Barbuda is Antigua’s flat sister thirty miles north, an island with one village, a lagoon, a beach that runs for eleven miles and a shade of pink in the sand from crushed shell. Almost nobody goes. That is the reason to.
The ferry from St John’s takes ninety minutes and the small plane takes fifteen. Book a day tour that includes the boat, a taxi on the island and the lagoon trip, because the island has no buses and the taxis are a phone call to a man called Junior.
The frigate bird sanctuary is the morning. A small boat across the Codrington lagoon to the mangroves where thousands of frigate birds nest, and in season the males inflate a red throat pouch like a balloon to attract the females. The boat gets within a few meters. The kids will be silent, which is rare.
The beach
Then the beach. Princess Diana beach, named because she came here to escape, is the pink one on the west side, and the taxi drops you at a spot with a shelter and comes back in three hours. The water is clear and calm, the sand is pink at the waterline, and there will be perhaps three other families on eleven miles of it.
Lunch is a lobster from a beach shack if it is open, or the picnic you brought from Antigua. Bring water, shade and everything else, there is no shop on the beach.
A day is enough with children. The hotel on Barbuda is expensive and the one night is for adults who want the empty beach at dawn. Then the boat back to Antigua with pink sand in the shoes.
Planning Antigua & Barbuda with kids? Start with the full Antigua & Barbuda family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.
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