BEACH-LIFE IN BARBADOS
Today, we arrived at our final Caribbean port-of-call, Bridgetown, on the island of Barbados.
The plan for the day was very simple… find a beach… swim… relax… repeat…
…and that’s exactly what we did. Having used up all our remaining dollars yesterday, in Grenada, we changed some money at Reception, and then went for a walk into Bridgetown.
The port of Bridgetown, and its accompanying cruise terminal, has the capacity to welcome lots of cruise ships all at once. Today, there were four berthed alongside the expansive quay; The Marco Polo wasn’t the smallest, but between all four ships (which included the Norwegian Jade and a massive ‘Carnival’ ship), that meant many thousands of passengers all wanting to go ashore at the same time.
We deftly bypassed the melee of taxis hanging around the entrance to the port and strolled along the main road into town. It’s a pleasant enough walk by the sea-wall, with plenty of shade, and one that we’ve enjoyed many times before. The fish market was open and in full swing, so we diverted from our route to take a look. It being a weekday (often when we’ve come here, it’s been a very quiet Sunday), the market was busy, as were the roads into the town. At that time in the morning, the marina was relatively quiet, but we knew that by the time we’d be walking back, there would be countless catamarans and other large boats filling up with punters, ready to be taken out into the bay to party. A lot of partying seems to go on in Barbados.
When we got to the beach, we were pleased to see that it wasn’t too busy. Not only that; a pair of sun loungers only cost us $15, and access to the washrooms and other facilities was free.
We lathered ourselves in sun cream, headed for the sea armed with our snorkels and underwater camera, and spent the next hour or so enjoying the waters.
When we finally came out of the sea, we sat and enjoyed the ambience; the beach was starting to fill up, and live music emanated from the bar area. We had enough US dollars left over to order a couple of cartons of chips from the small food hall for lunch, and a couple of drinks to wash them down with.
This is what you do in Barbados.
It was coming up to 3pm when we decided we’d had our fill of beach-life for the time being, and started to walk back to the port. Once there, we made use of the last shore-side wi-fi that will be available to us for the next six days, which is how long its going to take us to cross the Atlantic to our final port stop in this cruise, Ponta Delgada, in the Azores.
