelson referred to the harbour as an “Infernal Hole“.

My final day was spent running around like a headless chicken and included a trip to the beach and brunch with two other friends who had visited me over the years in Gibraltar and Spain. Just like that, eight days had flown by, and it was time to head to the airport. With that, came my final encounter with the rental service (or so I thought). They arrived late again, but promptly checked the car for damage before giving the all-clear.

I dropped my luggage (filled with banned food contraband) off and headed to the departure area, where a very pleasant, flirty security guard patted me down because ‘she wanted to.’ She was friendly, and we shared a good laugh over the incident. It left a smile on my face as I boarded my flight to Spain via London.

Somehow, I managed to get the same seat, 10A, again, but this time I had a cute little old lady named Trudy sitting next to me. This was Trudy’s third attempt at visiting Antigua, and this time she went to a birthday party of one of her former colleagues.

A day after arriving home (Spain), the owner of the rental company contacted me to say that they had found a scratch on the car that needed repairing. Strangely, the scratch was nowhere to be found when they checked the car at the airport but had randomly appeared afterwards. Nevertheless, I accepted responsibility for the damage, and we settled with him after receiving an invoice. I was very annoyed and considered going on a social media rant, naming and shaming the business, but figured that it would only make me feel good for a minute.

All in all, it was a good trip back home, one I didn’t expect to make, but I’m very happy I did. Antigua is a country of two halves: Paradise Lost – the City Centre and Paradise Found, everywhere else!

My recommendation for anyone visiting is to skip the city and head to the countryside; you won’t regret it!