一览
为什么值得去
Guiana Island is a low, uninhabited isle of roughly 600 acres lying off Antigua's northeast coast, tucked between the Parham Peninsula and Crump Island and forming the sheltered southern wall of the North Sound. The fourth-largest island in Antigua and Barbuda, it has no permanent residents and no resorts—just bush-covered hills, a ring of mangroves and reefs, the bones of an 18th-century sugar plantation, and a flock of birds and a herd of deer that have claimed it as their own. It is the kind of place you come to look at rather than to lounge on: a quiet, untouched Caribbean sanctuary seen best from the water.↗↗
What makes Guiana Island special is the way history and nature sit side by side. A derelict stone estate house and the ruins of lime kilns recall two centuries of cane, cotton and cattle, while the island's coral-fringed shores and mangrove cays make it a refuge for the fallow deer that is Antigua's national animal and for the endangered West Indian whistling-duck. For most visitors the experience is a slow boat cruise along the coast on a North Sound eco tour, watching seabirds wheel over the mangroves and reading the silhouettes of the old plantation against the sea.↗↗↗
A Quiet Isle in the North Sound
Guiana Island—sometimes spelled Guana Island on older maps—sits at the northeastern edge of Antigua, in the parish of St. Peter, with its long southern coast facing the mainland across a narrow tidal channel known as the Narrows. To the north and east, its reefs and mangrove-fringed shores open into the calm, shallow waters of the North Sound, the same protected maze of cays that boats tour out of St. John's. Around 600 acres of gently undulating limestone and coral, it ranks as the fourth-largest island in the country after Antigua itself, Barbuda and Redonda, yet the 2011 census recorded not a single permanent inhabitant.↗↗
That emptiness is precisely its charm. Where the west coast of Antigua is lined with marinas and all-inclusive resorts, Guiana has stayed rough, green and largely wild—a reef-fringed little isle of mangrove, turtle grass and scrub where the trade winds still blow unimpeded across open land. It feels like a glimpse of the Caribbean before the tourist boats arrived.↗↗
Plantation Bones and Centuries of History
The island's name is a memory of migration: it comes from the Guiana region of South America, where English settlers from Antigua had tried their hand before the 1667 Treaty of Breda redrew the map, after which many returned and took up land here. By the 1720s a plantation was under way. The stone estate house was raised in 1727, and a sugar mill followed around 1730; later the island grew Sea Island cotton and raised cattle and sheep. The main house still stands, empty and open to the elements, marked by date stones reading 1725 and 1929, while around it lie the crumbling walls of outbuildings and the ruins of two lime kilns at the old landing on the northwest coast, where ships and barges once called.↗↗
The Codrington family—one of the great planter dynasties of the Eastern Caribbean—bought Guiana Island in 1812 and held it until 1929. For much of the 20th century access was characteristically old-fashioned: at the Narrows on the south coast, visitors and workers crossed a stretch of open water on a hand-pulled pontoon ferry, a raft buoyed by drums and hauled from shore to shore on ropes. Bush has long since closed over that slip and the track to the house, and the mill itself has vanished, but the scene is exactly the isolated estate of Antiguan plantation lore.↗
Deer, Mangroves and Birdlife
Guiana's real claim to fame today is as a sanctuary. Fallow deer, introduced to the island around 1740, have long made it home, and the fallow deer is the national animal of Antigua and Barbuda. The mangrove cays and shallow reef flats around the coast feed and shelter a wealth of seabirds; the island forms part of Antigua's Offshore Islands Important Bird Area, designated because it supports notable populations of brown pelicans, laughing gulls, least and royal terns, red-billed tropicbirds and the rare, whistling call of the endangered West Indian whistling-duck skulking among the mangroves.↗↗
The vegetation is the dry, salt-honed scrub typical of Antigua's offshore isles: cactus-and-agave thickets on the ridges, wind-pruned coastal shrubs, creepers binding the dunes, and a fringe of mangrove where the land meets the tidal bays. It is exactly this mangrove system by Guiana Island that tour skippers point out as one of the most important in the North Sound—an ecosystem that buffers the coast, nurses fish, and gives the island its wild, unmanicured character.↗↗
How Visitors Experience Guiana Island
Because it is privately held and largely uninhabited, Guiana Island is not a site you simply walk up to and explore; for most travellers it is seen and appreciated from the water. The classic way to take it in is a North Sound eco boat tour out of the St. John's area, which threads the sound's roughly two dozen offshore islands. Skippers slow at Guiana's coast to explain the mangroves, the bird colonies and the derelict plantation, making the island a highlight of the day rather than a stop with facilities. A guided tour is the reliable route, and it adds the context that turns a green little isle into a story about sugar, the sea and conservation.↗↗
There is also a modern, if cautionary, layer to the island's story. Its quiet isolation and reef-fringed beauty repeatedly drew the attention of developers: a resort scheme under a Malaysian owner in the late 1990s stalled, the island later passed to the convicted Texas financier Sir Allen Stanford before the Antiguan government moved to reclaim it in 2009, and in 2014 a large proposed resort and residential project by Chinese investors became a flashpoint between promised jobs and fears for the deer refuge, mangroves and marine reserve. That tug-of-war is very much why Guiana remains an untouched isle—and a reminder to treat it as a place to observe respectfully, not to disturb.
特别之处
An uninhabited, reef-fringed isle of about 600 acres guarding the southern edge of Antigua's North Sound.↗↗
Ruins of an 18th-century sugar estate—the 1727 stone house, lime kilns and the old hand-pulled ferry crossing at the Narrows.↗
Home to the fallow deer, Antigua's national animal, plus mangroves and rare birds, including the endangered West Indian whistling-duck.↗↗
Part of Antigua's Offshore Islands Important Bird Area, a magnet for pelicans, terns, gulls and tropicbirds.↗↗
Best experienced from a guided North Sound eco boat tour rather than by landing ashore.
提前规划，事半功倍
- Plan to see Guiana Island from the water. Book a North Sound eco boat tour departing the St. John's / Jolly Harbour area and ask the skipper to point out the mangrove system and the old plantation ruins along the coast.↗
- Bring binoculars and a camera with a zoom. The island's draw is wildlife and far-off ruins—terns, pelicans, tropicbirds, the occasional deer—so a good lens turns a passing boat cruise into real birding.↗
- Treat it as a conservation island. The shoreline mangroves and reefs are protected habitat and the access is private, so enjoy it from the boat and follow your crew's guidance rather than expecting to go ashore.↗↗
- Pair a visit with the North Sound's other highlights—mangrove cays, snorkelling reefs and island nature walks—so Guiana becomes one memorable stop in a fuller day on the water.↗
关于本指南
本指南借助 AI 根据下方来源整理而成，并非实地探访所写。地点信息采集于 2026年10月5日。营业时间、交通和评分可能变化，出发前请向场所确认。
- google maps
- Guiana Island (Antigua and Barbuda)
- Guiana Island – Antigua Sugar Mills
- Stanford's charges could derail $1 billion Caribbean project
- Antigua, China investors plan big tourism project – WTOP News
- Guiana Island — Grokipedia
- Antigua moves to seize back Stanford's idyllic island | Allen Stanford | The Guardian
