Grab another cuppa and biscuits for some more Barbados banter – this is a bit of a long one….

Mysterious Seas

Spending time by the sea, and looking out onto it late into the night left me with (honestly) some weird thoughts.

Staring at the incoming waves for long enough is a form of hypnotherapy, it has to be.

I know science makes everything sound logical, but in reality, my naked eye looking at the waves has me questioning how the waves seem to know where to draw the line and never  (unless there’s a tsunami) spill beyond the dedicated beach and rock boundaries.

When the waves pick up speed and charge in with no let up, it’s like they’re in a bad mood, then they calm down and become gentler, beckoning you to enter. Mood swings.

What would happen if a vessel just drifted out to sea, into the vast infinity – what else is out there, or under the water that we don’t know about….

Do people still send or find messages in bottles these days?

At night, how do fish and sea life see where they’re going (or do they hide when the sun does down….still, lots of fishing boats go out fishing/trawling at night) – and I wonder how many sharks are lurking in the black expanse from the shoreline, since they generally feed at night?

Midnight dip – no thanks 🦈

Honestly, it’s funny what enters the mind when you clear it of the usual distractions.

A conversation I had with a local shop owner turned to the mystery of the sea – we were talking about the way strong currents can take people unawares, when out swimming.

The shop owner told me she’d been swallowed up into a whirlpool once while swimming in the sea, she went round and round and down. Sounds terrifying. This woman described a supernatural experience she claims to have had at that time, and that she saw things underwater that made no sense….another realm of some kind and that she was completely dry while she was in that realm. I know….what do you say to that….I could only listen and wonder if it could be true – who knows, God only knows.

This lady also informed me that the East Coast of Barbados (the rougher more Atlantic sea side) is thought to hold certain energies of a spiritual/occult nature, and appeals to some people for this reason….I’d never heard anyone say this before.

Anyway, maybe I’ve been talking to too many strangers, I’ll tell you about a few other in another post..

Moving onto a lighter note….

Bajan Siesta 😴

I spotted a mini mart sign on a side road in Bridgetown, with a table of fresh fruit outside, and decided to take a quick look. When I got to the door of the ‘mini mart’ it was barely a small room, not designed for walking into – and the man who just about fit himself inside the room was fast asleep on a chair with his feet up. Must have been the heat. Bless!! I decided not to wake him and wandered back down to the main road.

Embrace the rain

Rain is very good at getting you to slow down on holiday – some see it as a downer on exciting plans (which can be case), but sometimes it’s nice to welcome it like a good movie and get comfortable, ready to watch the show.

Its therapeutic. Ordinarily, I like listening to white noise through headphones in the form of pouring rain sounds, to drown out background distractions and help me focus on what I’m doing or reading. Nothing beats the real thing though…..

Storm Tammy

Storm Tammy well and truly made herself known. This wasn’t just a tropical downpour, everything felt different – the mood in the sky, the gusty breeze, the quickening of the waves and the low drumming of thunder before continuous flashes of white lightening against the black night sky – stunning.

Even on a normal night, the sound of the waves was so loud I wondered if I’d be able to get to sleep. The waves were even louder with this storm cooking up, roaring.

The day after

I woke up to the sound of rain thrashing against the balcony doors, around 5.20am, still dark outside.

I couldn’t even push open the french style balcony doors for a while – the wind was blowing them shut with a mighty force against my effort.

The rushing of the waves drowned out any lingering thoughts, and hardly any guests were up yet, so that wonderful feeling of serenity was strong, perfect for completely clearing the mind.

The waves were still pretty rough and the gusty wind was shaking the coconut palms. Crabs that had come up from the rocks for respite were scuttling around trying to hide if I walked near them. (Not so brave out of the water then…)

Still thundering

The thunder was a lengthy long low continuous growl at times, making me wonder if a jet plane was flying low overhead, but no.

I noticed sand bags had been placed in front of the patio door rooms on the garden floor. We could have done with sandbags on all floors to be honest.

Raining again

By around 9am it was raining again and the waves were getting higher and rougher, ideal for surfers, but there weren’t any.

The darker blue sea further into the horizon was speckled with white choppy waves for a while, before a fabulous thick foggy mist sank down on top of them.

I guessed this was going to be the picture for the rest of the day, Storm Tammy wasn’t done yet.

Lightening continued to flash all day, thunder clapped and the rain poured.

Hurricane season

October is one of the wettest months in Barbados, and the tail end of the hurricane season. High season starts early November, with the cruise ships flocking in and hotels filling up fast.

In the past I’ve been fortunate not to experience more than a quick downpour here and there when in the Caribbean this time of year.

This time I’d say I was fortunate to experience a beautiful storm.

It didn’t interfere with any of my plans, I’d had a long run of glorious sunshiny days and hadn’t planned on doing anything much that day – a beach day and a book was about as much as I was up for anyway.

That said, I heard some parts of Barbados had pretty heavy floods to deal with, on the roads.

End of the show

12 noon, and as if on cue, the mist is almost cleared and a streak of sunlight is trying to peak through, high on the horizon, with the promise of a brighter day on the way….there’s a moral in there somewhere 😉

Storm Tammy must have been heading off somewhere else, until another time.

In keeping with ‘after storm’ tradition, that evening’s sky graced the island with an intensely vibrant sunset, a sight to soothe the soul.

Thank you, beautiful storm.

On another day

Staring up into the inky black sky on night, I remembered I’d read somewhere that there are more stars in the universe than individual grains of sand on planet earth. More mind boggling stuff to ponder on.

A Barbados Hike

For any avid hikers, you might laugh this one off as a doddle!

(Sorry about the lack of footage, I lost most of it and photos for this on that dodgy SD card – unfortunately) 📸

4 Miles

I only did a 4 mile (2 hr) 7am morning hike (yes, the stuff of lightweights), thinking it best to start small and get an idea of what I’m signing up to before doing a longer Barbados hike, yet it was still pretty challenging in parts, and beautiful throughout.

If you love being active and getting out into nature, I’d highly recommend it. 10/10

PR

Unfortunately you don’t really see many advertisements or hotel excursions for Barbados hikes. The scene is dominated by swimming with turtles, catamaran cruises, Harbour Lights, island tours, rum tasting tours, Oistins etc, the usual things – yet Barbados has so much more beauty to enjoy, including many walking trails – but hiking it isn’t really pushed to tourists – (perhaps because it isn’t driven by huge domineering tour companies that monopolise the tourist advertising scene. Hiking guides tend to be small independent freelancers).

I looked for hikes through some online sources while some hotels were hitting a blank when asked about any organised hikes to book onto. I managed to get a last minute booking with a reputable guide.

Where do we start

With his GPS in hand, my private guide* started us off at Bath Beach, on the more rugged east coast – a little more southerly than Bathsheba, but we were not walking along the beach, that would be too easy. Nope, we headed up inland, and started with an almighty ‘wake your legs up’ vertical climb that had me wondering if I’d bitten off more than I could chew, this felt like mountaineering 😄 wow, the leg muscles were turning numb……but thankfully the vertical slopes were slightly less so for the majority of this short hike.

Above: spotted a piece of space craft that landed on the beach back in…..(can’t remember what year my guide said).

Onwards

That’s not to say the trail was easy – there were lots of steep, rocky, uneven paths, many of which became a slippery slanted mud sponge when we got caught in a fabulous downpour – suddenly some of the trails were turning into streams with only random tree branches and or thick hanging vines to grab and help steady yourself across them.

I do have a pair of hiking sticks – one stick would have been handy. I didn’t bring them because they’re quite heavy and I was trying to stick to one suitcase and keep from going overweight  – still, I was pretty much double the weight limit the night before heading to the airport- painfully trying to decide what to abandon –  always a nightmare! 

Anyway, back to the hike.

Goodness only knows how I managed not to fall and end up a muddy mess or break an ankle lol – on top of being drenched.

This wasn’t just a nice long walk. Proper hiking footwear is a must. Hiking/walking boots would be ideal, though I only packed trainers – which were ok, but not much of a grip when slippery, and not as sturdy as boots on rocky uneven ground. Note – your footwear will get very muddied-up and absolutely saturated if it’s wet/rainy, so bare that in mind.

An area we’d passed earlier on with a pretty glittering stream running through – quickly turned into a raging rapid following a downpour, so it had a small bridge built over it (I could see why).

Keep arms and legs covered to avoid cuts/scratches when ploughing through branches, plants, grasses and bites. Some tropical plants have a slightly jagged razor edges, plus thorns and random pointy bits.

Hike Highlights

I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that this hike had so many faces and scenes:

• Waterfall
• Beach/cliff side
• Deep jungle/rainforest
• Farmland – cautiously passing huge grazing cows/bulls and striding long grasses
• Some snippets of residential village life in the hills

The hike switched between these scenes throughout (like scenes in a film), weaving through steep uphill and downhill trails. Sometimes we’d be walking through a field or past some houses and then my guide would shove apart lots of branches and leaves on a side road then disappear in front of me, as though a dark portal had opened up, pulling us into a hidden tropical abyss.

I’d follow (with raised brow), wondering where on earth this could possibly lead to, then finding myself in a never-ending trail deep into forests of giant plants, leaves, branches, root-formed stairways down through the earth to ‘I had no idea where’.

World, people, traffic, rat race – their existence quickly forgotten in the hypnotic peace and calm of theses forests and trails.

We came across a gushing fresh stream of drinking water flowing through the rocks in the hills somewhere, that a local man living close by was filling up buckets with, we stopped for a chat…..he said the water was cleaner and fresher than what was coming out of his taps at home.

I didn’t see any scary or dangerous creatures, there aren’t really any in Barbados which is reassuring.

At one point in the deeper forest jungle areas there were lots of huge, almost black, beehive looking things high up in various trees. They were termite nests.

The end

By the end of this hike I did sort of wish I’d gone for a longer one – my guide made reference to his 10 mile hikes and said we’d have been able to go further and see much more on that one, pointing out the direction we’d have continued through and beyond……it looked like a banana plantation.

By the end of this hike I was drenched, from both the rain and sweating in the heat, but what a great feeling – it was a shame to end it.

Tip – might be a good idea to bring along a spare change of clothes if you can’t bare to be wet. I wore very fitted clothes so the wet feeling wasn’t too cringe…but if you’re wearing loose fitting/cotton that’s drenched and heavy – not very nice. Also, make sure your back pack is waterproof.

My guide pointed out that on his longer hikes, after getting soaked it’s not long before you’re dry again once the rain stops – he said ” I hike through all weathers” though some customers have become very unhappy and halted the whole thing and want go home if it starts raining.

* I found my guide Stephen Mendes after some routing around online – he’s well known around Barbados at all levels, from government contracts, tourists and locals making bookings with him. Amongst a variety of things (photography, lecturing…), he offers a number of hikes at varying levels. I asked my hotel to contact him and make the arrangements for me, but if you’re interested you can also just contact him directly via whatsapp.

There are also hikes organised by the Barbados Hiking Association, these take place at different locations around the Island ✨