Barbados

Our next trip led us to Barbados, where Rob had to go for a business trip (so sorry for him, right?). Of course Kim was keen on visiting another Caribbean island, and moved some time around in her calendar in order to be able to make the trip as well. 

The weather forecast leading up to the week was gloomy and not what you want to see when planning a trip in which you want to bask in the sunshine, reading a book and sipping on a pina colada. Gloomy grey clouds with rain streaming out of them at a 60% chance every day had both of us trying to find alternate vacation plans prior to the start of the meeting, with our old favorites Las Vegas or Key West possibly in our futures instead. If it hadn't been that Rob needed to be in Barbados for the end of our vacation for work, we surely would have wound up going somewhere else. But as it turned out, we stuck to our original plan and the weather in Barbados was not as bad as we had feared, at least in the early part of the trip.

We stayed at two hotels during our stay in order to keep work separated from leisure. The Hilton Barbados is where we called home for a few days. While the property there was nice, the people weren't as friendly or as helpful as we had hoped, and we struggled to find the warm and friendly Caribbean charm we had been expecting. In fact, we only really found that on our travels away from the hotel, which was a shame, and certainly made us appreciate that large chain hotels aimed at American and European tourists probably aren't the best way to experience the local culture in a place like Barbados.

Meanwhile, this trip was not just for Rob and Kim. A stow-away was with us: Flat Stanley! A friend of Kim's from work asked her to bring Flat Stanley with her to Barbados so that her daughter could report on Stanley's adventures to her class for a school project. He was very excited to get to go on an airplane for the first time and to get a stamp in his passport!

View from Flat Stanley's Room

On our first full day in Barbados, we figured we would go into Bridgetown and look around this historic port city, which was recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. We enquired of the concierge as to what the bus times were and he more or less laughed at us for thinking this would be a good idea. "Eh, yeah, about that, see..." he began and went on to explain that the bus service on Sundays was very, let us say, unpredictable and that there wasn't really anything to do in Bridgetown on a Sunday anyway. Undeterred by this negative energy, we figured we would make our own way and walk into town, which we estimated would take a little over 30 minutes each way.

On our walk, we came across a really nice beachside bar and restaurant called the Boatyard and stopped in there for some lunch and, of course, a few potent cocktails made mainly of rum - as a general observation, if you like rum and you like fruity cocktails, you will definitely like Barbados! 

After lunch, we continued our walk into Bridgetown. Even though it was indeed quiet there on a Sunday, it was nice walking around the harbor and imagining all the ships that used to stop in the Careenage in olden times, as they plied their trade between Europe, the US and the Caribbean. We also found a nice old church (St Michael's Cathedral) with a very old graveyard, and it was interesting to read the tombstones there, many of which dated from the seventeenth century.

The next day, we rented a car and went out and about to see more of the island. We visited St Nicholas Abbey (http://www.stnicholasabbey.com/), an old plantation house and rum distillery, which has been lovingly restored and maintained by its present owners and which gives a good impression of what plantation life would have been like in Barbados many years ago. The landscape in that area is full of sugar cane fields and is also quite hilly, with some beautiful views of the coastline to be had. 

Cherry Tree Hill (where there actually aren't any cherry trees!) offered a particularly memorable view of the landscape and ocean.

The next day, Tuesday, brought us the highlight of our whole trip - we went snorkeling with loggerhead sea turtles. Our tour guides, Charles and Lars, operate the Cliff Sharker diving and fishing tours and they were absolutely fantastic. If you are ever in Barbados and would like to swim with sea turtles, these are the guys you want to go with. They only take small groups of people on their small boat (in contrast to some bigger operations that bring dozens of people at a time on huge catamarans), they bring you out early in the morning before the afore-mentioned swarms of tourists arrive to scare the turtles away, and they take great underwater photos of you interacting with the turtles. You also get to swim over wrecks and Lars teaches free-diving techniques to anyone who is interested. On top of that, they are really nice guys and they are clearly more committed to ensuring that you have a good time and a good experience than they are to maximizing their revenue.

Having the chance to swim with the sea turtles, who have been on earth for millions of years and who have outlasted the dinosaurs, is an amazing experience and anyone who would not be moved by this probably isn't going to be moved by anything. The sea turtles are beautiful creatures and being in the water with them must be one of the most wonderful ways of interacting with nature and experiencing the rich history of life on our planet.

The rest of our time in Barbados was spent at the Colony Club hotel in St James Parish and, sadly, Rob had to spend most of his time there in meetings at his work conference. Meanwhile, Kim got the chance to relax on the beach and sip a few fruity cocktails, but unfortunately the weather was closer to what we had feared prior to our arrival, so there were a lot of clouds and some rain too -- not as bad weather-wise as our trip to Puerto Rico last year, but not great all the same.

We saved up our last planned tourist activity, a visit to the Concorde Experience (http://www.barbadosconcorde.com/) for the Saturday of our departure, as we would have to be at the airport anyway. Rob was especially excited about the chance to see the Concorde up close, especially as he had passed up a previous opportunity when he was a small child, something his family is fond of reminding him of! Almost unbelievably, when we arrived at Grantley Adams Airport in Bridgetown, we learned that the Concorde Experience was closed to the public that day, because of a once-off private event. It looks like Rob is just destined never to see it, or at least not until the next time we visit Barbados!