Trinity

We think of Gibbs Beach on the west coast as our hometown in Barbados. We've tried staying elsewhere—one year in Fitts Village, St James, and one year in Bathsheba. Nevertheless, nice as those places were, we always felt a little displaced and dissatisfied.

But we are budget travellers, and Gibbs is an expensive, exclusive neighbourhood. There are vacation rentals here that cost thousands of US dollars per night. Even the Gibbs Bay Inn, which is in just the right spot and looks fine (though just short of five-star), starts at about USD200 per night.

For a few years, we rented a little apartment up on Gibbs Hill. It was lovely, but to get down to the coast we would have to walk through a dark, steep-sided gully that wound around a couple of blind corners—not the kind of place you want to share with cars, especially not at night. The gully became a kind of psychological hurdle for us. Watching for a green flash at sunset on the beach was out of the question, because then we'd have to walk back up through the gully in darkness. We ate all our dinners in.

So it was with great relief that we found the lovely "Trinity", just a few minutes' north of Gibbs Beach, along the West Coast highway. It is a self-contained studio apartment on the ground floor of a house. As you can see, it opens out onto a spacious, breezy patio that faces away from the main road and onto a well-looked-after garden much frequented by green monkeys, Zenaida doves, bananaquits, grassquits, and hummingbirds. We really had a nice time here—I can't think of a single thing that could have been done to make our stay more comfortable.

The owner, Barbara Anne Rodriguez (who told me about the cow's nostril), is as sunny and warm as her native island. She tells me she has plans to add a two-bedroom apartment in time for next winter. You can read more about Trinity here and get in touch with Barbara Anne here.

The Oistins Fish Fry Traffic Jam

A definite downside to the Oistins Fish Fry is the traffic jam you have to endure in getting there. There are direct buses (yellow and blue) to Oistins from Speightstown along the West Coast road, but when we casually strolled out at 6 pm to the bus stop at Fitts Village (where we were staying the first time we went to the fish fry) , we had to let several buses go by as they were so packed with people there was no room for us to get on.

When we did finally get on a bus, it got bogged down in rush-hour traffic around Bridgetown, and from there it was stop-and-go all the way to Oistins! It was well past 8 pm before we arrived.

The bus goes along the South Coast, which is where most of the tourist resorts are. I can't say that the strip is much to our taste, but maybe it's best for Bajans if the rowdiest tourists are all concentrated in one small part of the island.

The second time we went to the fish fry, we left from Bathsheba. This time we thought we would dodge the traffic by going early, and presented ourselves at the bus stop outside the Sea-U Guest House at 3 pm (buses go to Bridgetown every hour from Bathsheba). Strangely, the bus never arrived, and one of our fellow would-be passengers said it might have something to do with school being let out.

So we took the 4 pm to Bridgetown and changed at the Fairchild Street Bus Terminal to the Sam Lord's Castle bus, which leaves at the top and bottom of every hour (i.e., every 30 minutes). But by then the rush hour was in full force, so we still got to the fish fry rather later than we had planned. In fact, the one-way trip took three hours!

So this year, we had a cunning plan ... stay tuned to find out what it was.

By the way, buses from Bridgetown back to Bathsheba leave every half hour between 5 and 8 pm; thereafter they leave every hour on the hour.

Turtle Nests Destroyed

Throughout the night of February 13 (the day of the Good Hubby's accident), we could hear the surf pounding the shore, even though we were about a mile inland.

The next morning, we visited Gibbs Beach again and noticed that there were smashed turtle eggs all over it.

Our host, P.H., told us that there are usually about 70 hawksbill turtle nests on Gibbs Beach alone. She was very sad to hear about the smashed eggs, as she has taken part in the hatchling release programme, where volunteers shine flashlights to guide the emerging baby turtles into the ocean.

From all I've read about sea turtles (The Voyage of the Turtle, by Carl Safina, is one of my favourite books), I can see that Gibbs Beach is a perfect beach for nesting turtles--at least, when there are not "large battering waves" pounding the shore.

From the website of the Barbados Sea Turtle Project, I've learned that hawksbill nests are usually about 18 inches deep. I guess that gives us an idea of how much the beach was churned up by those high waves.

I also learned that three different species of sea turtle nest on Barbados--hawksbills, green, and leatherbacks. I think P.H. said the leatherbacks mostly nest on the East Coast.

If there are about 70 nests on Gibbs Beach and each nest contains about 150 eggs, that means come hatching season some 10,500 baby turtles make their way to sea from Gibbs Beach alone. The number that survive to breeding age is, of course, only a tiny percentage of that--but still it's an encouraging thought.

I certainly didn't see 10,500 destroyed eggs along the beach that day, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that only a handful of nests were disturbed and that this summer baby hawksbills will emerge out of the sand and take to their ocean home in great numbers!

Sandy Crest Medical Centre, Holetown

Very fortunately, our hosts P. and D.H. arrived at Gibbs Beach in their car just moments after the Good Hubby had had his accident. They drove us to the Sandy Crest Medical Centre in Holetown.

I can't say enough good things about the treatment that the GH got there. The attending physician, Dr Trudy Weeks, found that the force of the wave in dragging his chin along the bottom had opened up a deep laceration inside his mouth, essentially ripping the flesh away from his jawbone. The laceration was full of sand.

His right eye was similarly rather sandy, so the first task was to irrigate this eye and clean it out as much as possible. Miraculously, although it was already clear he would have a huge shiner, his vision was unaffected.

Also miraculously, he had all his teeth, so the main task was to sew the hole in his chin back together again, after all the sand was cleaned out (she did this by poking her finger in the hole repeatedly!) I assisted in the suturing by holding his bottom lip open so that Dr Weeks could see what she was doing. So I'm afraid I've now seen my husband's jawbone.

There was very little tissue left on the bone, so Dr Weeks had a difficult time trying to attach the other side of the laceration back to the gum. But she was very patient and also quite deft with her hands. It took about an hour for her to put all the sutures in and to close up the hole.

She then ordered x-rays as she was convinced that the GH had broken his orbital bone. Luckily this was not the case, but I was rather impressed by how modern the x-ray facilities at Sandy Crest were (my father is a retired radiologist so I have a faint interest in these things).

I was most impressed by how kind and cheerful everybody was. In many countries that are as touristed as Barbados, the prevailing attitude might be one of impatience or disdain for a tourist that had got himself into trouble this way, but both the nurse and Dr Weeks were extremely sympathetic and unrushed in attending to us.

In the reception area of Sandy Crest, there is a framed photo and letter from Tony and Cherie Blair, thanking the staff of the centre for their kind treatment. Not a big fan myself, but I think I can say we couldn't have been treated any better if we had been celebrity politicians!

Gibbs Beach

Of all the beaches we've visited in Barbados, Gibbs Beach is our favourite. The beachfront is taken up with staid and elegant villas, all with lovely tropical gardens--as a result, the beach has a secluded, untouristed feel.

To get to Gibbs Beach, get off the bus at the junction of Highway 1 (the West Coast Road) and the road that leads to Rock Dundo. Walk north along the west side of the road until you come to a house called "Southwinds". There is a narrow passage on the left that takes you down to the beach.

When the sun is out, the waters of Gibbs Beach have that astonishing blue colour that always looks faked in photographs. You can see why travel copywriters are so fond of the word "azure" when you come here!

Most of the time, the sea at Gibbs Beach is as calm as a swimming pool. I've spent many happy moments floating on my back here, looking up at the casuarina trees and climbing bougainvilleas that line the shore.

If you tilt your head slightly back in the water, the sky and the sea become your whole universe. You can hear the clicking of grains of sand as they're moved back and forth by the waves--and if you let your feet float downwards, you can comb the sand with your toes.

It's so idyllic that, whenever I am feeling stressed, I try to visualize floating in the sea at Gibbs Beach to calm myself down.

On this visit, however, we found out that sometimes the sea at Gibbs takes on a different complexion.

An Eventful Fourth Visit

We are now back from our fourth visit to Barbados--and a very eventful visit it was!

This time we stayed with some friends near the lovely Gibbs Beach in St Peter's Parish on the West Coast. We were about 15 minutes' walk up the hill from the beach, just off the road that leads to the hamlet of Rock Dundo in St James.

We made our usual trips to Bathsheba and the Oistins Fish Fry, and also visited the spectacular Cave Bay and Bottom Bay at the southeast end of Barbados.

The most memorable part of this visit, however, involved the Good Hubby, his face, a wave, and a rock ...

Speightstown

Speightstown (pronounced "Spikestown") is a very charming town in St Peter's Parish, at the north end of the West Coast.

It is the "second city" of Barbados after Bridgetown. Named after its founder, William Speight, Speightstown was a thriving port until the 20th century.

Nowadays, however, Speightstown has a pleasantly sleepy air to it, and the words "roaring trade" do not exactly apply.

The former wealth of Speightstown is still apparent in some of the grand stone buildings that stand along Queen Street. One of these, Arlington House, has been turned into a museum that's well worth visiting for insights into Barbadian life, both past and present.

Virtually all buses running north along the main West Coast road will end up in Speightstown. From the Speightstown bus terminal (about which more elsewhere), you can also catch buses to other parts of the island, notably Bathsheba on the wild, Atlantic East Coast.

There are nice places to eat here (watch for a future post about the Fisherman's Pub), a well-stocked supermarket (Jordans), and several banks, including a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada.

West Coast Barbados Beaches

Here I must pause to rhapsodize a little about the beaches in Barbados. The West Coast of the island faces the Caribbean Sea, which for the most part is as shown here. Calm and gentle, warm and clean.

The most amazing thing about Barbados beaches is not just how beautiful they are but how free of litter. Where I come from in Southeast Asia, people treat the sea like a rubbish dump. You can't go to a beach without tripping over discarded water bottles, plastic bags, styrofoam clamshells, and other things too gross to mention.

In Barbados, however, you can walk for miles on the beach without seeing so much as a candy wrapper. I think I once saw a page of newsprint floating in the sea off Fitts Village in Paynes Bay, but that was it.

I sort of imagine that the Barbadian government employs an army of trash collectors to comb the beaches every night when all the tourists are sleeping.

The West Coast from Bridgetown to Speightstown

Many visitors to Barbados stay on the West Coast. It's not surprising, since most of it looks like this.

There are buses running up and down the stretch between Bridgetown and Speightstown all the time. It's rare to have to wait even five minutes for one.

Both Speightstown and Holetown are good for shopping and dining, as well as banking and communications.

If you're staying on the West Coast, getting around by bus is surely the easiest and cheapest option.