Ann's Blog

White Bay, Barbuda:
May 6, 2011
Pink beaches, wild donkeys, and
isolation behind the reefs

The numbers make it easy to understand why. It has a scant 1500–2000 inhabitants, compared to Antigua’s 68,000 (according to the tourist board; other sources estimate the population even higher, as much as 85,000) – and yet Barbuda is more than half the size of Antigua.

We first drop the hook in Low Bay, on Barbuda’s west side, off 11-Mile Beach. That’s not a typo: The beach stretches unbroken for 11 miles. As we sit in Receta’s cockpit and watch the waves lap the shoreline, the wet edge of sand is distinctly pink.

Up close, the colour is even more pronounced, and if you look closely, you’ll see the sand includes millions of tiny bits of pink shells. Count on seeing maybe one person for every hour of beachwalking you do.

What you will see lots of are frigate birds – especially if you go with one of the local boatmen to Barbuda’s frigate bird sanctuary, in the mangrove-edged lagoon behind the north end of the beach. At this time of year, the birds have already mated and borne their young, and many have already migrated. Still, there are enough fluffy white chicks – they look like cartoon characters – to satisfy us, and one male with his red throat pouch inflated like a red balloon – a technique they use to attract female frigates during mating season. (Since we were well past mating season, “he must just be looking to get laid,” one of our group remarked.)

After a couple days in Low Bay, we move to the south coast and tuck in behind and among the reefs of White Bay, by Spanish Point. Here, I’m entranced by the water colour – celadon and turquoise, the exact shades depending on the degree of sun vs. cloud. Steve goes to the top of Arctic Tern’s mast to capture a frigate’s-eye view of our anchorage, which has garnered a spot high on our list of Top 10 Favourite Places to Drop the Hook. One afternoon we see an eagle ray cruising the anchorage; another, a huge barracuda (about 4 ½ feet long) hangs behind our transom.

At night, as we play Spades with Devi and Hunter on Arctic Tern, we can hear some of the island’s wild donkeys hee-hawing on shore, a sound that convulses this city girl with laughter. The next day, we see five or six of them as we walk on shore. They keep a wary distance from us, braying a warning to each other if we try to approach. Even Devi’s attempts to entice them with an apple have no effect. (Granted, unless another cruiser tried the same trick, these guys wouldn’t know from apples. They don’t grow in the Caribbean and, believe me, you won’t find them sold in the modest stores in Codrington, Barbuda’s only town.)

Besides the occasional local fishing boat and one or two other sailboats that spend a night and then move on, Receta and Arctic Tern have Barbuda’s south coast to ourselves. Like it or not, we are cut off from our cell phones (no service here) and, gasp, from the Internet: There’s no wifi signal, and the nearest Internet café is in Codrington, a $70 US taxi ride away. No, we don’t need to check our email or upload our blogs that badly. Instead, we go for a walk on the flotsam-and-jetsam-strewn windward beach. Hey, maybe the ocean will deliver me a message in a bottle.

It doesn’t, but we do find at least a half-dozen specimens of a mysterious, foot-long black plastic….something. None of us knows what it is. (I think it’s part of a car engine, but the others, who know more about car engines than I do, pooh-pooh the idea.) Devi solved the mystery: I’ll let her tell you what she discovered: Click here for Devi’s May 14th blog about this beach “trash.”

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