Saturday, July 11, 2015

A Day Where Not Much Happens

Today we went out to the beach and we had to wake up early in the morning. I didn't feel like going in the water so I just sat on the beach. After that we went to a small restaurant by the beach and had fried chicken and macaroni and cheese. Then we went to a little restaurant and had ice cream. After walking around a bit we went home.

[Ed's version of the day: We've been sleeping on Pacific Time which means, especially in André's case, only rising at 10am here. We decided that this morning everyone should rise at 8am so we could actually get to a beach and into the water before the sun was too high in the sky, but as it was overcast André was allowed to sleep in until 9am anyway. 

Neither Google Maps on the phone, nor the Garmin GPS that came with the car seem to have the faintest idea which roads are actually navigable, and following their advice tends to lead to routes only navigable by tractor, and from which it can take some time to escape if you're only in a tinny little Kia. So we compare those two with a paper map and while doing so inevitably miss an ill-signposted turning. Getting to a beach on the west coast takes at least 30 minutes and sometimes 45 minutes. Getting to historic sights in the north should take 45 minutes and is more likely to take an hour and a quarter.

Today we returned to the small Payne's Beach we'd already visited, and once again had it almost entirely to ourselves. A flat layer of rock just offshore teems with fish at its edge (the drop-off, for lovers of Finding Nemo, perfect for André's younger sister, Lucy. Lucy and I spent an hour snorkelling hand-in-hand admiring a large variety of slivers of tropical brilliance. Lucy could swim well out of her depth, but see the shallow flat rock close at hand, and get there quickly to drain her mask, or take a rest. André moped on the shore.

We ate local Bajan food for lunch at a restaurant that was little more than a shack, with food served school dinners-style. There's a lot of Indian influence on what is basically a diet of starches, at least two on the plate at a time. Curried goat was on the menu. André had some fried chicken with macaroni pie and a small salad, which, very surprisingly, he tucked into without being prompted, and without complaining. (I had a spicy version of the chicken that reminded me in flavour, although not texture, of Jamaica's jerk chicken, along with a mixture of beans and potatoes and some lightly curried spinach. It was excellent.) This was declared a success, but icecream (a rare treat, and then usually home-made) was vociferously requested as a follow-up. A neighbouring icecream shack was closed, so we drove slowly north up the west coast, looking at other beaches, and past numerous rather pompous resorts, to the iceland's second-biggest town, still little more than a village, and found locally made icecream in a pleasant café. We strolled around the centre of Speightstown, all wooden buildings of some antiquity with sagging verandahs, which was cordoned off for the current Crop Over festival, a month-long celebration of the end of the sugar cane harvest (although sugar plays only a small role in the Bajan economy these days). Stalls selling rum, beer, and snacks lined the streets. On a large stage a children's choir was just getting stuck into a song called 'Reject the Devil', which the audience was also being encouraged to shout. Advertisements for another event promised 'Christian calypso'. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The return journey was the first we'd ever accomplished in Barbados without a single wrong turning.

Tomorrow I will require the boy to describe Barbados in more general terms, and how he thinks it compares so far to other beach destinations he's visited, particularly nearby ones in Venezuela, Curaçao, Aruba, Colombia, and Panama. If he's not willing to put a bit more life into this then we'll abandon it.]

No comments:

Post a Comment