A week's too short... (Barbados)

Member Name: Daisybelle

Product:	Barbados
Date:	11/12/00 (428 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Just a brilliant place

Disadvantages: It's not cheap

This place is definitely the biz. Having visited the Caribbean a couple of times and left with mixed feelings (Jamaica - too much hassle and Cuba – nice, but strange) I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a really fine place with outstandingly nice, decent people. I just wish we’d been for longer than a week.

First of all I’ll cover the bad bit, to get it out of the way.

We stayed at the Southwinds Beach and Racquet Club, a Divi (Yank chain outfit, I believe) owned set-up in St Lawrence Gap. This is an expensive place to stay and I wouldn’t recommend it. We were on a freebie (Scrounged a timeshare) and were supposed to be staying in a 2-bedroom apartment. This turned into a one-bedroom apartment on arrival, which was very nice, but not what we’d booked.

The general staff (Cleaners, bartenders, and entertainment crew) were fine, but the admin staff were somewhat rude and unhelpful. We’d only been here 10 minutes when another guest (From the Bronx) told us that the admin staff had a serious attitude problem. He’d been given an outlandish phone bill ( 900 dollars, including a 19 dollar charge for each connection made) – very OTT as the phone cards, available in most shops, give you about a minute for a pound on international calls. We thought he’d just had a bad experience but discovered he was spot on.

On the second day we went to see about getting our 2-bedroom apartment. Nothing free but they’d get back to us – they didn’t. I asked if we could get moved to the ground floor (We were on the 5th and I picked up a knee injury skiing 2 days previously) as the lift was broken. The guy on the reception just replied that the lift wasn’t broken. I replied that it was broken 3 minutes previously, as I’d had to hop down the stairs. He replied that it was working and showed no sign of getting off his backside and walking the 20 yards to check, in
timating that I’m either a liar or an idiot, and then stared off into space as if I wasn’t there – no offer of a lower floor.

I left at this point as I didn’t go on holiday to get cross. The lift didn’t work all week, but I just couldn’t be doing with getting myself wound up speaking to this man again and most of the time the reception was unmanned anyway. The other admin people were also extremely aloof, perhaps they got so many complaints that they were entirely fed up.

This aside the hotel was fine, they just seemed to employ the only rude Barbadians we met, which is the only reason I wouldn’t recommend it. The bar was also expensive and most of the time empty and the food at the beach bar wasn’t the best we had in Barbados, still very edible though. I believe Airtours use this hotel. Caveat Emptor. Let’s get onto the good stuff.

St Lawrence Gap is a great place to stay. It has a very genuine feel about it, but is also home to some excellent bars and restaurants. I’ll give a quick rundown on some of them.

The Ship Inn is the Grand Dame of the Gap. It has a couple of bars, a restaurant, a stage, an outside dance-floor and a giftshop. Later on it has a barbecue selling snacks if you get the munchies. The happy hour was a killer, from 5-6 you got 2 for the price of one, but Randy the extremely lively and easily bored barman, made this 2 doubles if you were on spirits. He also entertained himself by having water-fights with the customers and mixing up killer drinks and forcing people to knock them back. He got me with a shot glass of Tabasco one night – his “Welcome to the Island” special.

This bar has some great bands on and attracts a lot of locals as well as tourists, on Tuesday nights they have a cover charge of about 12 quid, which includes free drinks all night. A lot of the bigger places do this once a week, so if you ask around yo
u can get some wild nights on the cheap. The food at The Ship is very good, I had the Blackened Fish which was exquisitely tasty and not too expensive, although nothing was particularly cheap. Definitely worth a visit.

Next door is McBrides, an Irish Bar but without the usually attached tackiness. They have a variety of goings-on at night, including Karaokes, bands and DJs. The food was fine but I found the lighting too minimal. We were pretty pissed when we ate here and it was that dark I nearly fell asleep.

Across the street is the B4 Blues bar. A seafront place with a moderately priced lunch menu and huge portions. The food was great and too much - it sent us to sleep for the afternoon. We returned at night and found an expensive cocktail list, but it was worth it as the live blues band was brilliant. Owner/barman Ed Fern got up and did a few songs with them to add to the entertainment. Only problem with this place is it shuts at about 11 o’clock.

Next to B4 is Masquerades Restaurant. Very pricey, but excellent. The portions are not huge like most places - some of the food we were served looked that big I thought it was going to eat me if I didn’t get stuck in quickly. One of the nights at Masquerades it took 75 minutes from ordering to actually getting the food.

Nowhere we ate (even the very tasty breakfast at The Frog and Gecko, West End of the Gap) delivered the food in anything under 25 minutes, but 75 minutes pushes the patience a bit. The food was worth the wait though, I had a Thai curry here one night, and an Indian another. Both were perfect. The long waits in Barbados are attributable to the fact that everything is fresh, which quickly becomes apparent as all the food we had was great.

At the West End of the Gap is a Mexican Restaurant whose name eludes me, if I remember I’ll add it in. Again very slow although it was also very busy, but offered extremely good food served in extremely
challenging portions. They do vast selections of cocktails and work with a computerised waiting service. This was a very popular restaurant and it was easy to see why.

All of these places were similarly priced to the UK for drinks, but if you went to smaller local bars slightly off the beaten track the drinks were about a third of the price, handy if you’re on a tight budget.
The food was all expensive though, no main courses under a tenner, plenty nearer twenty. The lunch menus were much cheaper though, so if you’re eking out the cash have a feed at lunchtime and get a burger from a street vendor at night.

Even living out of the supermarket here can be dear, a lettuce costs 2 quid. There are numerous KFCs and Cheffetes (Local version) but no McDonalds. The only McDonalds closed 10 years ago due to lack of interest, as Barbadians seem to be chicken addicts.

Getting around in Barbados is very easy. A bus goes by nearly every minute and costs 50p no matter how far you’re going. The Z-buses, licensed minibuses again charging 50p, are mental. We got one back from Bridgetown to the Gap, the driver had a sticker staying “Jah is my co-pilot”. Good job, as this was some of the craziest driving I’ve seen. The taxis are moderately priced too, the 15 minute run to the airport was about 8 quid. We didn’t hire a car as it was pretty expensive and I had the feeling that Barbados was an extremely easy place to get lost - loads of small windy roads running through the plantations.

One of the touristy places we visited was The Animal Flower Cave. This is situated on the northernmost tip of Barbados, very bonny area. The cave itself didn’t do much for me. We were forced to go in with a totally useless guide – a very suspicious set-up. The woman who appeared to be running the show, a badged guide who collected the money, introduced us to our guide. He was a hawker selling necklaces up
to that point, she retired to the bar and he gave us a 10 minute run around, during which he said no more than 30 words. When I asked him if the cave was soapstone I got a hugely informative reply – No.

The Animal Flowers turned out to be 6 sea anemones in a rock pool, highly humorous. When we exited the cave, the “guide” (Who never even said hope you enjoyed the tour) stood banging on a “Please Tip the Guide” sign. Please Kick the Guide would be far more appropriate, so I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit this place, although the surrounding scenery was cracking.

This visit was part of a mini-bus tour we did, with a company called ER Williamson. The buses were air-conditioned and the 7-hour coastal tour cost about 38 quid each, including a very good lunch at the Atlantis Hotel in Bathsheba, a gorgeous spot on the East Coast. The driver, Duane, had only started working as a guide 2 weeks previously but proved quite informative and friendly. The tour also included our entrance fees to the Animal Flower Cave and The Sunbury Plantation, as well as free drinks. Sunbury is a fascinating house turned museum, full of various décor, photo’s, maps and art spanning Barbados’ 400 year history. The guide here was very informative and interesting so I would recommend a visit.

We spent an afternoon in Bridgetown, but the famous duty free shopping isn’t overly cheap, apart from the booze. I was after a Citizen Pro-master dive watch, but they were 50 quid dearer than I’d seen them in Livigno, Italy’s duty free haven. We stupidly went to Bridgetown without a map, so if there was anything of outstanding interest we missed it. I’m still glad we went though.

I managed to pack in eight dives while here. They ranged from mundane reefs to excellent. On one dive we saw three Hawksbill Turtles, a Stingray, a Spotted Eagleray, two sea horses and several Moray Eels – bril
liant. A must do for any wreckies is the SS Stavronikita. An upright, 365ft purposely sunk freighter, lying in 40m, this is a good dive. It was supposed to be an artificial reef but sank slightly too deep. There are plenty of entrances and exits as the dive operators doctored it before it was sunk in 1978.

I did my diving with Exploresub who have a shop at the West End of the Gap and several very good boats. It cost about 25 quid a dive, apparently the average price, including all the gear as I only took my computer. They are one of the oldest operators on Barbados, but weren’t exactly safety fanatics. On the second dive after the SS Stav, my computer clocked up 11 minutes decompression. Considering some of the people on this dive had minimal qualifications and experience, I thought this was somewhat erroneous.

I really enjoyed diving with these guys though and would recommend them if you have the experience to cope with a spot of deco diving. I suppose that in PADI-speak it was just a very long Safety Stop. A lot of the people diving with them had either dived with them on previous visits or come as friends had recommended them, always a good sign.

The best thing about Barbados is how nice the people are. Extremely chatty and interesting, and very polite to boot. They seem to take a lot of pride in their Island, and want you to enjoy it too. Even the beggars were really polite, though they weren’t numerous, and could take no for an answer. The same went for the drug dealers. We got daily offers of Hash, Speed and Coke, but they were ok with a polite no thanks. One of the better products from the hawkers was fresh Aloe Vera. For about 6 quid they’d fill up a bottle for you on the spot.

My sister used to work with several Barbadians in London, who told her that nowadays quite a number of them send their kids back to get educated, as English education isn’t as good and doesn’t breed respect. S
eeing how the children and young adults behaved, I find this very believable. I would definitely return to Barbados and would like to go for a month next time, instead of a week.

I've a little addition stuck on here sorry if it seems irrelevant and banal. A strangely serendipitous thing happened to me recently. (Happy coincidence, if you’re reaching for the thesaurus – I like the word too much not to use it though)

We were sitting looking at holiday snaps and drinking beers on a Saturday night. Just run through the Barbados set and I went to put a fresh CD on. Seen as he’s one of Barbados’ most famous sons, I picked up Eddy Grant’s Walking On Sunshine album. Turned it over to choose a track and lo and behold, here’s a photograph of Eddy that gave me deja vu. He’s standing silhouetted in the mouth of the above mentioned Animal Flower Cave, taken from the inside of the cave with the sunset behind him.

Not so remarkable, but we’d just been looking at a photograph of me standing in exactly the same spot and taken from the same position. Wow. I take it all back, go visit the cave, this it too spooky!

Summary: