Barbados trip report

[JoshA]

My wife and I were in Barbados last week on our first trip to the island. It seems a mostly developed, well-organized, polite, tourist-friendly, and well-educated place in the Caribbean. It is a large island (166 square miles with 260,000 people) with a distinct, admirable, and British-influenced culture. They are mad about cricket and the world cup in that sport will be held on the island soon. Golf, surfing, windsurfing, soccer, tennis, sailing, scuba and snorkeling are also easily available. It has beautiful beaches all over - calm water on the west coast, waves on the south and east. It has fine hotels, funky bars, nightlife and great restaurants as well.

We stayed at the Crane resort on the southeast coast in a new, beautifully-appointed, one bedroom residence. The old hotel (1887) is being supplemented with many new units and has large sections under construction. Mostly, this did not bother us as we spent most of our time at the beautiful beach and pool.



We ate at great restaurants:

Brown Sugar - Bajan (short for Barbadian) food on the south coast
Cafe Luna - Wonderful food and service on the roof of the Little Arches hotel on the south coast
Champers - Fine eclectic dining overlooking a southern beach
Restaurant at Southsea - Excellent food and service in the St. Lawrence Gap on the south coast
Buffet at Plantation - dinner show of Bajan culture
Zen - Elegant Thai food and sushi overlooking Crane beach at our hotel
Oistins Friday Fish Fry - cheap food and party atmosphere on the beach at this south coast fishing village
The Cliff - Outstanding food and service on the west coast at, maybe, the best restaurant on the island

We also took a snorkel-sail one day on the Silver Moon where we swam with turtles and saw reefs and deliberately sunk ships at Folkestone marine reserve.




We also spent a calm-water day at Mullins Bay on the west coast where we hung out at Mannie's Suga Suga and did some snorkeling. We toured the island on the two showery days seeing Bathsheba on the east coast (famous for surfing), Cattlewash, Codrington College, and Bottom Bay and Foul Bay near our hotel. We also did some shopping at Earthworks on the heights overlooking the west coast.

In summary, it was a great trip, helped greatly by suggestions from DebTor (Merci, Deb) who is a fan of the island. Barbados certainly has a lot to offer.

[nnoska]

nice turtle pic glad to hear you had fun

[bto]

gorgeous pics.

[JoshA]

Thanks, nnoska and bto. You are encouraging me to post a few more photos. Here's a fish I saw near the turtles. Anyone know its name? It seems to be a cross between a puffer fish, which was also there, and a flying fish which were plentiful on our catamaran ride to the site. Fried or grilled flying fish is a typical Bajan dish and delicious but this fish is much fatter than what we ate.

Another mystery is: where do these coconuts come from? I saw them washed up at various beaches along the southeast coast. One caretaker puzzled over them and said they are not from Barbados. I asked the beach chair assistants at Crane Beach what they were and they said 'sea coconuts' but agreed they didn't grow on Barbados. I surmised they came from Africa via sea currents. One web site on drift fruits mentioned the Amazon. They are about the size of plums.


Finally, to round out the flora/fauna display, here's a photo of some sea grapes on the hotel grounds.


They don't look too different from a fruit being sold by vendors at roundabouts on Barbados at the time we were there. We were given a bunch of something called 'akee' (spelling may be wrong) by a pretty, young Bajan girl at Mullins with whom we conversed. She said they're in season now and her friends have given her a large supply which she was sharing. You bite around the green skin to reveal some sweet flesh around a large seed. You can suck the gooey flesh for its flavor (no jokes please).

[nnoska]

it looks like a flying gurnard, what camera did you use for the pics, looks like natural light, i use the sea life dc500, very nice thanks for sharing

[JoshA]

Thanks, nnoska, for the info. There seem to be other types of fish called flying gurnards that don't look quite like this but they do seem to be in the same family. I used a Canon SD 550 pocket-size camera in a Canon WP-DC80 underwater housing. That way you have one camera that works both above and underwater.

[marybeth]

Josh,
Thanks for sharing. Our first ever trip to the Caribbean was to Barbados about 10 years ago and we have very fond memories. We also snorkeled over the wrecks and ate at Brown Sugar. It is indeed a very friendly island and I enjoyed the British flavor in the culture. Thankfully it doesn't carry over into the food...

mb