Antigua

Here we are on the beautiful island of Antigua there are three ships including ourselves moored up, depositing approximately 6000 souls on this sun drenched paradise, including the Costa Luminosa parked right side up!! Also alongside is a Royal Caribbean ship that has a Captain Jack Sparrow lookalike stationed at the bottom of the gang plank accompanied by a photographer who insists on taking your photo with Captain Jack, surprisingly the Americans seem keen on the idea, if it was our ship the Old Dears would treat him like Abu Hamsa and chase him down the quayside with a combination of parasols, Zimmer frames and motorised wheelchairs. 

The ability of Islanders to communicate in several different languages at once is another eye opener, the common denominator being the ability to separate said multilingual punters from their American Dollars (The preferred currency) and slipping them their change in Caribbean Dollars which are useless and you need a wheelbarrow full to have any value. If they are detected doing this switch their inability to be able to communicate in the language they had been using to secure the deal gives rise to "Me no understand"   This does not apply to the upmarket shops like Diamonds International and Colombian sapphires & rubies, I think the security guards with the automatic weapons and bulges under tailored blazers are quite intimidating. I am not sure if this level of security is to stop theft by Cruise Visitors or the locals, but the contents of the shops are quite stunning with prices to match up to 6 figures and beyond on request, never have I seen the blood drain from male faces so quickly and a hand shoot to a wallet in a defensive manoeuvre so quickly accompanied by much tugging of arms to look at the lovely tea towels and Bermuda shirts just over the way.  Three of us have made camp facing these jewellery shops ordering cold bottles of Carib beer, this is better than watching a football match.