Beautiful Barbados

A few more from the Gulf of Maine

What a nice - but early! - day.  The taxi picked us up at 7:30 am for the Jammin' Cats catamaran.  Along the way we picked up a couple young women from Holland, then another from Australia.

We arrived at the Careenage, paid our bill, took off our shoes and got onboard.  We found a nice little place in the shade for a while before leaving the dock.

Not long after we got onboard, we started motoring out of the careenage into the Caribbean for thesbille first snorkel site, the one where folks can swim with the hawksbill sea turtles. People coudn't use fins here because the turtles are endangered. Due to Tom's puncture wound, we had decided not to go in the water on this trip but it was fun to see the others swimming with the turtles.

We countinued along to a snorkel site over a scuttled French ship, the Berwin.  The Berwin is a World War I French boat scuttled in 1919 by her own crew. Her captain thought that they were being followed by a German U-Boat and decided to abandon ship first. The Berwyn sits between 7 and 10 feet below the surface depending on the tide. We could see her outline from onboard ship. Because it's so calm in the bay and because the wreck is nearly 100 years old, it is covered in marine life, such as coral, and lots of fish.

When we left the Berwin it was time to hoist the sails and head north to Payne's Beach.   In this calm bay we were close to land and it was pretty shallow so people could have fun swimming, floating on mattresses or going into shore.  This catamaran also had the luxury of drink delivery to the mattresses and swimmers!  Next time, you'll find me relaxing on a floating mattress!

After a bit, it was lunch time.  Those of us onboard got to eat while the swimmers were still climbing on board.  It was a pretty standard Bajan Tour lunch - peas'n'rice, flying fish, curry chicken, salad, macaroni pie...  I'm not complaining at all, though - I love it all :)

After lunch, a bit more swimming, then heading south again.

We disembarked about 2:30 or so and got home about 3:30.  It was a beautiful day, no rain, but I was exhausted.  I fell asleep and didn't wake up until about 8.

We got a call from the front desk - someone from the Sunday non-catamaran had called.  Tom got the number to call back on Tuesday.

Our catamaran pickup was for 8:15 so we got up early.  The driver was actually here before 8:15 so we hustled to get to the (huge) bus.  Another family fro The Crane was already on board.  We waited a bit for someone else who never showed up.

At the first stop we picked up a bunch of guys who turned out to be part of a hockey team.  They were either still, or already, drunk and acting moronic.  Wonderful.

This bus held at least 40 people and we were nearly full when we got to the Hilton to pick up the last few people.  We waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  Some of our folks got off to see what was going on.  No answers.  Tom got off and talked to the driver about why we were holding up the busload of people for so long.  The driver said it was his orders, to talk to "the boat".

Finally, after about 45 minutes, 4 people got on the bus.  No apologies from them or the driver.  We just continued to the catamaran.  Everyone except us got on the catamaran.  Tom wanted to see the manager, who was not there on Sunday (of course !).  The folks in the office said to let it go, we'd be "happy" once on board, probably referring to the open bar.

We said no, that we weren't going.  They called us a taxi (at our expense, naturally).  Tom got the name of the manager to speak with him later.

Our taxi arrived and we left.  We told the driver exactly what had happened and he drove us to the competition! The first boat, Cool Runnings, had already left for the day but a very kind man from the Jolly Roger called them for us us.  The didn't have any openings until Tuesday so the Jolly Roger man (Tom thought his name was Richard) booked us a trip for Monday on Jammin' Cats.  I was really amazed at how kind and helpful the taxi driver and Richard(?) were to us.

If you need a taxi in Barbados, Call Big Apple at 246-239-0637.  A great guy.

Meanwhile, on the trip back to The Crane, Tom mentioned that we had a bat in our apartment overnight.  He had heard it about 2 am, then again at dawn the bat was at the glass doors trying to get out.  Tom had pinned him (or her) between the slatted door and the glass door, then tried to open the glass door to let the bat out.  S/he flew away and Tom noticed that his arm was bleeding.

I saw the puncture wound and we were trying to decide what to do.  When we got back, Tom called the front desk to ask about doctors.  Naturally, it was Sunday...  He got the name of an emergency clinic that was open until midnight.  I looked up bats online and found that there had been no rabies here for at least a decade.  All the people said that there was no rabies here, too, but we wanted to be sure.

I wasn't even sure that it was a bat bite since it was just one puncture wound, not 2 (or 4) but we headed off to find the emergency clinic.  There were about 10 people ahead of us and only 1 doctor so it took a while to get in.  The nurse reiterated that there was no rabies here, took Tom's medical history.  Turns out his last tetanus shot had been just over 10 years ago.

Back to the waiting room.  Just after 5, we got to go into the small doctor's office.  I was amazed at the old-style exam table.

After a bit, the doctor came in and told us what we already knew - it was probably not a bat bite.  They dont have rabies here on Barbados but had it been Trinidad...  Tom did have an infection that was creeping up his arm so he got the tetanus shot, got the wound cleaned and dressed, prescriptions for antibiotic ointment and meds.

We took the prescriptions to the pharmacy next door, then back to the clinic for paperwork that we can try to submit to our insurance when we get home.

Crisis averted!

On the door underneath the hinge.

I have no idea how he got to the second floor!

We ended going out to breakfast here at Pueblo Real and I took the pictures of the flowers afterwards.

After exchanging our reservations since Michael can't join us, we ended up going to Rainmaker Rain Forest. That's a privately owned rain forest down a long gravel road.

On that road I took the picture of the cow/bull or whatever it was with the huge buffalo hump.

True to it's name, it was pouring when we got to rainmaker. We decided to go inside anyway.

Because it was raining, we had to take most of our pictures with a waterproof camera, old-style that will need to be developed before uploading.

There was lots of climbing, suspension bridges, slippery places, rain. What fun!

I was pretty ok until we saw the red band around the tree that meant a worker had spotted a snake in it that morning. I don't know if the snake has to move the band when he moves.

Tom went very quickly by the tree and didn't see the snake. I looked into the tree and did see it. With the help of Wikipedia and google I identified it as a green vine snake when we got back. It's venom was "serious cut not lethal" to humans.

After I saw him, what little adrenaline I have got depleted very fast and I had some trouble finishing the walk. This was the day (of course!) that I didn't bring any extra cortisone.

Finally got home and took the cortef and Tom went back out for gas.

After he got back we got phone calls from our Thrifty friends who were off somewhere, in the rain, getting dark out...with a flat tire. Tom gave them phone numbers of the office here, Thrifty and others. He was thinking of trying to find them but they somehow got help from someone closer to the scene.

We went out to dinner and major rains, thunder and lightning. This is an open-ish restaurant so we had rain blowing in...and a crab wandered through.

Finally, we figured it was time to go and the ice restaurant folks lent us an umbrella.

Time to head to bed. Out early tomorrow for a sail/snorkel/lunch trip.

This is not my video but it's a good one of where we were today.

This was the day we went to Manuel Antonio National Park. I'm only going to post some of the pictures from here and the rest later, depending on the connection.

Our shuttle picked us up at 7 and included the couple we met at the Thrifty on Sunday and the couple we met here for the Quepos grocery run.

At the park we got our guide, Andre, met up with us. He had a super high-powered telescope on a tripod so we could see lots of things would never have seen, especially on our own. Without Andre we probably would have seen nothing!

All of the pictures in a circular frame were taken through the telescope. We saw 2-toed and 3-toed sloths. Their differences were not just in the numbers of toes but several other things such what they ate. We also saw baby bats sleeping, several types of tree frogs, insects, frog larvae.

The frog larvae was interesting. I have 2 pictures. It looked like a gelatinous mass with lots of eyes...which moved. Eventually, the sac will fall off the leaf and into the water below. Those eyes will become tadpoles for a bit, then frogs.

We heard before we saw the howler monkeys. They were very noisy! Eventually one threw a tree branch down toward us, then a bit of monkey poop.

The monkeys are, of course, free to go wherever they want and some were getting killed in the roads. Or they would use the power cables as highways. Not a good idea! The people installed blue cables for them at the routes they normally took. The monkeys can see the blue, use those highways and stay safe.

We also saw another type of monkey, lizards and more.

After this part was over, we forded a stream and had a great fruit snack along with soursop drink. Mmmmmmm. On this trip I've had more fruit than a long time.

We went and sat on the beach for a bit, then back "home".

After naps, there was a barbecue near the pool, then early bed.