Day Fifteen: Barbados and Home

Well its the last day of our Caribbean tour, which means I shall have to think of random events in my life to blog about from now on...unless you want to do a quick whip-round to send me on a tour of another few countries?.........



...thought not, oh well, on with the blog!

Today was our final day in the Caribbean, and we finished where we started, in the surprisingly dull and grey harbour. Out of all the islands, I was more surprised that Barbados had the worst port to come into. Its a working port and as such is packed with massive containers and old fishing vessels, which takes away alot of the charm of the island, considering this is the place where the famous Sandals resorts are located and where every celeb worth their salt goes to for a relaxing break.

This time we were not on a 'Best of' tour, having done that one on the half way point of our cruise, but instead the ship offered a 'Farewell Barbados' tour, which took in a few of the tourist attractions and then dropped us back at the airport for a swift check-in before leaving for home.

We were picked up by the funniest tour guide we'd ever had. He was your sterotypical West Indian, complete with a big bushy beard and his famous rooster call to get the passengers back on his bus.....

.....yes thats right, a rooster call, which was probably why he was know as 'the rooster', legend!

We first drove by a sugar cane factory and were then taken across the island, which is surprisingly flat, to Gun Hill Station, which is one of the most important and largest military outposts

Now this is the chap who showed us round the station, and he had the best accent I've ever heard. He was born and raised in Scotland but has lived in Barbados for 20+ years, so just imagine that accent!

From there, we headed up to St Johns Church, which was built in 1836, and is owned by a very nice British couple, however this was overshadowed by the fact that we were next door to the one and only Eddie Grant's house! Now for those of you who don't know who Eddie Grant is, click here, and for those of us over the age of 23, you would think that after the massive success of Electric Avenue, Hope Joanna, and the success of Baby Come Back, which he wrote originally (fascinating fact for you) in the 1960's, he would have been able to afford a slightly bigger house than this metal bungalow that he lives and works in (he has just built a recording studio here, and has the biggest satellite I've ever seen, so he can see who is playing his songs any time of the day!)

He does have massive gates on the front to keep away the hoardes of fans, so we will forgive him his one showbiz moment!

From there we headed onto another sugar plantation for some lunch, where I tries Breadfruit, which sounds like it should be one of the other but is actually really nice. Basically the history of it is that when we introduced slave labour into the Caribbean and were still a lovely big empire, the captains of the ships that brought them over found that there wasn't any cheap food to give to the workers to keep them going all day, apart from this big, ugly fruit that grew on alot of the trees on the islands. It tastes alot like freshly made bread but is very soft and a little bit like a mango in texture and taste as well, so the British decided to give them nothing but that while they were working. Unfortunately, the Breadfruit is very high in protiens and carbohydrates, which is good in that it makes the slaves work faster, but also meant that when the slaves turned against the British, they had quite alot of strength!




Since we gave the islands back, the Breadfruit has still been enjoyed as a delicassy, and we were given some in our huge plate of food that they gave us at the lunch, which was really nice.

That filled us up nicely for our journey back to the airport, while our driver sang sweet melodies to us (he really did have a nice voice!). One of the great things about the holiday is that we didn't have to worry about check-ins or lugging luggage around, so we were in nice and quickly into the airport to catch our depressing flight home!



Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane?......

This weeks blog was going to be a pretty short one, as apart from the villa's battling (and unfit) 2.2 draw in the first leg of their european adventure, nothing has really happened, until last night that is....



I'd just got home from workin the really muggy and horrible heat (the worst kind of hot, I mean seriously, intense 90 degree heat in the Caribbean is fine, but I wilt in British summer!), and so I rushed upstairs and was half way through getting changed out of my work gear, when Mom shouted 'look out of the front window!'. Now, we, over the last couple of months, have had many things fly over our house, we've had Sea King Helicopters, Jumbo Jets, Chinooks (which shook the foundations of our teeth!), and as previously seen on this page, an Air Ambulance, so when Mom shouted 'look out of the window', I rushed over, half naked and looked upwards.........



.....for about 15 seconds....




.....until the car went past..........



......that took my photo...........



....for Google Earth!



I had heard about Google Earth doing the ground shots because its annoying getting that one dimensional image when ur zooming in looking for naked women (apparently), so they are doing an upgrade in service, which will be really good, unless you were standing, naked from the waist up, in full view of the car when it drove past!


Suffice to say I wasn't best pleased, and can only hope that they have decent editing software when they come to upload the images, lets hope!