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Antigua and Barbuda
A twin-island nation famed for 365 beaches
Antigua and Barbuda is a twin-island state in the eastern Caribbean that likes to boast of a beach for every day of the year. With under a hundred thousand people, it built its fortunes first on sugar and the Royal Navy's great harbor at English Harbour, and later on sail-tourism and a tropical climate that draws yachts and cruise ships. Beneath the resort image lies a proud Afro-Caribbean culture, a love of cricket, and the deep historical weight of the sugar-and-slavery era.
Antigua is the larger, more developed island, low and rolling with a deeply indented coast of bays and reefs and a high point at Mount Obama (formerly Boggy Peak) at 402 meters. Barbuda, flat and lightly populated, is ringed by pink-sand beaches and shelters a vast frigatebird colony in its lagoon. The dry tropical climate and limited fresh water make the islands vulnerable to drought as well as hurricanes.
Settled by the British in the seventeenth century and worked by enslaved Africans on sugar estates, the islands gained independence in 1981. Tourism now dominates the economy, supported by offshore finance and a citizenship-by-investment program. Recovery from Hurricane Irma, which devastated Barbuda in 2017, and the islands' vulnerability to rising seas and storms define the present.