Barbados

We arrive to a threatening sky and another humid morning. During the night it had apparently rained, as the veranda deck was quite wet.

Barbados is the most easterly of the islands, hence the East coast of the country gets the full brunt of the Atlantic Ocean, as it is the first bit of land the ocean hits. The westerly side of the island is on the Caribbean side and is well protected from the heavy waves. As a result, land values are considerably higher on the West Coast and most of the best hotels are situated there. Although "discovered by by the Portugese in the 16th century, no one claimed it until the British took possession nearly a century later. Today it is one of the earliest British possession that remains in the Commonwealth.

The island is a true coral island, with less than 5% of the land suitable for agriculture. They really have to practice good soil management in order to conserve and improve such soil as they have. The main crop is sugar cane, but they also have other tropical plants such as many varieties of mangoes, papaya, bread fruit trees and passion fruit. They also have discovered oil on the island and export the crude to Trinidad for refining and then import the refined products. Gasoline is very expensive, as in all the islands. They import about 90% of their products - mostly from the United States. Brazil has dominated the sugar cane market, so most of the Barbados cane is used to make rum, although some is exported as well as used domestically as sugar and molasses.

The scheduled bus tour took us to an old mansion furnished with 17th and 18th century items. The grounds were very lush with many banyon trees that must have been very old as the trees had many tendrils reaching to the ground. These tendrils, called aerial roots, are vine-like that grow to the ground, root and grow to give girth to the tree. As a matter of fact, Barbados is a Portugese term which means "those with beards". Locally they call the trees Bearded Fig Trees and are a member of the Ficus family.

We were next taken to an Anglican Church which dated back to the 1600's, had been damaged and re-built in the 1800's and still is in use.. The tour arrived during their Sunday service so we were unable to do more than peak in the front door. They were video taping the procedure. It is amazing what Christianity has become.

We wondered to the back which contains tombs. The earliest I could identify was for one who died in 1823. Many were rather large above ground tombs. We could hear the organ playing and I did record a bit of the organ with congregation singing. Ruth heard one of the ship's passengers humming along with one of the hymns, but the tune was unfamiliar to us.

The bus we were on was modern, with air conditioning but the aisle and seats were very narrow. Ruth wanted me to sit against the window, but thought I was taking up all the room and was pushing her into the aisle. After the first stop I got the aisle seat and found that falling off the seat was simply the result of a very narrow seat, not the broad behind of which she had accused me of situating as to monopolize the seating area.

We next visited an orchid farm that had on display many varieties. I took many pictures which I will attempt to upload to Picasa today. On our return to the ship about 1:00 PM, the horizon looked really dark and about an hour later it rained hard. It was interesting to see it rain so hard around the ship, yet all around the sun was shining. The island has some well water and they use desalinization also. They are not short, but they are very water conscious so practice good conservation.

Monday and Tuesday we are at sea, so they are lazy days. Many shipboard activities are scheduled, but the only one we may take advantage of is a lecture on sharks.