We had three very good reasons for visiting Barbuda – my Uncle Michael, 88 years of age and extremely agile to boot, was coincidentally aboard the luxury cruise ship Hebredian Spirit for Christmas and would be at anchor off Low Bay for just one day – the 23^rd December!  The second reason was of course to visit the largest colony of mating and nesting Frigate birds in the world and the third was to see the pink beaches!

Pink shells on the sand!

The Barbuda Express leaves St John’s Heritage Bay at 9.00 am so we were up with the lark at 6.00 to be sure not to miss it and what an enterprising venture it is!  Three American men bought the old passenger catamaran in USA where I suspect it had already experienced a hard life.  With no support from the Antiguan Government they have clawed their licences and approvals and now ran a pretty efficient transport system between the sister islands of Antigua and Barbuda. The Government’s only response was to subsidise the flight journey to put them out of business!  (Of course now it is profitable and successful they would like it for themselves!!) There is no departure jetty – just a hut on the quay near the gigantic American cruise ships where you buy a plastic ticket with a number on for 100 EC dollars one way (around 20 pounds).  At this time of year it was packed with locals clutching kids’ presents, Christmas trees, food and drinks – you name it. We all boarded in an orderly fashion in numerical order and with our cargo hanging off the roof set off on our 90 minute journey on time. Once the Hebredian Spirit came into VHF 16 range we radioed the captain to let him know of our imminent arrival

whereupon they sent a small tender to meet us at the dockside.

We spent a wonderful and emotional three hours aboard with my Uncle and his companions and (oh joy) the luxuries included comfy armchairs, fabulous seafood cuisine on deck and flushing loos!! 

With fond farewells to the five star luxuries we then set off to The Palm Tree Hotel for the night so we could see the Frigates in the morning.  Well! talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous – all the ‘hotels’ are closed on Barbuda either for repair (?) or lack of business and the ‘Palm Tree’ was little more than concrete bungalow set in waste ground surrounded by a dubious metal fence!  However, the beds were made up with fresh laundry and despite a million mosquitoes champing at our ankles we decided to make the best of what rapidly became obvious was our only option!  The island is very flat – hardly above sea level – and extremely poor.  Hundreds of donkeys and deer roam wild and we witnessed a horse race of sorts over the hill.  There is a reasonably stocked supermarket in Codrington ‘Village’ and an almost deserted shack on the ‘pink’ beach where we spent the remainder of our day until sunset.

The blackboard clearly offers lobster or fish on the grill but further investigation drew a negative (the owner laughingly told us this is just written on as a joke – he has no food to offer and no way of cooking it anyway!)  The sand is actually a normal colour with swathes of Barbie doll coloured pink shells washed up by the tides – very pretty.

We had a ‘cook up’ that evening sitting at the plastic table with dodgy legs,  in the room cluttered with sofas, broken down TVs, wobbly oscillating fans, baby’s push chairs, a neon lighting system and a hundred and one family and friends all wandering in and out at random!  The ‘girls’ were all busy cooking our dinner in the kitchen in the dark (which I thought was the Barbudan way of keeping the bugs out of the food) but it transpired the bulb had blown so we set of in a brand new Toyota Rav 4X4 to find a replacement from a friend.   It transpired that Serena, our host, loves England and particularly London, where she and her family often visit to take care of numerous medical problems at the excellent hospitals!  Our bill for the night was around 100 pounds for the three of us including dinner and breakfast – not sure how much of a bargain that was!!  She has a web site and all the rooms were full!

It was a relief when Ray our Frigate guide turned up as pre arranged at 10.00am – we have been away from ‘home’ for three months and it as gone like the wind (excuse the pun) but that was my longest night!  A beautiful sunny morning – we headed off towards the lagoon where we parked the car, paid our Park Tax and Ray went off to get his wooden boat.  Quite a journey across the water of some fifteen minutes before we reached the mangroves literally growing out of the sea where we knew the birds had their colony. They have no natural predators and are fully protected.  We spotted the males’ red ‘balloons’ from a long way off and got terribly excited but on closer inspection they turned out to be red mooring buoys!

Okay, let me tell you what I now know about Frigate Birds!  The mating season starts in September at which time the males sit in the mangrove bushes and with a little water and air manage to pump up their red necks into large red balloons before getting themselves into an excited fervour – beating their balloons with their beaks and thereby making a drumming sound to attract a mate.  There are incidentally many more males than females as during harsh hurricane season the males have the strength to rise high above the clouds to remain safe whilst the females and their young often perish.  As you can imagine this has had an adverse effect on the characters of the females who have become very picky and full of their own self importance!  They fly around on the thermals with their huge wing spans and white chests until they spot a particularly attractive red throbbing balloon at which point they fly down to investigate further – the male gets even more excited and pumps himself up further and drums away for all he is worth, at which point the female invariably cools off and flies away! The bitch!  Eventually though the lucky ones get picked for the season and once coupled the red balloon shrivels up and the hard nesting work begins!!  The females sit tight until the males have gathered enough twigs for her nest, and a lot of stealing of other birds’ twigs transpires, whereupon just one egg is despatched into the family home.  The male then incubates the egg whilst the female flies out to sea to catch food (flying fish and the like as they cannot dive below the surface of the sea).  Once the chick is born, the male’s duty is done and he flies away for a whole year to another colony.  The unlucky males cool down their balloons and join them!  Well, we visited the colony in December so as you can imagine the poor remaining boys had been pumping solidly for three months and the girls who had still not chosen their mate were playing a cruel game – swooping down from the sky, hopping from one branch to another – giving hope and then dashing it – it gives a whole new meaning to being lead on!!

The male is in the bush with the female swooping down from above!

The male is to the right, a white head denotes a chick.

Back on the ferry (hoorah!) a bit of Christmas shopping in St John’s with mega speakers blaring with reggae music– fantastic Christmas Eve atmosphere – then back to the boat (more hoorah!)– off with the grubby clothes – into the hot shower and on with the bling and off to party with all the others!!!