The Adventure Begins!

We landed on the gorgeous island of Barbados yesterday afternoon! The trip here spanned approximately 13 hours. We grabbed a bus from the airport and headed to West Terrace, St. James in search of our Airbnb lodging. If you have seen or read the 3rd Harry Potter movie/book, you'll remember the Knight Bus I'm sure- the bus drivers here must be related to Ernie Prang. Needless to say, we survived the ride and faithfully followed Google Maps to the location of our rental house in Holetown. We walked around, carrying our luggage (mine had all of my 50 lbs of camera equipment in it- Kenric was an angel and carried it for me) for almost 2 hours because we couldn't find the house. Finally, we found a nice lady to ask directions from and she told us that the address we were looking for was about 15 minutes away by car in Fitts Village. Google lies! By that point we were dehydrated, tired and a bit sunburnt, we probably looked pathetic, so the kind lady walked us down to a taxi stop and helped us on our way to the real address we were looking for.  When we arrived, Alesha, our host, kindly showed us around and left jugs of cold water and snacks on the table. We took cold showers and fell into bed at about 8pm.

The next morning, we didn't wake up until 9am, but after we were up we made the 20 minute trek down to the local grocery store to buy food and sunscreen:) After carrying it back to our house, we made some cheese sandwiches and changed into swimming suits and then walked back to the Fitts Village beach. The beach was gorgeous and so so empty! We have successfully avoided the tourist season. I believe that during the three hours we were at that beach, we saw two other couples and nine little white crabs. We were also greeted by a few lizards, geckos and small monkeys!

After making it back to our house from the beach, we changed clothes and then went back into town to catch a bus to Bridgetown. We jumped on a smaller bus this time and the ride was a bit less erratic than yesterday, but still quite an adventure. We got complimentary back massages from the seats beneath us vibrating along with the bus radio's bass. I think that reggae music is beginning to grow on me:) Bridgetown! My, my where to start! The section of the city that we were able to see during the rest of our Monday was stunning. We got off the bus in the north-east corner of the city and only made it a couple of blocks before nightfall, but we wandered through streets and streets of little malls- the only thing similar I can think of is a chinatown sector in a US city- streets lined with fruit stands, souvenirs, cloths, bags, shoes, everything. We finally made it though the streets and up to the front gates of the Cathedral of St. Michael and All Angels. There was a group of women headed inside and they invited us to come along for their choir practice. We spoke with a few of them and the organist and made plans to return the next day to photograph the bishop. We both feel a bit like missionaries again, all this running around and talking religion and making appointments to come back:)