Barbados & Trinidad

Mid-morning on Thursday we docked in Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados.  Settled by the British in 1627, Barbados finally achieved independence in 1966.  The island is the easternmost in the Caribbean, straddling the line between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.  It has a population of about 285,000.  Because of its British control for over three centuries, it is said to be “more English than England sheself”.  While tea is enjoyed every afternoon and cricket is played as the national sport, African heritage brought by sugar plantation slaves creates a unique culture.  Roadside fruit stands and fried fish stalls can be found all over the island.  They have a strange law that prohibits the wearing of camouflage clothing by civilians, as it is reserved for military personnel.  We were told that we would be returned to the ship if caught wearing camouflage.

We chose to join a shore excursion to sail on a catamaran and snorkel with sea turtles.  We visited an area near a beautiful beach where we put on our snorkel gear and swam with four large turtles.  As with the sting rays of the previous day, the turtles were calm and gentle, but perhaps a bit more wary of human touch.  They were of medium size, around two to three feet across, and according to our boat crew, probably 30 to 40 years old.  After the snorkel experience, we moored next to the beach for about an hour and many passengers swam to shore.  From there, we raised the sails and spent the next hour or so sailing with a brisk breeze before returning to shore and our ship and a 6 PM departure. 

We woke up on Friday morning in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the larger of the two island nation of Trinidad and Tobago.  The islands were discovered by Columbus on his third voyage in 1498. They remained Spanish until 1797 when they were taken under British rule.  The islands became an independent nation in the 1960s.  Trinidad and Tobago are the southern-most islands in the Caribbean, located only 7 miles from Venezuela.  The islands have a population of 1.3 million people, and the country is among the wealthiest of the Caribbean nations because of a large oil and gas industry.  Port of Spain is the country’s capital and as such has a large commercial and governmental community.  Trinidad was supposedly the birthplace of steel drums and calypso.

Instead of booking a shore excursion, we walked a short distance into the heart of the city.  On every corner stood a visitor guide, dressed in a bright red shirt, to assist us tourists find our way around the city.  After walking a few blocks, we entered a large park where a temporary stage had been set up.  The signs advertised a concert at noon every day of this week.  Since it was after 11 AM, we found a table and benches to make ourselves comfortable and ‘people watched’ until the concert began.  Very few ship visitors were in the park; it was a local event, for sure.  Once the concert began, we figured out that the music was some sort of highly amplified “Caribbean rap”.  A few minutes of that and we made tracks out of the park and down the street.  We were going to stop at a local restaurant that had been pointed out by a visitor guide, but somehow missed it.  Since we found ourselves in the vicinity of the dock, we returned to the ship for lunch and a beer.

 

 The traffic in this capital city was horrendous!  Long lines of cars and trucks were waiting at traffic signals, but when the signal changed, there was nowhere to go; gridlock!  We were supposed to leave Trinidad at 5 PM, but the ship had to have some sort of port clearance document that was sent from the government building to the port.  The courier got caught in traffic and couldn’t get to the ship on time so we were unable to get away for another hour.

We now have four days at sea before reaching our first port in Brazil.  Hooray!