General: Barbados

You’ve got Malu’s travel challenge to thank for this one – it reminded me that I haven’t written about Barbados…….yet.

I’ve been to Barbados three times in the past ten years, each time for two weeks holiday. Since it’s not the cheapest venue in the world, both to get to, and also to stay in, I guess you could say I must like the place. In fact, I do like it – a lot!

Barbados seems to embody all that I want from a holiday ...
...at the end of a busy day’s seeing and doing!

GEOGRAPHY AND WEATHER BITS

Originally plotted and named by the Portuguese, who remarked upon its strange bearded trees (hence ‘barbados’), the island was more permanently settled by the British. Its contrasting coastal scenery, alternating between the distinctly balmy and calm to the decidedly rough and breezy is a major plus point for me. Barbados is one of the outer islands ... more

You’ve got Malu’s travel challenge to thank for this one – it reminded me that I haven’t written about Barbados…….yet.

I’ve been to Barbados three times in the past ten years, each time for two weeks holiday. Since it’s not the cheapest venue in the world, both to get to, and also to stay in, I guess you could say I must like the place. In fact, I do like it – a lot!

Barbados seems to embody all that I want from a holiday in terms of things to see, do and preferably EAT at the end of a busy day’s seeing and doing!

GEOGRAPHY AND WEATHER BITS

Originally plotted and named by the Portuguese, who remarked upon its strange bearded trees (hence ‘barbados’), the island was more permanently settled by the British. Its contrasting coastal scenery, alternating between the distinctly balmy and calm to the decidedly rough and breezy is a major plus point for me. Barbados is one of the outer islands that form the barrier protecting the Caribbean Sea from the much rougher Atlantic Ocean. Inland, the scenery is equally varied, going from almost mountainous in the ‘Scotland District’ to rolling slopes planted to sugar cane. The landscape really owes this entirely to cultivation, without which, it would be an annexe of South American rainforest. Barbados’ nearest neighbour to the south is Trinidad, and after that comes Venezuela on the South American mainland.

Being roughly triangular in shape, you not only get two contrasting shorelines, but an intermediate ‘calm-ish but breezy’ coast too, set askew to the Atlantic on the south west side of the island.

Very few people holiday on the rough side facing the Atlantic, although it is very popular as a second home location for ‘Bajans’ (never Barbadians) to get some cooling relief from the height of winter – yes, I did say winter. Mind you, this is not like our winter. Thanks to Barbados’ proximity to the equator, temperatures are very even, around 30 C every day. What you actually get are wet and dry seasons.

Summer is the preserve of fairly regular but not lasting rainfall, and can be regarded as the off season, which from the British viewpoint is fine – it’s cheaper to go there during our summer, which has to be a ‘first’ for us. You have to get the rain in perspective too – it’s not like a grey day in the UK when it rains. There, the skies open, and then it dries up and the sun comes out again – end of story. Barbados is lucky too, in so much that it’s too far south to be affected by the hurricane season, well mainly anyway. The last full blown (sorry) hurricane to hit was in 1953, although I have been there when the palms were bent double and you couldn’t see the ground from a fourth-floor balcony for driving rain, but again, it was soon over, and the innate warmth in the ground soon dried everything out again, helped along by bright sunshine. This does mean that summer can be rather humid, and a lot of the millionaire’s houses with rooms open to the beach have to throw out all the soft furnishings once a year to stop mould getting a foothold. Not your problem if you’re only staying there though.

The west coast is the one that most people would regard as their idea of the Caribbean, coral sand beaches, palms leaning across the sand creating much needed shade and just the gentle lapping of tiny wavelets. The southwest side is for cheapskates like me who can’t afford to live it up at ‘Sandy Lane’ along with footballer’s wives and celebrity golfers.

Barbados covers an area of around 166 square miles. If that means nothing to you, then bear in mind that The Isle Of Wight is 145 square miles, so unlike some Caribbean islands like Jamaica or even Cuba, there’s no need whatsoever to book a two-centre holiday to make sure that you see plenty. Prospects for hiring a car and seeing a lot of it are high. It therefore follows that unless you really MUST spend a lot, you can stick to the cheaper locations for your accommodation since a trip to the ‘other end’ is about as arduous as going to The Needles from Ryde.

WHERE WE STAYED

On all three occasions, I have stayed in a village called Maxwell, which is on the route from the airport to the capital Bridgetown. Maxwell lies near some familiar place names like Ealing , Hastings and Worthing, one of which even sports an Osterley Hotel, which made me smile as the original is about 1½ miles from my house!

My first two stays were in the Welcome Inn and in its second rebirth, The Barbados Beach Club. The hotel was a mixture of self-catering and full board, the rooms being equipped with fridges (not mini-bars), cooker hobs and kitchen sinks. However, we got wind that the inevitable was going to happen – it was going to go ‘all inclusive’. I can see why the hotel management might think that this is a good idea, after all, you’ll probably stay on the premises all week, booking sundry extras, but from my point of view, I do actually WANT to eat out every night, and to a newcomer, the very existence of ‘all inclusive resort hotels’ gives the impression that it’s not safe to go out. In the case of Barbados, nothing is further from the truth.

My daughter, who was eighteen at the time, seemingly dated half of the young male population of the island whilst we were there and never once felt unsafe. When a lad said ‘I’ll get you home’ they did exactly that, and she has retained some good friends there to this day. This is not to say that you should leave your wallet lying around on your dining table, but just sensible precautions that you’d take at home are plenty.

Our third stay, given that the Welcome Inn/Barbados Beach Club had gone over to all-inclusive was at the Sea Breeze Hotel, all of 100 yards away. This has an enchanting restaurant, placed on stilts over the beach itself, and so was delightfully breezy in the evening. Mornings were a delight of another kind as all kinds of cheeky songbirds lined up to help us eat breakfast.

Then we learned from the Canadian management that they were thinking of going all-inclusive too. We haven’t been back since.

What is it with this drive to keep people inside the hotel grounds when the island is so beautiful and interesting? I don’t understand the mentality of whisking yourself away on a 9-hour flight to a country you’ve never been too, and then to hang around the pool drinking cheap drinks (cheap in content too) whilst wearing a plastic bracelet. Then again, why do people go all the way to Las Vegas and spend their days indoors perched on a stool in front of a fruit machine? I guess I’ll just have to beg to differ and leave it at that. Of course, the other knock-on effect is that it’s only the hotel owners (quite likely foreign) and their few staff that benefit from employment – the rest of the island gets nothing out of the deal.

GETTING AROUND

Firstly, there are no trains, so no trains to be late either. There was a sugar plantation line from the east coast to Bridgetown but it’s now defunct. Every now and then you spot a bridge or an embankment seemingly going nowhere – that’s the old line.

There are three kinds of buses. Government-run buses are in a blue and yellow livery, whilst confusingly, private buses are in a yellow and blue livery (or was it the other way round?). Thirdly, you have what is known as the ‘route taxi’. These are licensed minibuses displaying their route number. They more or less stop on demand which can make progress very slow around tea-time, especially since any luggage stored at the back has to be passed across and over passengers when the bus is full, quite often exiting via a window. Generally speaking you tend to HEAR these coming rather than see them – their drivers carry their own boom-box stereos run at full blast to help you since they are all in the manufacturer’s standard off-white. No liveries here! Given that they don’t tend to be air-conditioned unless you count having the windows open, they can get very hot with that all pervading ‘Eau D’Armpits’ fragrance inside, and the whole experience, whilst very cheap, is something like a Turkish ‘dolmus’ in a heat wave. Great fun though, and a good way of sharing a joke or two with locals, all of whom really seem to like visitors. You can also hire them in their entirety (the minibus, not the locals) in the evenings, if say a group of you are going out to get blad…….errrr……sample a few jugs of Daquiri (each?).

They drive on the left (mostly), and the basic hire car tends to be a ‘moke’. Originally, these were real Leyland Mini-Mokes but as these crawl off one by one to that Moke dealers in the sky, any small car that’s been cut away and re-engineered is called a moke. Unless you can afford a saloon with air-con, these are your best bet. Car hire is expensive, since a new car costs the locals a personal fortune thanks to swingeing import taxes.

In the rainy season, beware the lake that builds up over night on the car’s convertible hood. There’s nothing more unpleasant when you’re all nice and warmed up for a day out than to have ten gallons of cold water deposited on your lap. Once you get going, that can get pretty chilly! The cars themselves don’t mind – they’re made to be hosed out anyway!

Apart from a central spine highway that more or less runs north to south along the whole island, driving around Barbados is rather like driving around rural Devon in a heat wave. The narrow country lanes frequently have high hedgerows, telephone poles down the sides and combined with the driving on the left on black tarmac with a white line down the middle, it’s all rather familiar at first glance. The occasional palm tree brings you back to reality though, as does any close scrutiny of the rest of the foliage. Those squirrels or ferrets you think you’ve seen scurrying across the roads are mongoose, imported by the original plantation owners to stop snakes killing the slaves. Now there’s a caring employer for you! Protecting his investment more like.

Joke Break: A plantation owner writes off to the East India Company to acquire what he calls a couple of mongeese. They reply that they make a policy of not supplying animals to anyone who can’t spell the plural. ‘OK’, re-sends the owner, ‘send me two mongii’. Back comes the standard letter. Exasperated, the owner makes one last ditch attempt. ‘Send me a mongoose, and if that’s not too much trouble, send me another.’

WHAT WE DID

Helicopter trip – Bajan Helicopters will swish you all around the island taking in some stunning just-above-the-waves flying along the rugged east coast for about £40. Seeing that I’d got my camcorder handy, the pilot let me take the other front seat

Submarine trip – Not unique to Barbados, these Atlantis subs are springing up everywhere with a reef of clear water to dive into. The electric powered tourist sub really does dive – it’s not a glass-bottomed boat, albeit only to 50 feet, and always with a support boat above. To be frank, apart from being able to say I’ve been underwater in a submarine, the view was a bit disappointing with only one curious turtle coming to stare at us.

Catamaran trip – Probably much more fun and cheaper too is to take a place on one of the sailing catamarans as they ply the west coast, mooring at some pretty spot for lunch, leaving us free to swim ashore or laze around supported by those ‘noodle’ thingies. Oh the decadence of floating in crystal blue water with a cocktail in one hand and a couple of noodles protruding suggestively from between ones legs! (A couple?!)

Jeep safari – The reassuringly modern Land Rover Defenders are a great way to get off the beaten track, although be warned, the closer you sit to the tailboard, the rougher it gets! They really do get you to the bits that others don’t go, like through a rainforest complete with the background chatter of the fairly rare green monkey. It’s also an opportunity for their drivers to show off – I had to keep telling myself ‘well I suppose they know what they’re doing’, but all was well and the cold drink stops were wonderful!

Zoo and Rainforest – this is one you can do yourself. On a hill in the centre of the island lies the zoo. Many of the animals, including the smaller alligator family are allowed to wander around. It was tortoise-humping season when we were there, the noisy buggers! The large troop of green monkeys have to be eyed with suspicion though as they are quite bold and have scratchy fingernails. The rainforest exhibit is a treasure. Built on a hillside previously used as a rubbish dump, it represents the ultimate in recycling, attempting as it does to reproduce the natural state of Barbados before the sugar cane clearances. The musty cool feel of the place is so restful. Even the apparently wooden benches are made from a recycled plastic looking a bit like Aero-bar when cut. Very enterprising. All around are the shuffling noises of things that go bump in the day as well as the night. There are no nasty snakes here – the mongoose, mongooses, mongeese, mongii ate them all.

Garrison Savannah Races – Look like a toff for the day as this lush green racecourse on the edge of Bridgetown – if there’s any racing on that is.

Garrison Savannah Folk evening – This is a typical ‘ethnic evening’ with a banquet and local music and dancing. I enjoyed this but mainly because my wife engineered it so that I could sit next to the lady from Ecuador and practice my Spanish! According to her, it was very good. All I know is that I didn’t get my face slapped once.

Harrison’s Caves – I can’t remember the origins of these now and anyone familiar with Cheddar (not the cheese) and Wookey Hole won’t find much unusual here. Being taken round on an electric road-train was nice though!

The Flower Cave – A bit of a disappointment to say the least. This cave at a windy* tip of the island is purported to have been the home of many sea anemones, with the emphasis on the past tense as they’re not there now. Fans of Eddie Grant may however recognise the silhouette of the cave entrance as being that on the rear cover of his ‘Walking On Sunshine’ album.

*As an indication of how windy it is, I don’t remember sweatshirts being on sale anywhere else!

Round Trip – Many coach companies run these trips and they are as good a way of identifying places to come back to as any. By the way, in Barbados they don’t have honking great luxury coaches on account of the average width of the roads, so what you will get, even at the airport, is a somewhat smaller and quite utilitarian bus. Your luggage follows on a separate truck. Don’t worry, it works. On a circular trip, you are confronted with a whole new gamut of place names, Bathsheba, Cattlewash (quite literally a spot on the east coast where they bathed cattle), Holetown, Speightstown and so on.

Distillery Tours – The famous Mount Gay rum tour is a must for drinkers. Whilst the actual distillery is now elsewhere on the island, the Mount Gay museum tour is still attached to the bonded warehouse. I have to say that in a humid 30 C heat, the ‘angel’s share’ was quite overpowering, but nicely. You can also go to the more factory-like distillery where they make the basis for Malibu. Ironically, the white glass bottles are shipped from Britain, filled with run and coconut and shipped back. Of course, all of these tours end with a free tasting. I tried not to, but you know how it is.

WHERE WE ATE (AND DRANK)

Whilst fish and seafood feature, quite naturally highly on most Bajan menus, the island does actually have its own dairy industry so beef is available as well as lamb chicken and goat. The big game fish are very popular as are flying fish, which actually turn out not unlike grilled sardines. Many visitors are at first puzzled and possibly repulsed by the mention of dolphin on the menu, but this is ‘dolphin fish’ which I believe is known else where as Dorado. Many menus are suffixed ‘not Flipper!’ after the mention of dolphin just to make absolutely sure that you don’t think your eating a Bottlenose.

There’s no getting away from it, wine IS expensive, and for some quite mediocre stuff. Le Piat D’Or comes to mind. To be fair, what would you expect? The local beer, Banks’ is good, of its type and they also make a stout, which might not be the ideal drink in this climate!

Of course, rum is a major feature of many Bajan drinks and they are justly proud of their old traditional Mount Gay brand of dark rum – it’s converted me from Bacardi anyway! A jug of various fruit flavoured Daiquiris, made with local rum, is a very agreeable way of passing an hour (or two) in the comparative cool of the evening.

Joke break: A doctor pops into his favourite New York cocktail bar after work, where they make his favourite Hazelnut Daiquiri. Having run out of Hazelnut flavouring one night, the barman remembers the barbecue-smoked flavouring and tries to pass this off on the doctor. On querying why it tastes different, the barman replies……….

’It’s a hickory Daiquiri, Doc’.

Burt’s Bar is a great place just outside Bridgetown to try these various cocktails, and if you feel like you can’t move afterwards, don’t worry, they have a good restaurant too! If you really must, you can follow American football on the sport’s bar’s screen as well.

Pisces and David’s Restaurants are somewhat more upmarket eateries as the posh end of what is know as St Lawrence Gap, a strip of beach-front eateries only a short walk from Maxwell. Pisces excels in atmosphere and fish, being built out over the sea. David’s Place is a bit more formal, and David will give gentlemen personal inside leg measurements to fit them up for long trousers should they arrive in shorts. These are both the kind of place we’ve eaten our ‘last night’ meal – you certainly might think twice price-wise about eating there often.

St Lawrence Gap is also a good source of budget eateries, but beware the burger sellers with handcarts. From the safety of a restaurant terrace, I watched the same man handle raw meat, money and cooked meat all with the same hands, without washing in between. The Government have outlawed such hygiene hazards and it’s no wonder that he suddenly became a cab driver as a policeman approached.

The Boatyard – this in on the outskirts of Bridgetown and is another romantic built-over the beach setting. Apparently frequented by the stars, they managed to stay away the nights we were there, but it’s actually quite reasonably priced for the neighbourhood.

Harbour Lights – Ah yes, Harbour Lights, the last place I got so pi**ed that I invented a new dance craze, the ‘I’ve Had 12 of These Banks’ And I feel Fine, Hic’. The ‘I’ve Had Swenty Of Theesh Banksh’ version was nowhere near as animated. A good fun night out all the same, with drinks and barbecue thrown in (and later ‘up’). Hiring one of those route taxis in advance to get you home again is a mighty fine idea.

Hurrah! Barbados is one of the few countries in the world where Macdonald’s had to close their branch through lack of custom, the locals preferring their own Chefette drive-in chain. Sorry Ronald.

SHOPPING

Cave Shepard – this is the main department store in downtown Bridgetown, and is a very popular stopping off point for visiting cruise liner passengers. Apart from their ability to handle tax-free shopping with aplomb, it’s nothing really special, maybe on a par with Debenhams, and parents of school kids from Britain might like to be warned that the whole place is plastered with ‘Back To School’ adverts in August – doesn’t that just make you homesick?

Incidentally, whilst nothing to do with shopping, Barbados retains O Level Exams, which continue to be set for them by a British University. Many Bajan parents in the UK send their children back there for the more formal ‘old style’ education. University education is shared across the West Indies, so that to study one subject you may find yourself in the Trinidad campus, where others may lead you to Barbados or Jamaica. Lesson over.

Chalky Mount pottery is a treasure trove if you like hand-made unique pottery

WHAT WE BROUGHT HOME

Rum – Mount Gay Rum, what else?

Flying Fish – you can leave this till you get to the airport and have vacuum-packed fish shipped home.

Best Of Barbados – This is a chain of shops, including an obvious one at the airport, which carry high-quality souvenirs, many of them containing the artwork of local artist Jill Walker.

WHAT WE MISSED

Cropover Festival – We have somehow managed to miss this Harvest Festival ‘Caribbean Style’ every time we’ve been. Given that the island’s population is a little over 0.25 million, don’t expect the Rio carnival, but from the videos and CDs of music, it sounds like damned good fun, and maybe doesn’t take itself so seriously.

Banks' International Field Hockey Tournament – Not that I’d have wanted to go, but we always seem to get the UK teams on our return flight who have decided to stay on for a week or two on our plane, complete with silly velvet hats, fake breasts and ‘nudge nudge’ jokes. Some of the men were a pain too.

Oystins Fish Fry – Now here’s one that I keep meaning to get to especially since it’s near Maxwell. Once a week the village of Oystins and its fishermen in particular gather together to run a night market and fresh fish barbecue all in one. I can taste those flying fish sandwiches just thinking about it.

GENERAL STUFF

Do not sit under a manchineel tree. This harmless looking 'fruit' tree bears a fig-sized bulbt, which should it fall from the tree and come into contact with your skin, will cause blistering. Even rainwater run-off from the leaves can cause dermatitis. The trees are clearly marked with a painted white line around them (like in the UK during the blackout), so if you see a shady unpopulated spot, just make sure that it’s not because a manchineel tree is creating the shelter.

Voltages and plugs – these follow the US practice of 110 volts with a mixture of two and three pin plugs depending on whether an earth is required.

Phone system – Run by Cable & Wireless international dialled calls are freely available. Barbados is part of the North American 001 international dialling zone – this does NOT make calls to the States and Canada local rate!

THE END

I honestly can’t think of much more as it’s a couple of years since I was last there. Barbados really is superb introduction to the Caribbean, even if Concorde doesn’t go there any more!

 

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