Current Events: Barbados, Southside

Ready for Snorkeling

Surfing lesson at Freight's Bay

Enterprise Beach

Golden Hour at Atlantic Shores

Dominoes at Oistin's Fish Fry

bowls made from fish scales and resin

Owning the stage

Joy

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We’ve been staying on the south coast of Barbados for a week in a dilapidated, shell-pink mansion made of stucco and stone that reminds me of the houses I sometimes visited in Nassau as a child.  The interior is white - white tile, white furniture, white walls – and sunlight bounces off of every surface.  The sound of the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean, which the property overlooks, fills every room.  Barbados is the largest, most civilized, and most racially integrated of the islands we’ve visited.  According to our guidebook, the country has a 98% literacy rate, and it shows.  Bajans also seem to be a very active bunch.  When I jogged to the small, nearby beach early one morning, I passed dozens of people out walking.  There were two exercise classes being conducted at the beach, one led by a tall, lean man with a white Rasta mushroom hat whose choreography seemed entirely arbitrary.  There were a couple dozen Bajans in the waves.  I have passed quite a few older Bajans walking along the road to the beach with a device that looks like a stiff, wire-cored swim noodle clasped about their waists.

White sand beaches ring the entire island.  Thursday, we drove up the west coast and lunched in Holetown, a posh town with an unfortunate name, then wandered a shopping center with Louis Vutton, Ralph Lauren, Gucci and Cartier among other high-end stores.  At a marine reserve at the north end of Holetown, we took turns snorkeling and watching Toby, who made friends of two Bajan boys at the park there and discovered the joy of the seesaw.   After taking a surf lesson Friday, Lilly and Nina were catching waves left and right while Justin surfed nearby, cheering them on.

The Oistin’s Friday Night Fish Fry, where we had a delicious dinner of grilled Kingfish and Mahi Mahi that even Lilly liked, was another highpoint of our week.  Toby made herself the center of attention with her interpretive dance moves on the sound stage where a DJ spun Paula Abduhl’s “Rush” (before your time, thirty year-olds and under) and “Sexual Healing.”  The next day, we encountered several people around town who exclaimed upon seeing Toby, “we saw you dancing last night!”

Being in Barbados, I’m unafraid jogging alone for the first time since we began our trip.  On Carriacou and St.Vincents, I had men call out to me (once when I was running on an otherwise empty road), and one vanload of vocal men even came to a screeching halt in front of me, prompting me to run in the opposite direction towards the nearest village.  In Canouan, I started running strapped, with Justin’s dive knife in the belt of my water bottle holder.  It has a blunt tip, so the most I’d be able to do if someone really attacked me is to maybe pry his fingers off my arm like an abalone from a rock, but it comforted me to know I could flash it sheathed if anyone got particularly aggressive.