I was reminiscing recently about some of our past holidays. As we are soon to fly off for a trip it got me thinking about some of my fave trips and one that clearly stood out was our trip to Barbados, when we went for just a week in the middle of June 2008.
The reason we were going on a trip out there was that my brother had been living out on various Caribbean islands for two years, working as a volunteer and missionary, jammy thing. His time to come home was upon us so luckily, my parents decided that a family trip over there to pick him up was in order. One of my sisters wasn’t able to make it but the rest of us, including sis and bro-in-law that lived in USA, and Mike, who was then just my boyfriend, my two parents, my youngest sis and I all headed over to the island. It was truly unforgettable.
One of the things I loved most about the trip was that we had booked a big villa to fit all of us, in the St. Peter area of the island, not too far from the Sandy Lane area. So, unlike resorts where you pretty much stay on the resort and only use the beach that is connected to the resort, we were able to explore the local area and mingle with the locals. The villa had a pool but we were able to take a few minutes walk down to the local beach where we were greeted by a guy with the longest dreads I think I have ever seen. Everyone was super friendly. You can also see how the Caribbean / Bajun people have such a reputation for being chilled out, their whole way of life and attitudes are so relaxed and chilled ‘Don’t worry about it mon’, ‘Take it easy’…
We drove to the mountainous area of the island, on the east, and got to drive through the residential areas where you really got to see how the locals live and then were were taking a walk on the beach, a very non-touristy beach, when we were called over to help a guy with a fishing rod – he had caught a turtle by accident! So we (I say, we, I mean Mike), helped him to reel it in and then we released it back into the sea – such a cool experience.
We took a trip to the capital, Bridgetown and ate lobster at a local fish fry and saw the marina area. We BBQ’d in the torrential rain (June is in the wet season but it is still mega warm), went to the coolest nature park ever, everything is roaming free and saw some amazingly random creatures. We enjoyed good food, snorkelled and saw a sunken boat, swam with huge turtles that just happen to be in the sea, picked bananas and mangos off trees and fought with the wild monkeys as to whose was whose, took walks on the beach and ate an unknown fruit off a tree because it smelled like sweets (later to find out it will burn your throat and the locals laugh at you for eating it), and had lots of fun and island banter. We probably heard too much Rhianna music, I think that is all they play on Bajun radio, but hey, ho! Haha.
Mike and I would be swimming in the sea and would just keep repeating over and over ‘We’re in Barbados’ and it became the phrase of the holiday. ‘We’re eating dinner… in Barbados’, ‘We’re going swimming… in Barbados’.
It is somewhere I would completely recommend and I would love to go back. My top tip would be don’t stay on a resort! Rent a villa and live like the locals.
*This is my entry to Travel Supermarket’s Holiday Postcard Competition *
Rebecca x
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