Last day

OHW-UH!! As the children might say. UnFAIR! Don't WANT to go home!! But I suppose we have to tomorrow. The hire car arrived this morning an hour later than it should have, at 10:30. This is 9:30 island time, apparently, but we had some more relaxation here so not such a bad thing. We headed off north and ended up after a few reversals, at North Point i.e. the most northerly bit of the island. 

The country in St. Lucy parish at the top of the island reminded me (to rolling of eyes from Caroline) of St. Just in Cornwall but not so wind-scoured and of course an awful lot warmer. And with more sugar cane. You know - rolling hills above the sea with scattered settlements, not too many trees and much agriculture. And with a fresh Westerly, which in this case, came from the East, of course, and was warm rather than bone-numbingly cold. But that's detail. North Point was at the end of a rather potholey road and completely unmarked apart from a handpainted sign saying "nice view" and some Germans in a hire car. There was also a man in a shack selling coconut-based bird feeders. He seemed very nice, and told us we could walk from there to the "animal flower cave" marked on the map nearby. Intrigued as to what a cave could have to do with animals or flowers, we walked the couple of hundred yards around the (Cornwally, but hotter and more coral-based) cliffs to the capitalist outpost that is Barbados's Animal Flower Cave. There were some excellent viewpoints where we took photos and the we decided, due to a communicative misunderstanding, that we would visit the cave itself.

We paid our BDS$20 to a strange man in the adjacent bar and went down into the cave, which turned out to be a sea cave in the soft coral-rock cliffs, which had windows out onto the wild Atlantic and seawater pools which were only refreshed at high tide and when the surf was up, being (as they were) significantly above sea level. The "animal flowers" in question turned out to be what we would call sea anemones, and a few tenacious examples were present in one of the pools, along with some small marooned fish the likes of which populate every rock pool in Cornwall. Not that I'm comparing this with Cornwall at all, obviously. Famed 1980s pop star Billy Ocean had apparently visited the cave once and so one of the windows was called "Billy Ocean's Window" because he had sung one of his songs there. Hallowed ground indeed. It all sounds a bit naff, but actually it was unusual and interesting, and we liked Val, our Rastafarian guide, who told us about the parties they had in there in the summer, and his 18 month old boy Dylan who likes playing in the pools. Val was obviously on a deal where he would take us round the cave and then sell us some of his craft, so afterwards we were directed to a stall where we had the opportunity of buying various trinkets. Bought some bracelets in Bajan colours for the kids then back to the Yaris.

We then headed down the East coast on mostly better roads, and stopped for a sandwich. The beach reminded me of Southern Queensland in October, but unfortunately much rubbish. Difficult to tell whether it had blown in from the sea of been deposited by locals. Either way,  it was a bit of a shame. The island is very focused on the west coast, where the sheltered water and expensive properties are, but the east is beautiful and wild and should be an asset. We motored down to a small place called Bathsheba - apparently there was once a railway that brought hot Europeans here from Bridgetown to take Atlantic air, and the 1930s Atlantis Hotel is still here, with a recently resurgent trade in day-trippers wanting a break from the beach. We had a short walk along the shore and took some shots of the mushroom stacks offshore then headed south again.

Next stop was Sunbury, a Georgian plantation house currently run by the Bajan national trust. The estate had been established in the late 17th century, and the current house dated to the late 18th, with all the land around still worked for sugar cane. The house was really interesting, although I think I annoyed C by saying it reminded me of Gar-Tul, only bigger and hotter and with more sugar cane. Actually, the only way it really was like Gar-Tul was the 3ft thick walls (good for withstanding hurricanes) and the high Victorian decor of the interior. Oh, and the water cistern in the roof, and the lost garden feel of the exterior. C was intrigued by the "punishment chair" in the nursery, and I liked some contemporary cartoons about slavery which chimed with the themes of the book about the Preventive Squadron I am currently reading.

Then off to Bridgetown, a bigger and more congested metropolis than we had anticipated. We drove through the world heritage listed barracks area, which is indeed a miraculously preserved 18th century original, with a racecourse in the middle where the parade ground once was. The trouble is, it is all government property so there's no point really in stopping. In fact, the best maintained bit is still occupied by Barbados's military, with an impressive Whitworth gun out front. So we drove on, over the Carenage (the Bridgetown water course) to a car park where we paid five dollars to someone who was almost certainly not authorised to take it from us. Had a wander around downtown Bridgetown at rush hour, which was v. busy and a bit like Windhoek but with loads more people. Despite their attempts to spoil the main drag with horrible concrete modernisms, most of the architecture is colonial, and it is easy to imagine how it would have looked in the 19th century. We also wandered past the oldest synagogue in the Western hemisphere, built in the 17th century. It has been beautifully restored externally but was unfortunately closed. 

The Bajans seem friendly and polite in numbers, and we were quite relaxed after a bit of acclimatisation. The main drag has a lot of posh jewellers, and we ended up in the Colombian Emerald Co, where C indulged her hankering for a new ring - diamonds and rubies :-) the quality seemed good and the price acceptable, so I bent the credit card a bit further. 

That was it really. We headed back up the east coast, past the famous cricket ground and got back to the hotel around six, to be greeted with th first rain of the holiday. Singapore slings at the bad and another nice dinner and that's it. Am finishing this off with some fairly convincing tropical rain falling and the frogs singing as enthusiastically as usual. Hope we can have a last swim tomorrow morning before taking the hire car to Holetown and the pottery for souvenirs...