February 2025 – The Discerning Travelers

There is nothing more alluring in the dead of a Canadian winter than flying off to a dreamy Caribbean island. Over the years, we’ve had the good fortune to have travelled to many. In fact, when we did a recent inventory of our Caribbean adventures, we discovered we had missed very few. Bonaire and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) are the only ones.

This year, though, we chose to return to an island we’d spent time on twenty years ago and returned to more times than we can recall for port stops on cruises. That island is Antigua and Barbuda.

Our first taste of the island came on a stop-over when we were making a connection from St. Kitts and Nevis. At the time, there were no direct flights to St. Kitts, where Art’s medical school class was having a reunion (because one of his classmates hailed from St. Kitts and wanted to have the reunion there to show off his island—not a bad plan). Someone had arranged for a three-hour island tour while we waited for our connection so that we didn’t have to sit in the airport. We fell in love with it and promised ourselves we’d return for a more extended visit. We did that the following year.

The following winter, we flew to Antigua with great anticipation, only to find that our plane was unable to land. Evidently, the old airport had rudimentary landing capabilities, and it was a foggy night. Given that the runway is between hills, it was tricky. Our pilot tried three times and gave up, taking us to Guadeloupe to refuel before trying again. Still unable to land, we ended up spending the night in Barbados but had success the following morning. Twenty years later, we landed in Antigua at their brand-new airport. This one even has air conditioning! So began our latest adventure from which we have just returned.

We had two weeks on the island. We have never been fans of staying put on a single resort for more than a week, so, like two years ago, when we spent a week in Barbados, followed by a week in St. Lucia (read about that trip here), we wanted two different experiences—this time on one island. So, we set up our criteria for selecting resorts.

First, they had to be adults-only. We’re grateful that there are places for families (we’ve been there and done that), but at this stage of our lives, being around other people’s children (or grandchildren) is not our idea of fun in the sun. This was a must, and we were delighted to find that Antigua has an excellent selection of adult-only places. However, when reading the fine print on several of them, we discovered that some of them permit children during school break time. We couldn’t risk it, so those ones were off the table.

We finally landed on two wildly differing experiences. The first one we chose was Cocobay, which bills itself as the “most romantic” resort on the island. We also chose their “Starfish Experience,” which gave us one of their best cottages (they have only cottages) at the water’s edge with a large veranda that included a private plunge pool. The second week, we decided to try a Marriott property because we’ve been loyal Marriott guests for years and have significant status. We chose their adults-only offering on the island—the Royalton Chic. To make it the kind of experience we would want, we chose a Diamond Club Presidential Suite. We have so much more to say about that one. That’s the topic of the next post, so stay tuned. But let’s talk about a week in Cocobay.

Located on the southwest coast of the island, the 65-cottage, adults-only resort is situated between two beaches five minutes from Jolly Harbour Marina. The property is one that includes everything from accommodation to meals and drinks, so some might call it an all-inclusive. The problem with that label is what it conjures. We wish there were categories of these properties. The fact that it includes everything in no way should conjure the images of the typical March break, all-inclusive. The place is quiet and dignified. Need we say more?

Cocobay Resort from the water – you can see all the cottages and the main buildings to the right

When we arrived at the property, our airport transfer (included in our “Starfish Experience” package) dropped us off outside a small, island-style lobby. Our personal concierge wasn’t immediately available—we were told we’d meet her in the morning. She turned out to be a lovely, personable young woman who ensured that everything about our stay was as we liked it.

When we got to our cottage, we found ourselves in a quaint—slightly rustic—cottage that we came to see as a notch up from so-called “glamping.” The promotional literature for the resort refers to the cottages as cozy and charming. They are, however, bordering on shabby. For the price, we expected better bathrooms and possibly more cleanliness. With the original dark wood floors and all that rusticness, it was hard to tell. The two main problems with the cottage for the (high) price we paid were the bathroom, which was just short of disgusting and had dreadful lighting, and the severe lack of closet and storage space.

The cottage had a built-in corner banquette that was severely wasted space. The tiny closet wasn’t even deep enough for hangers to hang properly. There wasn’t a single drawer in the place. But then there was the veranda.

The highlight of the cottage—and of the week, to be honest—was that lovely, large verandah hanging at the water’s edge with its comfortable seating and plunge pool. To tell you the truth, though, the pool was ice cold, and Patty plunged only twice. Art begged off. It was quiet and private and we spent many an hour there relaxing in the hammock or on the Bali bed, listening to the wind in the trees. Oh, and drinking Antigua rum.

The week was relaxing, and the food was surprisingly good for such a small place. The highlight of the food was lunches at Cliffside. This was a small (cliffside) spot with only five or so tables for people who had purchased that “starfish experience.” The food was made teppanyaki style and presented beautifully. Although the service was spotty (we almost left one day because the bar staff/server failed to show up), the experience was fabulous overall.

A highlight of the week was the private dinner we had as part of the “Starfish Experience.” Replete with tiki torches and lots of flowers festooning the table set on a private spot at the water’s edge, the dinner was served by a private server. A romantic interlude, indeed!

The beach was small …

… but two larger beaches were a short walk away. We do love a beach walk, so we did venture to the two others. One of them is where they bring boatloads of cruisers from the port of St. John’s for the day, so it is to be avoided, but Big Ffrye’s Beach was worth the walk.

As we like to do, we couldn’t spend a week there without chartering a boat for a day. Our concierge arranged it for us, and we were off to explore the island from the ocean side (this was the first of two such events over the two weeks). We’ll tell you about that wonderful day in another post. And part 2 of the resort story is yet to come—we spent the second week at a much larger resort, the Royalton Chic. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, in case you’d like to tour Cocobay with us …

Link to Cocobay: https://cocobayresort.com/

What do you think of when someone says Amazon River? Words like mysterious, wild, natural and untamed beauty come to mind. The Amazon is more than a river, though. It’s something of a world unto itself. And for many of us, it’s kind of a bucket-list thing. But what’s the best way to experience it? That was the question on our minds a while ago when we started planning our adventure.

First, we considered flying into Manaus, the city 1500 kilometres from the Atlantic and the spot beyond which you can travel only in a small riverboat. In the end, we decided to book a cruise out of Rio (so we could visit Rio before the cruise), up the coast of Brazil and into the river to Manaus. It then turned around and travelled back, ending in Miami three weeks later.

So, how did it go?

The day our ship turned left from the southern Atlantic Ocean into the Amazon River, the heavens opened up, and the rain started to fall. The rain was so intense for a while that the decks of the chip were almost ankle-deep in water. Once the rain stopped, we were left with a stultifying, leaden humidity along with the searingly hot temperatures.

As we slowly made our way into the river (which is miles wide at this point), we passed hundreds of kilometres of shoreline showing dense rainforest—or, to be more precise, the tops of the trees of the rainforest canopy. Although the river was not extraordinarily high at that time, it was still high enough that we saw only the canopy as we glided by.

Our first stop on the river was the village of Alto de Chao. This stop gave us a real sense of the kinds of beaches along the river. Although the river water, owing to its colour, doesn’t look suitable for swimming, we were assured that it is clean.

The following day, we got a better sense of how the local people live in the village of Boca de Valeria. We took the tender from the ship to the heart of the village, where the local children were the greeters. Each one offered something: an opportunity to hire them as guides, a photo op with a young girl in traditional dress, or a chance to get up close and personal with a pet toucan or sloth. We chose the toucan.

The village was small, with houses built on stilts to withstand the vagaries of the rise and fall of the river height. It didn’t take long for us to tour the entire space.

After 1500 kilometres of river cruising, we reached the port of Manaus. The port of Manaus, which is actually located on the banks of the Rio Negro near where it meets the Amazon River itself, is a vital hub in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. As the largest city in the region, Manaus acts as a gateway to the rainforest, and its port reflects the unique blend of urban life and wilderness. The first thing that stuck with us, though, was the extraordinary amount of industrial development and the massive amount of garbage that floated in the river near our dock. It was shocking.

Yes, all that green stuff and such is garbage.

During the rubber boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Manaus flourished as a wealthy trade center, and its port became a symbol of that prosperity. The city itself has a wide variety of colonial buildings that speak of a much more prosperous era in the past. It even has an opera house.

Since we were in Manaus for two days, we had a chance to have several experiences. First, we took a riverboat to January Lake, an eco-reserve, where we sped through the grasses in a motorized canoe to see the giant water lilies. We hoped to see wildlife, but other than a few egrets, we saw none. On our way back to the port, we were treated to “the meeting of the waters,” where the dark water of the River Negro reaches the murky brown of the Amazon and travels that way for six kilometres before mixing.

The ‘meeting of the waters” where you can clearly see the demarcation between the water of the River Negro and the Amazon River

Differences in temperature and composition keep them apart for that distance. It was an interesting phenomenon.

The following day, we toured the city on foot by ourselves. It would have been easy to get lost among the myriad streets where vendors sold everything from Chinese-made cosmetics to housewares and clothing to (obviously stolen) smartphones. We were told to keep our valuables hidden and our phones close to the body. We did.

On our way back out of the river, we stopped at the port of Santarem. There, we boarded a rattle-trap repurposed (but not refurbished) city bus with no suspension or air conditioning for the hour-and-a-half drive to the Tapajos Rainforest. Once there, we made our way into the rainforest on foot for an hour-and-a-half hike. It was incredible and worth dodging the extraordinary volume of ants. Again, we saw no wildlife, but we learned how rubber is harvested from rubber trees.

The experience was nothing if not inspirational. In fact, when we got home, Patty began writing the sequel to last year’s book We Came from Away. If you were to pick up Meet Me in Miami, you’d get the luscious details of that Amazon River cruise—armchair travel at its best, along with a story of second chances for the characters.