The best way to get an overview of the island is on a taxi tour. In about 2 1/2 hours, a local driver (all of them are guides) will show you everything for about US$50 (£26). The driver will also arrange to let you off at your favorite beach after a look around, and then pick you up and return you to your hotel or the airport. Call Airport Taxi Stand at tel. 264/497-5054 or Blowing Point Ferry Taxi Stand at tel. 264/497-6089. If you want more organized sightseeing, call Bennie's Tours at Blowing Point (tel. 264/497-2788). This is the island's most reliable tour operator.
Boat trips can sometimes be arranged to Sombrero Island, 61km (38 miles) northwest of Anguilla. This mysterious island, with its lone lighthouse, is 360m (1,200 ft.) wide at its broadest point and 1.2km (3/4 mile) in length. Phosphate miners abandoned it in 1890, and limestone rocks, now eroded, rise in cliffs around the island. The treeless, waterless terrain evokes a moonscape. Ask at your hotel desk if you can be hooked up with a vessel sailing over to the island.
For that rare rainy day, there is the Heritage Museum Collection, East End at Pond Ground (tel. 264/497-4092), open Monday to Saturday 10am to 5pm, charging US$5 (£2.60) admission. Artifacts on display range from the golden age of the Arawak Indians to the British "invasion" of the island in 1969. In addition to artifacts, photographs also tell the story, including those documenting a visit from Queen Elizabeth II in 1964.
One of Anguilla's most festive, and certainly most colorful, annual festivals is Carnival, held jointly under the auspices of the Ministries of Culture and of Tourism. Boat races are Anguilla's national sport, and during Carnival they form 60% of the celebration, in which the island's people display their culture, drama, creativity, and love of their land. The festival begins on the first Monday in August and continues for 1 week. Carnival harks back to Emancipation Day, or "August Monday" as it's called, when all enslaved Africans were freed.
