Charles III in Antigua and Barbuda: Two Islands, 365 Beaches, Pink Sand and a Dockyard Built by Enslaved Africans

A former British colony is celebrating independence, and the British king is arriving for the party. Charles III is touring the Caribbean as head of the Commonwealth: after the Bahamas, where he danced at a parade, planted a tree and posed like a boxing champion, and after Guyana, he's now in Antigua and Barbuda. Queen Camilla will join him later.

The country sells itself with one number: 365 beaches, one for every day of the year. To someone who measures summer in hours waiting at Evzoni, that sounds almost insulting. Antigua is the main island, and Barbuda lies about 40 kilometres to the north and is far less developed for tourism. That's where you'll find the second card in the advertising, pink sand.

On Antigua, bays protected by reefs have turquoise water. In the northwest, Dickenson Bay and Runaway Bay are for swimming, water sports and beach bars. In the south, Valley Church and Ffryes Beach are calmer. On the east coast, Half Moon Bay is a great crescent of white sand facing the Atlantic, wilder in character. A catamaran to reefs and hidden coves is the usual excursion, and sailing is part of daily life, with a long maritime tradition.

The most important site isn't a beach. Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbour is a Georgian dockyard of the British Royal Navy, now on the UNESCO list, with historic buildings, small museums, restaurants and a marina. Brochures show it like a postcard, but it was built and maintained by enslaved Africans. When a British king is visiting, that detail weighs more.

Above the harbour, the Shirley Heights lookout surveys English Harbour and Falmouth Harbour, and on Sundays the sunset becomes an event for everyone, with barbecue, Caribbean music and steel drums. The capital, St. John's, has colourful facades, a market, cathedral towers and shops at Redcliffe Quay, and the Fig Tree Drive road winds through tropical vegetation, former plantations and fruit stalls. For places to stay there's Curtain Bluff, opened in 1962 on a peninsula on the south coast, with 72 rooms and suites, the private island of Jumby Bay a few minutes away by boat, and Admiral's Inn, in former naval buildings inside Nelson's Dockyard itself.

Barbuda is the other story. Here is Princess Diana Beach, named in memory of the princess who enjoyed the island, then Low Bay, a long strip of pink sand, more intense where tiny shells gather, and Codrington Lagoon, with mangroves and a sanctuary for frigatebirds, thousands of them, reachable only by boat. You get to the island by ferry from St. John's or by small plane.

"The beaches are incredible, you go barefoot and in a bikini everywhere," says Rocío Crusset, who travels there often. The king probably won't be going barefoot. And 365 beaches and one UNESCO-listed dockyard tell two different stories, only one of which is on the postcards.