Beautiful Barbados

By SETH KUGEL

I picked up a few money-saving tips during my four days in Barbados last week:

1) Drink tap water instead of bottled; it’s safe.

2) Take the bus, not a cab, from the airport to your hotel.

3) Avoid paying the cover for live music at McBride’s Pub by befriending the Brazilian women’s boxing team.

I admit, the third may not be universally applicable, but it sure saved me some bucks (15 Barbadian dollars, or $7.50 at a simple 2-1 exchange rate), so I’d be remiss in not passing it along.

Turns out that my trip coincided with the world championship of women’s boxing, also being held on the easternmost island of the Caribbean. My first night, I spotted three women wearing Brazilian athletic outfits and strolling along the island’s night-life row. I am a big fan – and part-time resident of — Brazil, so I introduced myself and invited them all for a drink.

Lest you think that either a) the Brazilian women’s boxing team boozes during tournaments or b) the Frugal Traveler can afford to buy three women a cocktail, let me clarify. First, my new friends Glauce, Clélia and Andréia had already been eliminated from their weight classes. And second, I was taking them to Café Sol, where the two-for-one, 10 p.m.-to-midnight happy hour meant a round would cost a mere 24 Barbadian dollars ($12).

So soon we were sipping mediocre, beggars-can’t-be-choosers frozen margaritas, and I was doing what any man surrounded by female Brazilian boxers must: beg for a team T-shirt. Clélia said she had an extra uniform (like the one in the photo accompanying this article), and would bring it to me the next night. She did, I put it on, and we were all waved into the dance party at McBride’s, where a mixed crowd of tourists, Barbadians and Barbadian-American tourists packed the sweaty house.

It was a nice change from my trip to slightly stuffy Bermuda. Both had perfect swaths of white sand lapped by brilliantly, pleasantly warm blue waters. But Barbados also had a vibrant, warm, slightly scruffy local scene to go with them. Add to that the incredible kindness with which this island’s residents — who call themselves Bajans — treat foreigners, and you’ve got one heck of an island.

Even its size seems perfect. Shaped like a ham (or, for vegetarians, an off-center pear), Barbados measures about 22 miles from top to bottom and at most 14 miles across – too big to get bored in, too small to get lost in.

Upscale resorts dot the western coast, and the bustling southern coast is full of budget hotels and nice – if teeming – beaches. The rest of the island is more raw, more wild. There are empty beaches; former plantation houses; historic parish churches; and small villages largely consisting of what Bajans call chattel houses, tiny old wooden homes, many of which are barely bigger than a small New York City studio apartment.

I spent a lot of time in the south, on the beach or at the Gap or eating at good places like Just Grillin’ and Ackee Tree, but I spent more on trips around the island. Buses will get you just about everywhere. Blue public buses, yellow private buses, and private vans are all 1.50 in Barbadian dollars (75 cents) per leg, no matter how far you go.

My favorite spot by far was the sparsely populated east side, where surfers – and few others – flock. I got to see the east side’s other, er, side. I figured an easy way to do so was one of the free weekly hikes run by the Barbados National Trust that start out from a different point of the island each Sunday morning at 6 a.m. That’s how I found myself standing in the Bath Beach parking lot with about 60 or 70 Bajans on my third morning there. (I could spot only one other semi-outsider, a Bajan visiting from New York. ) The trust’s general manager, William Gollop, showed frightening good cheer as he explained that the hikes were available in five levels of difficulty. I joined the second easiest.

Make that the fourth hardest. We set off down a sometimes grassy, sometimes wooded trail that hugged the rocky coastline at a pace I associated more with speed walking than hiking. But the terrain was flat, and I kept up as we ducked under branches, swashbuckled through high grass and admired the crashing waves against rocks below.

It was when we cut inland and sharply uphill into the woods that I began to suffer. Pretty soon my heart was beating so hard that it upped the intensity of the pounding in my skull. Note to self: next time you are going hiking at 6 a.m., lay off the Mount Gay Rum on the rocks at Sweet Potatoes’ Latin night the previous evening.

The leaders of the hike felt my pain, though, and swung into be-kind-to-tourists mode. When I had to stop and catch my breath a few times, someone always waited with me, never remarking that several young children had passed me by. When I finally reached the top of the hill – after a final narrow, steep and tortuous passage between two rocks that required you to pull yourself up by vine, I was rewarded with a view of the coastline below, and a long, easy trip down.

The trip down, through villages and by churches, was much more sociable (in that I could breathe). I struck up a conversation with a Bajan named Roslyn Straker, who took it upon herself to become my fruit tree guide, picking fruits growing from trees everywhere – dunts, Barbados cherries, guava, even a fruit I had never heard of before, the janum. (Yes, I had heard of dunts – the day before.)

After we finished the hike – at barely 9 a.m. — I downed two snow cones (1.50 Barbadian from a woman who drives her snow cone truck to meet the hikers’ finish every week), and Mr. Gollop was kind enough to give me a ride to Bathsheba, the main town on the east side of the island.

I headed straight for the beach, where a swim and a nap were in order. The surf was fierce, in some spots crashing just offshore into dramatic rock formations carved by waves over the millennia. But there were other places to take a dip, and a handful of Bajans were taking advantage as I dozed.

Everyone I met in Bathsheba recommended that I eat lunch at the Round House Inn up the hill above the beach. I landed a choice table with a view of the water and ordered pork chops in Bajan barbecue sauce, macaroni pie, salad and a spiked rum punch. Cost? Fifty-six Barbadian dollars, which I justified under the you-deserve-it-after-a-tortuous-hike clause of the Frugal Traveler unwritten contract. I ended the day with a walk (uphill, argh) to the Andromeda Botanic Gardens: nice, but no better than the free fruit-tree-tour I had gotten that morning from Roslyn.

One other worthwhile daytrip was to Speightstown, a slow-going historic port town on the northwest coast with little to do but walk around and enjoy the atmosphere – including a drink at a traditional Bajan rum house called Val’s Hideaway, housed in a chattel house on Mango Lane. I wish I could say there was some great chattel house hostel I stayed in for $10 a night through all this, but such a place does not exist. There are two other budget options, however, at slightly different definitions of “budget option.” The Intimate Hotels of Barbados site offers loads of hotels for under $100 a night, one of which was the Pirate’s Inn. The price listed on the Web site is 167.44 Barbadian dollars ($83.72) plus taxes, but when I called to reserve by phone and asked for their cheapest possible price, they offered me the Caricom rate (given to Caribbean residents), a discount of about 10 percent.

But two days in, I moved to a guesthouse recommended by fellow bearers of the JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet pass, Saska and Paul, whom I met on the bus to the famous Oistins Friday night fish-fry. Over immense plates of marlin, macaroni pie and salad (17 Barbadian dollars, or $8.50) from one of the endless stands serving huge crowds of Bajans and tourists, they shared their find: a guesthouse called Cleverdale, where they were staying for $32 for in double room. I moved in the next day, even though the owner chose to charge me $40.

Cleverdale was far from luxurious – it had no air-conditioning and a shared kitchen, for example – but it was perfectly clean and friendly and had a beach view. It was also a 30-second walk away from the object that view, Worthing Beach, a pretty white stretch of sand popular with local families on weekends. Forming a cluster with Cleverdale were two other guest houses that travelers staying there suggested might even be better: Rydal Waters Apartments, and Maraval Guest House.

All also had the advantage of being within short walking distance of the St. Lawrence Gap, saving late-night money on cabs home and increasing the odds, however slight, of bumping into the Brazilian women’s boxing team.

From http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/barbados-for-hikes-beaches-and-a-brazilian-boxers-t-shirt/

From http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/NewViewNewsleft.cfm?Record=36771

By Kerrie Bynoe

A hundred travel agents from the United Kingdom dined in fine style last night, during the fourth night of the Gimme 5 and Fly programme put on by the Barbados Tourism Association.

Hosted by the Almond Beach Village, the numerous travel agents that came from Northern Ireland, England and other areas in the UK were treated to dinner on the beach, as they continued to experience what their customers feel when they are booked for a unique vacation in Barbados.

BTA President Stuart Layne, said that the sixth year of the programme has again proven to be a successful one, adding that the UK agents are not only excited about selling Barbados, but they are excited about returning as well. If you have done this well with selling the island without visiting it, now that you have seen it I am hoping that you have done twice as well, maybe three times as well in terms of promoting it, said Layne.

The agents arrived in the island last Friday and have participated in a number of activities including an Island Safari tour, a mini-carnival through St. Lawrence Gap and a breakfast catamaran cruise.

The Barbados Advocate spoke to travel agent Val Brown who was representing One World Travel Agency from Northern Ireland, and he was having a fun time in Barbados while learning more about the island. I will definitely be telling my customers about the beautiful scenery, said Brown, during the Safari we saw a lot of the East Coast and other areas which are really nice, and I would be able to talk a lot about that.

The Irish travel agent went on to say that he would be able to make personal recommendations which he was not able to do before, adding that this was an asset to any agent. It has given us a wider view of the entire island and the hospitality and the type of accommodation that you can get here. The all-inclusive hotel is different than the other all-inclusive deals that we have experienced at other places and it is certainly a tremendous experience, he added.

Brown and a number of the agents praised the BTA for their work, stating that while they have been invited to other countries in the same setting, the effort put in by the BTA outshone the other places.

They actually organised a carnival and we made our suits, closed the road way and we had a big street carnival. It was really good, continued the agent. Chairman of the BTA Ralph Taylor said that enabling the agents to experience the island was something that could boost the number of people coming into Barbados. He said, Many of them love the island and know a lot about it, which makes them the best people to sell the product, because when you can tell your customer about the product in detail then you are the best person to sell it.

Taylor, who is also the Chairman of Almond Hotel said that the hotel is looking to do some major renovations to the Almond Beach Club, adding that some work will also be carried out at the Beach Village in an all over effort to provide a facility that the agents will be proud to sell.

Whether it was the pounding rain or the nagging reminder that I hadn't yet written the post about the races, I woke up very early this morning.  I guess the rain was a part of one of the hurricanes that are out at sea somewhere - Hanna or Ike.  Gustav had already been past Cuba and headed towards New Orleans.  Maybe it was just rain.

Anyway, I woke up early and wrote my last blog entry.  When I went online to upload it, I found that  my hacked site and my 2 sites with the error messages were back up thanks to the hosting company.  WooHoo!  That takes a lot off my mind.

Today is Island Safari day.  Island Safari is one of two 4x4 jeep Land Rover companies that takes people on off-road tours of the island.  The other company is Adventureland.  As we later found out, Island Safari bought out Adventureland recently, anyway!

My (Our?) favorite is the Island Safari because I like the places it goes better.  The IS goes to more coastal places while Adventureland seems to go for inland places.  In the past on Adventureland we have gone to Chalky Mount into a potter's studio (stuff was for sale, of course), Welchman Gully (rain forest), St. John's Parish Church (a nice, old, parish church on a cliff but too many souvenir hawkers in the parking lot), Mt. Hillaby (the highest point on the island), Hackleton's Cliff (Hackleton wanted to commit suicide so he and his horse went off this cliff.  It is not known if the horse had wanted to commit suicide), and Bathsheba for lunch.

Ian, our driver, picked us up at 7:50AM.  Although the "official" trip hadn't started yet, he gave us a running commentary of everything we were seeing on the say to pick up people from two other locations.  5 of the other people were other "O'Connors" from Wales.  So, the O'Connors had the non-O'Connors outnumbered 7 to 4.

Ian told us all about chattal houses, various types of plants and much more as we headed to our convoy meeting place, the lion at Gun Hill Signal Station.  This signal station was restored by the Barbados National Trust and has military memorabilia and great views.  The lion was carved out of a single piece of rock in 1868 by a British Army Officer serving on Barbados. The lion has a large globe under it's paw, signifying England's world domination.

The others in the convoy were there already and had seen the lion and were just waiting for us.  We had to exchange vehicles (Scooby-Doo for Garfield) because the Scooby was too low on gas.  After getting our new vehicle, we took off to join the others.

Through the sugar cane fields, past crops of yams and eddoes, past the still-working Andrews Sugar Factory, through mud and ruts, the Land Rover took us all over.  Sugar used to be a very important crop here and it was used in another important crop - rum.  Now the main industry here is tourism but you can still see lots of sugar growing around the island.  It's a rotational crop and they rotate that with the eddoes, yams, pumpkins, cassavas, peanuts and other ground crops.

 

We went past an interesting cliff that has been painted on over the years.  Part of the outcroppings suggest a lion, so a lion was painted there and other areas features highlights of Barbados.  Here's a painting of our jeep and it's headed towards Bathsheba according to the caption.

 

 

 

This section of a bridge is over a gully - a collapsed portion of an old cave.  When this would happen, rainwater would leak in or be funneled in from the streets and birds would drop seeds in making a new forest or rain forest. 

This bridge is particularly interesting.  When they made it a couple centuries ago they ran out of building materials so they used what they had on hand - molasses, eggs and eggshells.  And it still holds up to this day amazingly well.

 

Our next stop was on a high cliff overlooking Bath.  It's hard to tell from this picture how high the cliff was but we had several warnings not to get to close to the edge - No Way!

I suspect that this cliff is part of the cliff that Hackleton and his horse leaped off.

 

 

 

 

Here are all the Land Rovers lined up ready for our next adventure.  They all have the names of cartoon characters and the jungle stripes are different colors.

The sides are plastic and roll down in case of rain, as we'll have a chance to discover a little later.  This reminds me of "The Surry With The Fringe On Top" from the musical, Oklahoma:

"...and isinglass windows that'll roll right down, in case there's a change in the weather..."

 

Looking over the banana trees into Bathsheba.  This was taken from a solid - I hope! - bridge.  To the right is one of many types of palms found on Barbados.

There are also several types of bananas, including plantains.  The smaller, green ones are called "fig" bananas and they're cooked green and mashed up and used for their large iron content with pregnant women or people with anemia.

Banana plants are often used here to help prevent soil erosion.  Also used to help prevent erosion are gabions.  These are rectangular wire baskets filled with small rocks and strategically placed so that water can flow through easily but the soil is held behind.  These gabions can often be seen near bridges.

Bathsheba and one of its curiously eroded rocks in the ocean.  These are being eroded away from underneath as the tides come and go.

Bathsheba is a beautiful little seaside town.  Although it is too rough here to swim here on the Atlantic side, surfers practice and hold competitions here.  This surf area is also known as the "Soup Bowl".

Also here is Andromeda Gardens.  Although on this trip we didn't stop here, we've been there before.  The Gardens were founded over 50 years ago by horticulturist Iris (great name for a horticulturist!) Bannochie.  There are 650 plant species there from all over.  It's an absolutely beautiful, peaceful 6.5 acres of plant heaven.  There are naturally-growing orchids, palms, flowering trees, lily ponds...and animals such as green monkeys, birds, lizards and fish.  It's a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.

Bathsheba is also a place to pick up lovely beaded jewelry and island crafts.  Here Tom is looking for a new band to replace the last one he got here.

The last time I got one was the year that Sue was with us.  We all three had them and when mine finally broke Tom fixed it a few times.  The last time mine broke and became unfixable I decided not to get any more, at least not for awhile. For me, the bracelet was a reminder of Sue (like Cocomos, in an earlier post) and when that broke, it was like a little part of Sue's memory leaving me.

And here come the rain!  We didn't roll down the curtains, at least for a while.  The rain felt good and cool on my face while riding along.

When we finally put the plastic curtains down they didn't help all that much - rain dripped off the corner of mine and into my molded plastic seat making my human seat soaking wet.

We stopped taking pictures because we didn't want to get the camera wet but we probably have some from a previous year that I can insert into here when we get home.

From Bathsheba we headed north on the Ermy Bourne Highway past Cattlewash (where they used to, well, wash cattle)  Most cattle on the island is for dairy only.  Most people here eat chicken or fish. 

After that, past Barclay Park, a popular area for locals to take a picnic or relax for an afternoon.  There used to be a railroad coming up to this point but it stopped service in the 1930's.

Further along was the side of the cliff that they call the Sleeping Giant.  When looked at it from the right angle, I could see how it got its name. 

At some point, we went through Joe's River Forest.  This Tropical Rain Forest consists of 85 acres of woodlands situated in the parish of St. Joseph. With the imposing Hackleton's Cliff on one side and the picturesque Atlantic Ocean on the other, this site is a nature-lover's paradise!

Here we saw fiscus, white woods, cabbage palms, mahogany trees (used for high-end furniture and boats, and the bearded fig trees for which Barbados was named by the Portuguese.  We also saw massive termite nests on some of the trees.

We went past the Morgan Lewis Mill, the last complete windmill on the island.  Originally there were 530 windmills, used in sugar production but the others have all fallen into disrepair due to changes in the sugar refining process.  The Morgan Lewis is kept in good running order now as a historical landmark and it's operated on certain occasions and for school tours.

Then up to Pico Teneriffe.  From this point, the next point of land is Teneriffe in the Canary Islands.  This is a very interesting part of a cliffy-beach with waves coming up through breaks in the rock as huge water spouts.

The rain let us and we could roll the curtains back up, thank goodness!  Without the breeze, it was getting kind of muggy.  But the good stuff was finished.  We headed across the island to Six Men's Bay, down past the ritzy condos of Port St. Charles, through Speightstown, past Mullen's Bay, and into Holetown for lunch.

We had a nice lunch, similar to the one I described last week in the Cool Runnings post but with the addition of macaroni pie, in a very nice outdoor restaurant attached to the Sandridge Hotel.  Unfortunately, this hotel is doomed to be torn down soon, to become the parking lot for the hotel going up next door.

After lunch it started raining a bit again and we were going fast on the ABC highway and the rain hurt.  It almost felt like hail but I knew that couldn't be.

Finally, back to the Crane and some dry clothes!  What a great day, even with the rain.  I like seeing the various sights and hearing the local guides describe his/her island but what I like most is the ride, the jouncing up and down through the fields, over cliffs, into forests, though mud.