Monday

Writing this Monday evening at one of the tables by the pool, having watched the sun dip behind an annoying cloud (yes, cloud!) just on the horizon. I sort of expect it to get chilly now but of course it doesn't, although there is a pleasant offshore breeze now which is keeping the mugginess at bay. Ooh our rum punches have just arrived. My, they're strong, and we had a bottle of NZ Sauvignon with lunch as well... Anyway, yesterday after a huge slap up brekky we went for a walk north along the beach, including Speightstown, which is small but interesting, with a collection of old colonial buildings, some of which are crumbling but others are being restored by the Barbados National Trust. Everything was closed, because the entire population appeared to be in church. Got as far as the Almond Beach Village (not as nice as our place but on the most lovely stretch of sand) next to the marina and extorted a coconut out of Andrew the Coconut Seller on account of him being slightly too keen to show us his wares and us having no money. Took lots of photos and got fairly horribly burned through factor 30 sunscreen.

 

Then there was some other stuff - swimming, reading, lazing about and complimentary cakes for tea. We ended up not having any dinner as neither of us was hungry, so we watched the stars for a while and tried unsuccessfully to stay awake. Eventually turned in at about 10 and slept for 10 hours. The unbelievably noisy Bleepy Things In Trees are strangely soothing after a while.

 

Today we had another big brekky (eggs benedict) and did some swimming and a lot of sitting around, but not so much actual sunbathing due to bits of us being bright red from yesterday. Went to the Speightstown supermarket (local Banks beer 2 bajan dollars as opposed to 10 in the hotel...) and were reminded of what a civilised country we live in and how good places like Tesco and Sainsberry's are. We had lunch, which was excellent again, with the aforementioned bottle of sauv. blanc. Apart from that we have just been here, and very nice it has been, too.