Barbados
Gaviota
Mon 14 Jan 2008 14:06
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13.05N 59.37W
Well we've been in Barbados for a week now; we like
the island and the people so we've spent quite a bit of time on land. We
sailed down from Martinique last Sunday afternoon/night, beating against the
wind and seas so Annabel was quite sick. We arrived at Port St Charles
last Monday morning at 6.30am. It's a very posh place, with lots of
condos(American-style townhouses) with their own moorings and just a few
visitor berths by the customs office, all filled by huge motor and sailing
yachts, but we managed to squeeze in and have breakfast and a snooze between
talking to several residents out jogging and doing yoga on the adjacent
helicopter landing spot ! Another British yacht arrived whilst we were in
customs and the skipper and Syd eventually worked out where they'd seen each
other before - on a flight back from Gibraltar in September! This was their
first stop after sailing accross the Atlantic, so we cheered them in as best we
could, remembering how we'd appreciated our ARC welcome in St Lucia. After
a quick drink in the very posh yacht club restaurant and a bit of a wander round
to find that it was a gated secure area and there didn't seem to be much else to
see or do, we also discovered that it was going to cost us US$90 per night for
the 'marina', so we decided to sail on down to the Bridgetown(capital of
Barbados) area.
We had a nice gentle sail down the west coast of
Barbados, past Paynes Bay (Payne is a very common surname here - the customs
officer showed us 6 columns of them in the phone book!) and anchored here in
Carlisle Bay, a lovely wide sandy bay in Bridgetown. That night was quite
calm but most other nights (and some days) have been very rolly, although
there's been hardly any wind all week. Also the nightclubs on the beach
have been blasting out their music until 2.30am and we haven't got round to
joining them, so we've been suffering from disturbed sleep and just had to have
a few siestas during the day....
Bridgetown is a mix of local shops and services and
smart duty free shops for the many cruise ships that stop here - one day we
counted 5 in the dock !! We've found a good internet cafe where we could
use their computers and printer and Annabel made one visit with her laptop and
was able to plug it in to theirs and download a few things, which wasn't
possible on the unreliable wifi connections at Rodney Bay. To get into
town we take the dinghy into the old town dock which unfortunately doesn't look
quite deep enough for Gaviota. Annabel loves the local drug-stores which
sell all the usual brands of European and American shampoo etc, plus interesting
bottles of things like witch hazel and camphor oil as well as basic stationery
and snacks - we've found ginger boiled sweets(should be useful for preventing
sea sickness) and little packets of un-salted roasted nuts which are a
mandatory accompaniement for the sundowner drinkies!
On Thursday we hired a small Suzuki jeepy thing and
drove all round the island, stopping for lunch at Bathsheeba on the east coast
where we had the best local-style meal since arriving in the
Caribbean. Then we carried on up to the northern point with
its dramatically eroded cliffs and then down through the centre of the
island which is quite hilly, but not as much as St Lucia. The fields were
mostly planted with sugar cane and we glimpsed a few large plantatian houses
through the trees; the one open to the public was too busy with coaches for us
to go in. We didn't see much wildlife; an occasional mongoose ran across
the road, but we did see a couple of monkeys when we were well away from
civilisation! The island is quite well populated; people mainly seem to
live in little wooden bungalows, often quite colourful, and there are lots of
American style flats/condos and bigger houses on the southern and western
coasts.
After some hard questioning at the tourist office
we found a bike shop which said they might be able to find a mountain biking
group for Syd - lo and behold someone rang him when we got back to the boat
later that day and invited him on their ride this Saturday, and maybe Sunday too
for some technical off-road stuff. Someone offered to come and
pick Syd up from the beach car park near where we're anchored in Carlisle
Bay, so although Saturday dawned wet and rainy he put the bike together on the
boat and we took it across on the dinghy, planning as we went how we would get
it out without getting sea water and/or sand on it. The plan failed when
Syd fell backwards into the water, but the bike stayed dry and clean and we
hosed Syd down at the beach showers and off he went for a good little ride, but
didn't feel quite fit enough to do the Sunday technical stuff - too out of
practice ! Well, at least we've learnt that we can get the bike ashore on the
dinghy - we'll try both bikes next time. Annabel had found a branch of the Hash
House Harriers on Barbados, so she took 2 local busses across to the other side
of Bridgetown for their usual run/walk, followed by a few beers. One of
the girls had spent some time in Marlborough where Annabel grew up, and there
were a few Scottish people there too, which was interesting.
As I write this on Monday 14 Jan, we're packing up
the boat ready to sail down to Tobago and then to Trinidad - we expect to be in
that area for a couple of weeks to enjoy Carnival. The wind was quite
strong for the last few days, and from the East, so we're hoping for a good
smooth sail, overnight again, as it's c.120 miles.
Hopefully I'll get round to getting some photos
developed and put on the web diary and will get a good internet connection there
to upload them, which I can't do with the satellite phone link on the
boat.
Annabel
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