February 15, 1998
I have to be up and out the door at a ridiculously early hour of the morning, thanks to the airlines' insistence that international passengers be at the terminal approximately one billion hours before departure. As a result, I have the Gardiner Expressway virtually to myself. It's very nice to be out on the road without having to worry about lane-weavers, tailgaters, Jacques Villeneuve wannabes, and other hazards of the highway.
Travel note: the extra expenditure of the Self Park lot at the Park 'N' Fly is well worth it. The airport shuttle bus goes to the Valet Parking lot and then to Self Park before it goes to Economy. Because there's a huge lineup at the Economy lot, not everybody gets to get on the bus. While others wait, fuming, I sit in relative comfort. Moral: them that has, gets. Socio-economic note: self-parkers tend to be single men travelling alone, while economy types tend to be middle-aged couples with garish jackets. Be that as it may.
The couple sitting next to me on the plane are crew members flying standby who got on at the last moment. She is francophone but accentlessly bilingual, and oh so very cute. In fact, there are several cute young women on the plane. I already knew that life was not fair, but I don't need to be reminded of this at regular intervals, do I?
The pilot is one of those overly chatty, sexist pilot types who no doubt believes that the sun and earth revolve around him, scientific evidence to the contrary. When the plane goes through turbulence, he advises the flight attendants, "Just steady yourselves, girls," and reassures us that "This is a strong airplane, folks." You can cut the self-satisfied smarminess with a spoon.
As the ride gets bumpier, I repeat a mantra to myself: "Airplane travel is statistically far safer than driving."
The in-flight movie features Richard Gere. I ignore it.
Overheard conversation on plane:
"Can I get you something to drink?"
"What's on the menu?"
"Everything."
"Pepsi."
"We have Coke - is that OK?"
"No."
Pilot informs us that "The temperature in Barbados is 30C. Too bad we can't stay, but somebody's gotta work."
When you land at Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados, the Barbados Tourist Bureau goes the extra mile to welcome incoming pale-skinned travellers. As we step, blinking and disoriented, onto the airport runway, a steel band strikes up, and two lines of uniformed young women flank the entrance to the terminal building, greeting visitors with "Welcome to Barbados." Is there anyone out there who is impressed by this stuff?
While waiting in line for passport control, I notice an advertisement for houses near the Royal Westmoreland golf club, with prices ranging from $500,000 US to $10 million. Let me check my other pants pocket.
My Air Canada vacation package provides transportation from the airport to the hotel, thus avoiding difficulties with taxis. (My Barbados travel guide warns me sternly, "Always negotiate the fare before entering a taxicab.") The 15-minute ride is a blur of peeling-paint shacks, signs for Banks (the Beer of Barbados), and tootling horns. The guide, ever helpful, points out that "the ride from the airport can be somewhat hairy."
For this trip, I decided to splurge on a relatively nice place - the Bougainvillea Beach Resort. My room is a large studio apartment complete with bed, couch, balcony, several extra chairs, full bathroom, and television. It's as much floor space as my apartment back home. After asking the room porter several stupid tourist questions ("How do I get my shaver to work?" "Does it rain much here?") and awkwardly discussing the question of whether or not to tip - I apparently don't need to - I settle in, open the balcony doors, and sit outside and look out at the tranquil ocean view. Life could be much worse.
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The view from my hotel room, looking towards the pool. |
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The view from my hotel room, looking towards the ocean. |
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The front entrance to the resort. |
February 16, 1998
My Air Canada representative, Cicely, is supposed to meet travellers in the lobby at 10:00 for an orientation session, but I decide I can't wait that long to get going. (Barbados is one hour ahead of Toronto time, so I was up and going fairly early.) Shortly after nine, slathered with 39 SPF sunblock, I change a Canadian twenty at the desk, receive disturbingly little in return, and head out for a walk along the Maxwell Road, otherwise known as Barbados Highway 7. International currency speculators use Canadian money as toilet paper, as it's cheaper these days than the real stuff.
Walk as far as Oistins, about a mile away, before becoming all hot and humid and pooped. The shopping plaza here has a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce branch, complete with banking machine. The Royal Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia also have branches in Barbados, all of which are identical in appearance to those back home. (I wonder if their service charges have been going up lately, he thought, uncharitably.) Armed with exotic paper money of various colours, bearing pictures of people I've never heard of, I head out in search of a bus to take me to Bridgetown.
In Barbados, three kinds of public transport exist. The first is the official Barbados Transit buses. These are large, clean and comfortable, painted bright blue, and virtually non-existent. The second option is the so-called reggae buses, which look a bit like old school buses, are painted yellow, have no suspension to speak of, and invariably travel at great speeds. (In fact, two of them collided on the Bridgetown-Dover road today, forcing traffic to be diverted into the center of the island for most of the day.) The reggae buses are pretty cool. The third option are the route taxis, which are basically station-wagon-sized vans that can hold up to 15 people at once. The word cramped doesn't quite begin to describe the experience. The only way I and my knapsack can squeeze into the #11 bus into Bridgetown is for me to basically nearly dismember an unfortunate woman sitting in the back corner. All I can do is apologize profusely, which I do.
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Route taxis at the Bridgetown terminal. The reggae bus terminal is just to the left of here. |
Bridgetown is basically Barbados's main drag. Tourist shops, restaurants, clothing stores, fruit and vegetable marts, betting shops, a couple of impressive public buildings, and lots of pale, flabby white tourists. Apparently, a cruise ship is in town. What must the natives - mostly thin, black, poor and relaxed - think of the rich fat white people in funny-coloured clothes in their midst? It's this great divide that makes it impossible for me to completely relax here. I can't help but see myself as others see me. And Barbados is a fairly prosperous country, with a pretty decent quality of life compared to most of the Caribbean. Imagine what it must be like to visit Cuba, say, or the Dominican Republic. It boggles the mind.
Travel note: I am never hassled for being white - though I am asked approximately two dozen times whether I want a taxi.
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The Bridgetown Public Library. Contains at least one biography of Mickey Mantle. |
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A plaque commemorating a 19th-century drinking fountain. The fountain is no longer operational. |
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The road leading into the poor part of town. Single-room shacks, a communal toilet, chickens clucking in the road, the whole bit. |
Eat lunch at an ocean-side takeout place in Bridgetown. Order fried flying fish and Sprite. Not bad (the fish, that is - the Sprite wasn't anything special).
Digression: in Bridgetown, they number the sewer grates. I have no idea why.
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One world-wide constant: the most ornate building in a city is usually a life insurance company office. This is the Bridgetown branch of the Mutual Life Assurance Company. |
My plan for the week is to spend the early part of the day exploring bits of the island, and then spend the hot part of the day lolling about by the hotel beach. The one flaw in this reasoning is that there isn't really a cool part of the day, but no matter. I have a choice when it comes to swimming: I can swim in the ocean, which is pretty warm this far south, or I can swim in one of the two hotel pools. One pool has a waterfall which I can soak myself under, and the other has a swim-up bar. I decide to swim in the ocean, and then wash the salt water off in the pool. Life is tough.
Tonight, the hotel restaurant is featuring a barbeque buffet. I talk the maitre-d' into letting me fill a takeout carton with food (main course on one side, salad on another) and take it back to my room. Discover that the room's television carries the ESPN International channel, which shows soccer every night. Drink a free rum peach, stuff my face with various kinds of good food, drink a Banks (the Beer of Barbados - I think I mentioned that already), and watch PSV Eindhoven and Ajax play on television while the ocean roars in the background. This, folks, is as good as it gets.
February 17, 1998
Normally, I get seven hours of sleep a night. Last night, I got nine. I think it must be the sun.
Decide to head out to the west coast, so I take a bus to Speightstown. My guidebook says that Speightstown hasn't changed much in the last century. I believe it. There's a few small shops, an art studio or two, and one very large building, which presumably used to house the British representative or the governor or something.
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The very large building, Speightstown. |
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A passerby mumbled something at me as I photographed this. Apparently, this is an old gang headquarters or something. Photographing such buildings may be hazardous to one's health. I got the hell out of the neighbourhood right after I took this picture. |
I decide to take the Speightstown-to-Oistins bus back to my hotel, as I assume that avoiding Bridgetown will save time. (Bridgetown traffic can get pretty blocked at times.) I should have known that this was a mistake: a person waiting for the bus along with me is starting to get impatient, and Barbados people never get impatient. This means that the bus is late - and when a bus is late, it's going to fill up.
The bus arrives. I sit at the back. People get on. More people get on. Still more people get on. No one can move. I feel smug - I have chosen a seat at the back, next to the back door. I feel less smug when I realize that the back door is not operational, and that basically I'm stuck in the bus until about 50 people get off it. I brace myself for a spot of Involuntary Sightseeing, but then the bus is pulled into the depot. We are all directed to get off the bus and onto another one, presumably one with a functioning rear door.
By the time I get to the bus, there's clearly been contention for the few seats remaining. One elderly woman, standing, is screaming at a second elderly woman, who is sitting. I suspect that both wanted to sit down, but only one could. Unfortunately, I can't follow the local dialect well enough to know exactly what they're saying. All I catch is "Don't you wave your finger at me." An hour or so later, the bus - now much emptier - arrives at my stop. Later, I read in my trusty guidebook that the Speightstown-Oistins bus route is "notoriously unreliable." Now they tell me.
Back at the hotel, I decide to try out one of their boogie boards. (Boogie boarding is apparently mostly a sport for kids. I don't care.) The way this works, apparently, is you take your board, wait for a wave, and then launch yourself onto the board. When I succeed in riding the wave, I zoom right to the shore, and feel like a Surfer God. When I mistime it (the usual eventuality), I wind up eating a heck of a lot of salt water and am forced into a somersault by the force of the wave.
The waves are mostly only a couple of feet high, except, every now and then, you get one that's way over your head. There is something awe-inspiring, and addicting, about seeing a Big Mother of a wave about to crash down on you while you frantically maneuver your board into position. I suddenly grok why surfing is so popular. I have huge bruises on my knees from crashlanding into the sand repeatedly. I do not care.
Travel tip: don't swim into a big wave, unless you're really into having your arm nearly ripped out of your shoulder socket.
Other travel tip: when the waves are high, don't go out farther than you can stand. Those undertows are a bitch.
Meet up with a young couple from Winnipeg who are also attempting to boogie board. She is approximately the most attractive young woman I have ever seen anywhere. (See earlier comment about life being unfair, etc.) If all women in Winnipeg are anywhere near this attractive, drawbacks such as -50 windchills must seem like minor annoyances. Oh, well. (Down, boy.) These people are the only representatives of the Gen-X generation in my vicinity: virtually everybody else is in their mid-forties or older, except for a few small children. I feel like a draft dodger hiding out back home while everybody else of my generation marches off to war.
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In Barbados, many people name their houses (much as they do in England). Here are two examples. |
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February 18, 1998
Today, I take another route taxi into Bridgetown, and then walk to the Bridgetown bus terminal to catch a bus to Bathsheba. Signs in the Bridgetown bus terminal encourage everybody to be nice to tourists. Good idea, from my perspective.
Barbados, topologically, is roughly like an inverted gravy tureen. It's flat by the ocean, and steep hills rise up from the ocean to the centre of the island. The trip to Bathsheba takes about an hour, passing fields of sugar cane and occasional upscale houses. The last few minutes of the trip are hair-raising, as the bus travels down a very steep incline towards the eastern shore.
The eastern coast is rocky. The air is quite fresh - apparently, this is because the next land east of here is Arabia (you can look it up). The waves are much higher here, and several young surfer dudes are out riding the waves.
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The wondrous effects of erosion: rocks near Bathsheba. |
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Woman resting after surfing, Bathsheba. (See earlier comment about life being unfair, etc.) |
For some reason, I decide to go for a hike in the hills. Fortunately, I am wearing a proper sun hat and carrying lots of water, or I would have definitely been afflicted by heat prostration. A local watched me hike up the hill and then back down - what was this strange tourist doing walking around in 31C heat at 11:30 in the morning? I'm not sure, other than that it definitely was exercise. I am grateful to see a passing reggae bus, which I flag down.
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On the bus back from Bathsheba, a student from Grantley Adams School asked me to take his picture, so I did. |
Defining moment of the trip: I am in another route taxi, heading down the Maxwell Road. The sun is shining. The taxi is crowded, but the radio is playing waycool reggae music. At this instant, I am very very happy. (Postscript, 2003: I discovered, many years later, that the song was "Night Nurse" by Gregory Isaacs.)
February 19, 1998
I have consumed too much fried fish and Banks (the Beer of Barbados) this week, and my stomach is starting to complain, so I spend the day vegging out by the beach, and then spend the evening watching more soccer on ESPN International. It's the U.S. against Holland, otherwise known as the Christians versus the Lions, as the contest is a bit one-sided.
February 20-21, 1998
People keep wanting me to buy time-shares in a condominium or visit presentations about the advantages of time-sharing. I don't want to buy time-shares. I want to rest by the ocean. I want to drink Banks (the Beer of Barbados). I want to read. I want to swim. I want to be pummelled by the waves. These are good plans. I stick to them.
Unfortunately, while this makes for a relaxing, enjoyable holiday, this doesn't make for entertaining reading, so I'll just skip over this part.
Apparently, there's a rainstorm happening in Toronto, and the temperature is 2C. Oh, darn, too bad I'm missing it.
February 22, 1998
Time to return back to my normal life of overcast skies and low-single-digit temperatures - that healthy northern climate that we all have come to know and loathe. I have to be out of the room before noon, and the shuttle bus to the airport doesn't leave until 2:30, so I spend two hours just sitting in a couch by the front desk. I have, by now, gotten into the habit of only expending energy when I absolutely have to. Wind up chatting with some of my fellow countrymen, all of whom seem to be annoying lawyers.
On the flight back, I have the bad luck to be in the same row as two screaming children, who constantly want to switch seats with each other or with Mom and Dad, and constantly whine about the non-existence of some treat not immediately available on the airplane. I never realized before now what a godsend the in-flight headsets are. Even endless reruns of 'Who's On First' are preferable to the complaints of kids demanding immediate gratification.
Back in Toronto, the shuttle bus back to the Park 'N' Fly parking lot features a very dumb person who forgot where he parked his car. When the driver points out that there are three parking lots, and starts explaining the setup, the man gets confused. And when he gets confused, he starts getting angry. During the time the two take to argue, I finally remember where I parked my car.
Home sweet home at last - only to find that the lock on the outside door to my apartment house has changed. My landlord (a nice guy) had mentioned that he was going to change the lock, as it had been giving trouble - but I didn't know he was going to change it while I was gone, and he didn't know I was going away. Thoughtfully, he'd left a key for me on my inside door and left the outside door open, but it had been locked during the week. Fortunately, my landlord's brother is in the phone book, and he doesn't mind coming out to let me in at 11:30 at night. So, at last, my Caribbean adventure is over.
I liked it there, but -- and this may be a heretical thought -- you can have too much sunny and warm. When it's too hot, you can't walk about much or otherwise exert yourself unduly, and my nature is best suited to continual pell-mell rushing. Eventually, something had to give, and it was me.
But it's the nature of human beings to not know when they're well off. As I write this, the temperature hovers near the zero mark, and we've been experiencing rain mixed with drizzle, snow, freezing rain, ice pellets and plagues of locusts for two days now. All things being equal, I'd rather be out in the waves again.