Antigua Pictures

Well, now that I have a couple of seconds to myself I'll post up a couple of stories and pictures from this past trip to Antigua in the Caribbean.

After stopping in Florida for some fuel we were off to Antigua. The sun would set on this trip and we would be landing at dark, in an unfamiliar country, with unfamilar aviation rules and guidelines and just basically everything would be unfamilar. It was a nice flight all the way down the chain of islands that are in the Caribbean. It was a bit bumpy, but we were getting a very good tailwind as a result.

We spent the last hour of the 3hr trip from Florida to Antigua looking over all the airport information and approach data. We did not want to end up a smoking hole in paradise. We started our descent and saw St Martin off to the left and Antigua directly in front of us. As we got closer in we could start to feel the moisture and heat building from the warm Caribbean night air.

The landing was uneventful except we took a wrong turn off the runway into the main terminal area, when we meant to taxi to a different side of the airport. Once that got straightened around we were parked and approached by our ground agents. Thankfully they spoke perfect english! We arranged for our parking, fuel and ammentities for the next day. We never even cleared customs there. That makes 2 countries I have been to without ever clearing customs, Mexico and now Antigua. Aircrew's seem to get a lot of extra leeway when traveling alone. :)

The warm Caribbean night was just great, the airplane was sweating like crazy after having been in -50 degree air and now in very moist 26 degree air, the condesation was everywhere. A driver pulled up in this little tiny van, that was RIGHT HAND DRIVE! Haha, it was just too cute of a vehicle. It was a 35 min drive across the island to get to our hotel and we drove through some rather sketchy areas of town.

We arive at our hotel which is actually a yacht club resort in "English Bay". The rooms are in little bungalos which were just amazing. A private patio that overlooked the bay.. I couldn't believe it. And it certainly was not cheap. I believe the rooms cost $260 US per night.

We went out in search of some food and ended up going to a little restuarant right in the bay. We had a couple of beers, and sampled Carib beer which is a Caribbean brewed beer. Very tasty! When in rome right? I had a great curry dinner and Colin had what he described as perfect Mahi Mahi. Back to the hotel room early as we were both exhausted having spent 9hrs in the airplane that day. We agreed to wake up early and take a 5 min walk to the closest beach to check out the Caribbean ocean in the morning.

My alarm clock went off at 3:30am Calgary time.. ouch! But, it was worth it. We walked out to the beach and it was already very light outside. We spent some time on the beach just soaking it all up before having to head back to the rooms and get ready for the very long day ahead of us.

Our driver showed up and we were off to the airport. We arrived nice and early which was good, because we had a lot to prepare. Our airplane needed oil so after adding some oil to one of the engines I accidently brushed up against a cowling and got oil all over my back!!! Bah!!! The rest of the day was spent with people mentioning it to me everywhere.. "hey buddy, looks like you got some oil on your back".. yah, thanks.

We took off and left paradise behind. A little tear in my eye hoping that we could have stayed longer. Our first stop on the way back was Fort Lauderdale which was just as hot as Antigua. Very muggy there. We got fuel and cleared customs and then after many a gongshow getting everything sorted out, it was off to Montreal! Just to drop off one passenger though. We stopped briefly and then it was time to head to Winnipeg, and that would be the end of our flying for the day. Another crew took over in Winnipeg and flew the client home to Edmonton. We spent the night in Winnipeg and then flew back on Westjet the next morning.

After the dust settled we had spent a lot of time flying over the previous 3 days. Some rest was needed and I took advantage of the quiet schedule to sleep in well.

So here's some photo's from the trip! Just click on the picture below and the slideshow will start.