Barbados

Our last West Indies stop was Bridgetown Barbados.

Once again we’d ignored offered excursions but this time it was because we had arranged a personal taxi before leaving Australia.

We had read about Carson’s taxi and tours on line and were impressed by the reviews and his attitude so we contacted him and arranged our own tour. A tour of the island and lunch with a local lady, Noreen.

All the tours, coaches and taxis headed off and by 9.45 we were almost alone at the dock. Not to worry because we had booked our taxi for 10.00am and sure enough at 9.55 Carson arrived.

We cannot praise and recommend Carson highly enough, a perfect guide. We stopped at the oldest church on the island, St James Parish Church in Holetown. 

It stands on one of the oldest parcels of consecrated land on the island, often known in Barbados as "God's acre".

He showed us all over the island, including showing us a beautifully kept secret, a mural in the town of Speightstown in the island’s north.

Carson gave us a fantastic insight into Barbados, showing us the old towns and new ‘private’ resorts.

Barbados has some beautiful beaches.
The West Coast has calm turquoise waters.

 Beaches on the South Coast are rougher whilst the Atlantic Ocean on the East Coast provides breathtaking views but there are strong currents and huge waves so swimming is not recommended. The North Coast is too rough for swimming, but has spectacular scenery. We stopped at the lookout at North Point to see this rugged beauty, not what we had expected in Barbados at all.

We stopped to overlook the very attractive area of Scotland (apparently named because the early Scottish settlers thought that it resembled Scotland!?),

For those interested in geography and geology the overall shape of the Scotland District is that of a round bowl cut in half by the Atlantic ocean that borders along the straight east coast, with sand beaches and dunes. The remainder of the Scotland District is bordered by a variably steep cliff face. The area has rock formations between 30-50 million years old, composed of clay stones, chalk and volcanic ash.The topography in the interior of the half bowl is the result of the interplay of complex tectonic folding, faulting, and surface erosion, which commonly leads to landslides. These also are the reasons why the Scotland District is relatively sparsely populated and not used for agriculture, except in some very small pockets. The island’s highest point, Mount Hillaby is in the Scotland District.

  One of the 'pockets of agriculture' in the area has this wonderful working windmill.

Then Carson took us to meet Noreen who cooked us a typically Barbadian lunch – fish, pork, polenta, bread fruit and okra. Yum!

After a tour of Noreen’s tiny but extremely productive home garden we completed our island tour before being dropped off in the centre of Bridgetown.

Hot, Hot Hot!! In temperature and vibe. What a jumping lively place, it was Saturday afternoon and everyone was out enjoying themselves.

We grabbed a couple of large cold drinks and walked slowly back to the ship along the waterside.

Living in Australia the West Indies is not usually a holiday destination so it was wonderful to actually visit these islands.

Each one was different – St Johns, Antigua was small and almost quaint. The people were very friendly and we felt very safe and relaxed.

Castries was a very busy port town and I personally felt less safe in some streets, but we didn’t go further afield and see more of St Lucia.

Barbados was a vibrant and happy place, but is in danger of losing it’s identity to those who are buying up land and coastal apartments and then living in splendid, luxurious, air conditioned, isolation. The Barbadians are very laid back and do not make a fuss about anything but unfortunately the old vice of money and corruption is rife. We do hope that they can remain an economic island but things are obviously going awry when this tropical island nation imports bananas!

On an interesting note – before we left Australia we cancelled our contract with our phone and internet provider, Telstra. We were contracted to get ‘fast internet’ but due to ‘line congestion’ we could hardly download an email. Speed tests timed out, but when they did succeed had speeds of 0.2mbps. In Barbados they have an internet speed of 150mbps!!!! No company can provide that in Aus and nbn is offering half that speed.

We left the W.Indies behind and carried on enjoying our time at sea relaxing and  doing nothing, apart from those deck laps. On Halloween we had a ‘Halloween Gala Dinner’ with wonderful gory, blood thirsty descriptions of the food and then the show that night was – The Rocky Horror Show.

(We had seen the original show over 40 years ago, well before any of the performers were born and we felt that they really captured the enthusiasm and it was a great show. Everyone was up on their feet at the end, doing the Time Warp).