Day 5: Bababa BabaBarbados

Tuesday, March 30

This morning, about 10:00 am we landed in Bridgetown Barbados. Barbados is the eastern most island in the Caribbean, standing almost by itself out in the Atlantic. It also is supposed to have great surf on its east coast. Our guidebook also said that we could find bicycles for rent, and since the island is mostly flat, that's unlike the steep volcanic islands we'd visited up to now. So, instead of going on another cruise excursion, I though we could rent bikes and go check-out the surf.

Whoo-hoo!

Well, that didn't happen. We did find a bike shop. However we never saw a single person riding a bike. There are no bike lanes and no shoulders, and the locals drive with what looks to us like complete reckless abandon. Even if the drivers were polite and bike-friendly, though, there were a couple of things that convinced us a bike tour of the island was a bad idea.

First, there is absolutely no room on the road for a bicycle. There are so many cars that every inch of road is covered with them. Second, attempting to ride a bike in the heat and humidity would certainly bring on cardiac arrest. Instead, we just walked around town. (Like St. Lucia, taxi drivers were always asking us if we wanted a ride.)

In town we walked past the Parliament building and saw a statue to Lord Nelson (right at the end of Trafalgar Street.) We spent about an hour wandering around the Anglican cathedral, and through the cemetery that surrounds it. Even the flagstones on the walk were headstones, many dating back to the 1620s. We went inside the church and saw the huge pipe organs.

Once outside again, we decided to do some shopping. When we first started our walk I saw some really colorful dresses that I though would look great on Kathy. We went back to the store to price them and found out they cost about $450. Of course that's in Barbados dollars, so the US price was only $225. That was a little more than we wanted to pay, so we passed. (The store was air-conditioned, though, so that was great.)

We also found a supermarket and bought some sodas and snacks to take back to the ship. The only problem is that if you pay in US dollars, you can't get US change. After using our tens and ones to purchase groceries, we didn't have enough left to catch the shuttle back to the ship. Fortunately, our shuttle driver had change and we were able to use a 20.

After lunch, we sat in our balcony reading and looking at the four other cruise ships who were also parked in the bay. I almost finished my book (although I wasn't able to find the Java programming or banana part again. Don't you hate that.)

At dinner, Kathy wore a colorful hippy-tie-died skirt which really looked good on her. We started talking about how poor these islands really are, and how much dropping hordes of very rich tourists downtown every day really probably distorts the way people work and live. I can't imagine having a Chinese (for example) cruise ship embark in Newport Beach, and then having everyone you know try to figure out a way to make a living off of the passengers who visit. Both of us agreed that we didn't feel that way when we cruised to Alaska, Hawaii or Europe.

After dinner, Kathy went to pick up her email at the Computing Center and I tried to get caught up on my blog.