Antigua, boasting just over 365 beaches, has great reefs and wrecks for diving and snorkelling. On neighbouring Barbuda you can track the island's fabled frigate birds and visit the Caribbean's largest rookery. Barbuda is a quiet, single-village island that gets very few independent visitors, mainly ardent bird-watchers and a few yachties enjoying its clear waters and tranquil beaches. Antigua is a touch more happening, but the pace is still deliciously slow.

Best time to visit

December to mid-April.

Essential experiences

Exploring colonial-era sights, a working sugar mill at Betty's Hope and the 18th-Century Nelson's Dockyard; kicking back on the island's white-sand beaches; diving coral canyons, wall drops and sea caves with marine life such as turtles, sharks and barracuda; touring the Caribbean's largest rookery, in Barbuda; taking the scenic route along Fig Tree Drive and snorkelling the coral-encrusted wreck of the Andes; poking around the overgrown churchyard of Antigua's first church, St Paul's Anglican Church dating back to 1676.

In a few words, Antigua and Barbuda is

Cricket, rum, endless pristine white-sand beaches, dancing, calypso music and black pineapples.

Did you know?

Barbuda has less than 2% of the nation's population, black pineapples are not black and most of Barbuda's 1100 people share half a dozen surnames and can trace their lineage to a small group of slaves brought to the island in the late 1600s.