A travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting a day in Antigua during a 15-day repositioning cruise. They describe losing about half their footage due to a memory-card/transfer error, then narrate the day they still remember: a personal tour with a local guide named Andre (noted as a statistician), visits to Devil's Bridge, a fort/viewpoint, and several of Antigua’s beaches (the island is described as having 365 beaches). They end the day at a lively Independence Day food festival sampling local dishes and ginger beer. The hosts express strong positive feelings about Antigua's beaches and gratitude toward their guide.
Chapters
I feel like we're on our honeymoon.
Hello. Obviously, we are not in the Caribbean anymore. We actually have some terrible news. Something happened for the first time that has never happened before. We lost the majority of the footage that we shot on this day from this memory card.
Let me explain. It was just like any other day. We just gotten back to the boat after having this amazing day in Antigua. I took the memory card out of the camera. I put it in my computer. I was moving the videos from the memory card to my hard drive, and I've been having some trouble with my cord. It was getting a little wiggly, and it would come out like, eject on its own every once in a while, which you're not supposed to do. But nothing bad's ever happened before, and that happened. It ejected on its own, and half of the videos just disappeared from the card and from the hard drive.
They're gone.
It looked forever. They were gone.
Tears were shed. She was actually so upset that we didn't go to dinner that night. While we were on the boat, I wasn't quite as upset. So I did take my iPhone and film a little bit of it, just because I thought maybe one day we'd look back and laugh at this moment.
So let me explain myself. I was upset that we lost the first half of this day, but I was more upset for a different reason. It didn't just affect us or you watching this video. We had spent the whole day with the nicest person named Andre, who lives in Antigua and offered to take us around and be our personal tour guide for the whole day to show us this island. And he was such a cool guy. We had the best time with him. I was so excited about this video, and it was just so fresh. Like, we had just got back to the boat, and then, boom, our whole day gone in a second. And you just couldn't get over it.
And you felt like he had wasted his day with us, when in reality, like, we had a fantastic day together. The good news is. I was just gonna say the good news is. Is the good news is that the good news is that we didn't lose all of the footage from the card, only about half of it. And we did film on the GoPro and the drone, so we. Some footage from the day. So what we're gonna do now is kind of try to, like, fill in the rest of the story to kind of tell you what our day in Antigua with Andre was like.
So the morning started off with Andre picking us up in his car. He drove us around the old city and showed us all the cool parts of town and some historical things. But we don't have any footage from that. But the first big stop that we did was this really cool place called Devil's Bridge.
So Devil's Bridge is this awesome rock formation that's in the shape of a bridge, obviously, but the waves come up and they come up behind the bridge and they splash up over you as you walk across the bridge.
It's like, super scary.
Next, he took us up to this incredible viewpoint. Wow. There was this fort that set up on top of this hill and overlooked this beautiful bay with all these sailboats in it. And that was en route to taking us to a few of his favorite beaches.
So we learned that Antigua is famous for having 365 beaches, one for every day of the year. They even count. Like, they're really well done. So we spent the next hour or so just going around to some of the prettiest ones on the island. And seriously, we think that Antigua has the best beaches. They were all just this beautiful, perfect white sand with these beaches, blue waters that just look like a painting. Then we went to one for basically the rest of the afternoon. It had this one tiny little restaurant on there, and then there were no people and it was huge.
We have been fortunate to go to a lot of beautiful beaches in our travels, but I think I can confidently say that this is by far my favorite beach that I've ever been to.
I think I have to agree. The sand was the widest and the softest and the water was the bluest and warmest. It was just perfect.
Sara, this is most beautiful beach I've ever been to and the clearest water I've ever been in. It feels amazing with 83 degrees.
I feel like this is the beach that they take pictures of when they advertise all the resorts. And this is what you think the water is going to look like.
And it really does.
And then you get there and it does it. But this beach is the most picturesque beach I've ever been to in my entire life.
Love it.
The couple hours that we spent on this beach were probably a couple of my favorite from the entire cruise. And now we should be back up to speed. I think we have the footage from the rest of the day, so now the vlog will pick up as normal.
Unfortunately, it's time for us to get out of this beautiful water and dry out because we have so much more of the island to see and we.
Still have a lot to eat. I Cannot believe we timed our visit here on Independence Day, where they're having a food festival.
We just made it to the food fest for lunch. It is so fun and loud, and there's food everywhere. We have an hour before we have to be back on the boat. We're about to eat as much local food as possible.
Andre has ordered us a very local.
Meal that's D and saltish, or it's salted codfish. And the vegetables is spinach, okro, and papa.
Okay.
And some pumpkin is in there as well.
Okay.
It should be sweet.
Yeah, it's sweet. It's like, coconutty. Yeah, that's pretty good. If you know where to go with the locals, you can pay $5 for a huge box of food. We paid 25 for five concreters yesterday. Andre also gave us a local drink. He says it's ginger beer.
That is so good. I love ginger.
That burns. That's actually light. Really? Yeah, but it burns, like, the whole entire back of my throat.
It's kind of weird that on a hot Caribbean island. Yeah. Your national dish is soup, Essentially a soup made up of crushed veggies and some meats and dumplings. The okra gives it a very, like, slimy consistency, but it's the national dish. And we had okra and pork. That's the pool. It's a combination of vegetables. That's a po. Yeah, it's good.
We gotta eat this quick because we gotta get back to the boat. Or leaves us. We've been having too much fun.
Thank you.
Our day in Antigua is coming to an end.
We haven't been to many Caribbean islands, but as of now, Antigua is without a doubt our favorite.
It might just be because we had a personal tour guide who was the best ever, but I really think we would have liked this one the most. Anyways, I don't know what we would have done without Andre. He is a statistician for a living, but he is a really good tour guide.
Thank you again, Andre, for spending your holiday with us. We really appreciate it. You made our time here extremely special. Seriously, I just still can't get over how incredible the beaches are on this island.
Gorgeous.
Everything.
The people are so nice.
Great day.
Hey, guys. Just wanted to tell you about the new Travel Hustle interview that we have over on the blog. This one is with the budgeteers, who are three awesome people that will show you how to travel a really long ways on a really small budget. This is a super interesting interview, so make sure you go check it out. We'll put a link in the description below.
Hey.
Sometimes water gets to go from my. Can't hear it.
