Greg and Mandy's Travels

Ugh. Transit day. Always the worst day of a holiday. Today we had to get three flights – Bridgetown to Miami, Miami to Chicago, and finally Chicago to Boston. American Airlines tells us that the transit times are sufficient to catch our connections, but they haven’t met the TSA.

Up before 5 AM, packed our last few things, and walked out in the dark to try and find a bus to the airport. Luckily one came past in a few minutes and we arrived at the airport two hours before our flight. Being the only early flight, checking and security were very quick, so we sat  there with lots of time to spare.…

Way back in the 1600s and 1700s when Great Britain was locked in a tussle for dominance of the Caribbean sugar and cacao trade with the French, the Dutch and the Latvians (yep, that one surprised me too), Barbados was the main British port and the hub of their trade. It was important to be able to defend it from ships that suddenly appeared. After all there were no satellites and radar to warn you. So, the British established a network of 40 different forts around the island, each with their own fortifications and guns.

Today we explored St Ann’s Garrison, probably the biggest and most preserved.…

Spent the morning wandering around ‘the delightful seaside town’ of Oistins where our Airbnb is situated. At least that’s what the Barbados tourism brochures say. It’s a fishing village about 30 minutes around the coast from the capital that has turned into a backpacker oriented town. Actually it does have lovely white sand beaches, so that part is true. We keep going to the ‘Surfers Cafe’ on the beach for morning coffee, but as yet haven’t seen any surfers, although we did see one older white male kite-surfing. 

It’s really a fishing village, where the main attraction is the fish market.…

Up early to brave the public bus from our Airbnb in the beachside suburb of Oistins back into Bridgetown proper for our morning walking tour.

Only 4 of us on the tour and, you guessed it, all 4 were from Queensland.

Now let’s sort out which generation you belong to first. The two recent ‘heroes’ of Barbados are Sir Garfield Sobers and Rihanna. Which one of the two you know about seems to define your generation. 

OK, so you can tell that I’m old and grey. I can only remember one song of Rihanna, and that is because it’s a collaboration with Coldplay.…

Morning coffee on the white sandy beach overlooking the Caribbean Sea here in Bridgetown, Barbados, then a morning of researching and planning what we want to do over the next few days.

In the afternoon we climbed aboard a local bus and took an hour long journey north to Holetown. Yep, that’s its name. Holetown has an annual week-long festival which been running every year for the last 70. Various activities, parades and concerts throughout the week, with several hundred local stalls operating every day. Think Moomba, but with people.

Unfortunately, being the last day of the festival, most things have concluded, so we only got to see the 5km fun run and the 5km fun walk, which are not great spectator events.…

Well, we bumped back into humanity with a thud. Sometime around 1am we docked in Bridgetown, Barbados. We are only one of five cruise ships docked today, and when we woke up there were ships everywhere led by the huge P&O ship with 5000 people and 18 decks. Three large cruise ships, and two small ones so it’s going to be manic in the cruise terminal today. Over 10,000 passengers with their luggage, and truck loads of ship’s food and provisions arriving to be loaded for their next cruise.

Went up on deck to enjoy my last quiet coffee, watch the sunrise, and give thanks that I wasn’t queuing for breakfast with 5000 others.…

Drifted into the bay around breakfast time, and shortly after headed off on our 4 hour strenuous walk through the Tobago rainforest. At least, that is what it was billed as, as most of the people on the tour including us had chosen it specifically because they wanted a strenuous hike through the rainforest. Instead we were taken on a bird spotting wander through the rainforest, where we were gently chastised if we wandered on without looking interested enough in the red-throated, rufus-tailed white-bellied juvenile Jacamar bird. 

Leaving the ship, the bus took us up and over the hills running down the spine of the island, from the Caribbean side to the Atlantic side, along the coast a bit, then back up the mountains to the Tobago Main Ridge Forest Reserve.…

Today we called into the island of Mayreau, which is the smallest inhabited island in the Grenadines. Only 1.2 sq miles, and has a population of 271. Has no airport, banks, ATMs or buses. Two taxis and one road.

Mayreau was claimed by a French dude way back in the 1720s, and despite all the Anglo-French wars, and the eventually dominance of the British, he and his descendants were allowed to keep it. By 1773 the island was populated by six Europeans and their sixty six African slaves working on his cotton plantation.

Apart from the 21 acres of the village area acquired by the government, the rest of the island is still privately owned today, so I guess we hired the beach and its facilities (shelters, toilets, tables) for the day.…

Moved from our offshore position where we held-to last night, into the bay in Soufriere (sue-frair) around sunrise. Very sheltered and very calm waters. St Lucia is a very small island nation at the eastern end of the Caribbean chain, officially in the Lesser Antilles to differentiate them from the Netherlands Antilles. The island is only around 30 km long, with only two towns of any size – the capital Castries and Soufriere.

Soufriere is dominated on all sides by very steep mountains, with two peaked mountains called the Pitons dominating the skyline. Think of the Glass House Mountains in Queensland.…

Our longest open water passage meant that we were at sea all last night and all of today. Tonight we are at ‘drift anchor’ which means that it is too deep out here to put down an anchor, so the ship’s engines coupled with GPS are being used to keep us in the same position. Hasn’t GPS changed our lives. Traveling has been made so much easier by that little blue dot on the map.

Spent the day lounging about, so there’s little to report. Our wrist bands have been remarkably effective in keeping sea-sickness at bay, though in fairness it hasn’t been particularly rough weather.…