Barbados - Day One

I woke up this morning to sun streaming in the windows, birds chirping and the sound of waves crashing against the rocks. Ahhhh…. Beautiful way to wake up.

I was so excited to go outside and see Barbados! We walked down to the beach, which is across the street from our house, and this is what I saw:

We took a walk along the beach, climbed around, talked, and ended up sitting on a picnic bench. We had our shoes in our hand, and put them on the top of the picnic bench. Before we knew it, this old Bajan woman was yelling at us, “take your shoes off! Take your shoes off!!!” We did, and we heard her mutter, “you’re not supposed to put shoes on the table”. She was maaaaaaaaaaad. Come to figure out, he job was the care for the picnic area. I did feel bad – and would normally never put my shoes on a table – but I didn’t think anything about putting flip flops on a picnic bench on the beach…

This is the famous Bathsheba Soupbowl rock:

We saw this man, out in the water, doing something with a rod/pole thing. We couldn't figure out what was he was doing. It looked like fishing, but he wasn't casting his rode. As he got closer, we saw something going crazy on the rod. Something with a lot of legs... we walked closer along the beach, absolutely staring, and saw he was fishing for octopus. He had a pair of snorkeling goggles he'd hold in the water and look through to find the octopus. Once he had one, he'd stick it on the rod. The legs would just twist and turn and go crazy. It was cool but really gross.

On our walk, we came across Snake. Snake is probably in his late 50's, has grey hair sculpted in a mohawlk, and never wears a shirt. He is an old surfing Bajan pro that Andrew met the other day. He’s lived in Barbados all his life, grew up surfing, and has surfed with many surfing legends.



This is the famous soup bowl:

Andrew and Snake

As we were with talking with him, he got a call from a friend saying on the West side of the island there were some awesome waves. He asked us for a ride, and since we wanted to check out various surfing spot and needed a tour guide and had to pick Becki up from the airport soon, we said yes.

The area we were walking is right up the street from where we were staying. Accross from it is this grassy area where the locals set up booths to sell stuff to the tourists. And there is this guy there every day with a monkey - Spice.  The teeniest tiniest little monkey ever. So cute. And it had an earring!! A little earring with the Jamaican colors. So adorable! It was insanely wild, though - all over the place. I liked looking at it, but didn’t love holding it. I’m not very good with animals…

See the earring?

We loaded Snake’s surfboard in our car, and were off. It took us about 30 minutes to get from Bathsheba, on the East side of the island, to get to Brandon’s where the surfing was going down. The beach is seriously beyond anything I’ve seen before… the water is so clear and turquoise. Palm trees and coconuts, and the sand is so white and pristine. We watched the surfers for a while and waded in the water, and then went to get some food before grabbing Becki.

The turn into Brandon's is accross the street from the horse racing track - which is very cool. I wish there had been races going on while we were there. There was an old viewing shelter thing, and it had random excersize equiptment in it, right there on the grassy area next to the race track and a busy road. People would come work out there. I wish I had taken a picture. Right in Brandon's, as in you drive next to it to get there, and the fence borders the parking lot, is a military base - a poor picture below.  They still use Colonial fortresses. It's just a stone fort with cannons. Still in use. They man in white - is the SNOW CONE MAN! The soldiers wanted a snowcone, so this guy was squeezing the snow cones between the fence rails.

At lunch, there were lots of these black birds everywhere. One kept coming up and sitting and on the top of the chair next to me, when I noticed - it had a peg leg!! We spent the rest of lunch taking pictures of our new friend. I'm sure everyone thought we were completely crazy. But it was probably the highlight of my day. Yes, it was that cool.

Once we had Becki, we went to some more beaches and took pictures and looked around (we were actually at Oistins - we wouldn't learn that till later!)

We headed back to Brandon’s and got Snake once again, and headed back to our place. It was quite the site – Snake’s board on top of our little car, held in place with his ankle straps, and the 4 of us in the car.

I put on sunscreen and tried so hard not to get burnt. But alas, I did. It’s sitting in that car fully exposed, I tell ya. So when we got to Snake’s, he cut some aloe for us. So I put actual aloe on my skin. Awesome.

For dinner, we went down to this tiny bar joint that is next to our place. There isn’t much in the way of restaurants or shopping by where we live. The food was not that great – but the entertainment was awesome. They set up karaoke. Everyone went to town, it was so funny. They played all this Caribbean music. They really do speak with that Caribbean twang and it is awesome. Also – a very high percentage of the men have long hair in dreadlocks. Today I saw this man who had a huge beard in dreadlocks, and his hair was in one big dreadlock – it went down and out and stiff as a board, forming the letter L off his head. Wish I had a picture of that…

So we ate while the bar started to fill up with karaoking Bajans. It was so fun. The patio overlooked the ocean, of course.

After eating, we went for a walk down the street. As we were walking in the dark street, I heard someone come up behind us, and grab Andrew and I and make this noise… I freaked out. Scream so loud and jumped, so Becki screamed and jumped… turns out it was Snake. He felt bad, having only meant to grab Andrew – but we all laughed so hard for so long.

Snake hit Andrew up for some booze cash, promising to pay him back tomorrow morning. He had this whole long story, and I understood about 15% of it. The parts I did understand what he was saying, made no sense.

He is taking us tomorrow to a great surf spot, and letting me use one of his boards. My first surfing experience – how exciting! I cannot wait to get into those beautiful Caribbean waters…

Even now as we lounge around our place, we can hear the Caribbean karaoke beats from the bar next door, combined with the ocean sounds and smells… hmmmmm, I love Barbados!