Barbados: Bliss and a bit of grit on Caribbean island
Nobody looks their best in the dead of night, not even a tropical island. So I tried to cut Barbados some slack when I arrived around midnight, my eyeballs like red spiders, the capillaries blown by nine hours of sucking dead air on flights from Los Angeles to Miami to Bridgetown.
I smiled at the lone customs agent who glumly made passengers wait a half-hour while she studied every form before sticking them all in a stack in her armpit.
I laughed when my chirpy query of "how're you doing?" to the airport taxi driver was answered with a gruff "not as good as you."
I just rolled my eyelids down as we sped through dingy streets past darkened bars and strolling prostitutes to an overlit Hilton that looked as if it had been transported whole from Dallas or Atlanta.
"Bashy bim," local slang for "cool Barbados," was out there somewhere. All would be well come the dawn.
And of course, it all was.
I pulled back the curtains in the morning and the brilliant Caribbean light streamed in. There was old St. Anne's Fort across the street, its iron cannons waiting for the enemy frigates that never came. I padded my way down to the beach, past a bright yellow lifeguard shack that boggled my jetlagged optical nerves, and heaved myself into the warm, wet bliss of the sea.
"Gary gone Barbados, stay in a big hotel," I sang as I floated on my back.
"De Rock" and de rum
After more than two decades of overseas traveling, I finally came to the Caribbean, pretty much for the same reason as Jackie Hunter, a tourist from Westminster, Colo., whom I met my first morning on Barbados.
"I've done Hawaii, I've done Mexico, so I thought I would try the Caribbean," she said.
Barbados won out over the dozens of other destinations through a process of subtraction. I wanted something foreign (scratch Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) but not too foreign (cross out current and former French and Dutch colonies). Lush (sorry, Aruba) but far enough south to be unrelentingly warm in winter (bye-bye Bahamas).
Barbados sounded intriguing. Ninety miles east of the main chain of Caribbean islands, its location made it the natural center of British trading — the first port after the long voyage across the Atlantic.
It was a British colony for more than 300 years until independence in 1966. Its Parliament, founded in 1639, is the third oldest in the Commonwealth. Future U.S. President George Washington accompanied his brother, Lawrence, to the island in 1751 in an unsuccessful attempt to cure Lawrence's tuberculosis.
A playground for the wealthy (Tiger Woods was married on Barbados), it also boasts a thriving middle class, 99 percent adult literacy and 10 percent unemployment. Life on the island locals call "de Rock" is pretty good.
Then there's the rum. The sweet spirit of the sugar plantations. It's sold in over 1,200 tiny rum shops around the island. I was off.
I stop in historic though gritty Bridgetown just long enough to linger in the space once called Trafalgar Square. It was recently renamed National Heroes Square by republican-minded politicians trying to distance the island from its reputation as "Little England."
I ask Will, a local cab driver, about the statue of Lord Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar.
"They want to get rid of it, but nobody wants to take it," he says. "So they turned it around so it doesn't look at the sea anymore."
I head northwest on Highway 1, the first leg of my round-island drive. It used to be you could navigate using the map of Barbados on a bottle of Mount Gay Eclipse rum (hopefully not while driving). Today the label is less a map and more a Barbados-shaped logo.
Just north of Bridgetown, I swing into the Mount Gay bottling plant and museum. Guide Janelle Jones tells me the story of the company, once owned by the ironically named Sober family.
Mount Gay has been producing the sweet booze since at least 1703. The sugar-cane plantation is still locally owned though the rum company is now part of a the Paris-based Remy Cointreau conglomerate.
Jones portrays Barbados as a nation happily soaked in rum — rum in the afternoon, rum in the evening, rum in the morning coffee, rum in the afternoon cakes.
"They say if you drink rum straight, it preserves you," she says.
What about drunken driving? "We don't have the breath test here, but we think it isn't the drink, but people acting dangerously," she says.
Jones suggests that visitors who want to act like a local go to a rum shop and order a "Black and Coke," a mix of high-end black-label Extra Old Mount Gay rum and Coca-Cola.
$1,000-a-night rooms
Many of the rum barons had mansions along "the Platinum Coast" just to the north around Holetown, where British settlers first came ashore in 1627. Today the area, also nicknamed Billionaire Beach, has a string of high-end resorts clinging to the narrow ledge of sand.
The most famous is Sandy Lane, where rooms sometimes start at $1,000 a night in winter. The names Jagger and Sinatra have appeared in the guest book. More recently, Woods sailed his megayacht, Privacy, to the dock at Sandy Lane for his 2004 wedding at the hotel's Green Monkey clubhouse.
In T-shirt and swim trunks, I'm hardly a candidate for a colonial gin and tonic at the swanky Sandy Lane bar. Besides, I want to try one of the hundreds of rum shops, some little more than wildly-painted wooden shacks with a plank serving as the bar.
Two miles north of Sandy Lane, I pull into the dirt lot of John Moore's Bar, a rum shop favored by local politicians. There's a stuffed turtle on the wall and nice ocean views out back. Men play bingo while a fisherman guts his catch.
Nobody is drinking "Black and Coke," so I ask for a Banks, the local amber-colored beer. The bartender pulls a cold, sweaty bottle out of an ice-filled cooler.
The quieter side
I drive on until I get out of the west coast money belt. Mansions slowly give way to houses, then shacks north of Speightstown. I speed past the fishermen at Six Men's Bay to arrive at Little Good Harbour. At the small seaside inn, $500 gets me a modern two-bedroom unit with a kitchen across a busy street from the beach.
The hotel's locally famous restaurant, the Fish Pot, is housed in an 18th-century stone fort once used by His Majesty's troops, sweltering in their red woolen tunics. It's now a perfect perch for a sunset dinner of a local specialty, crisp-skinned flying fish baked in herb aioli. It is delicious, though I yearned for a neighbor's curry-glazed lobster.
The next morning I run into snowbirds John and Ginny Thomas of Plymouth, Mich., who are lolling on a padded raised platform on the beach.
"We've been coming to Barbados since the 1970s," John says. "We prefer the mix of Americans and Brits you meet here. We have friends from Britain who we only see here. It's like a reunion every time we come down."
While totaling my bill, owner Andrew Warden admits that he's jealous of my next stop — the rugged eastern coast.
"It's where residents go when they want to get away and you don't have a lot of money," he says. "It's absolutely gorgeous, but the weather on that side of the island can be unforgiving."
My sedan climbs the road over the spine of the island, stopping at Farley Hill National Park, whose centerpiece is an 1857 sugar baron's Great House that burned in 1965. Forty years later, it's overgrown with bright flowers and beautiful weeds. Green monkeys swing from the trees, while feral tabby kittens — no more than 3 months old — shakily climb around the rubble. A dove perches on a crumbling windowsill.
The hills are buffeted by gusts off the Atlantic. It's the first time in two days that I have felt cool and quiet. Visitors usually come by tour bus, so today I have the place to myself. A policewoman patrolling the grounds stops to smell a flower and is startled to see me.
I wind down to the eastern coast, stopping to watch a local climb a tree and lop off four coconuts with a machete. He slides back down, hacks off the top of the coconuts and sells them to tourists in the back of a pickup for $2 a pop. They drink the milk and leave the rind.
I've crossed the island and am now heading south on Highway 3, past Bathsheba.
The coast here is all cliffs and pounding waves, a kind of tropical Cornwall. A squall blows in and vendors at a hilltop crafts shop hustle to haul everything inside and slam the shutters.
But it's sunny again minutes later when I turn southeast on Highway 5 and find The Crane, the Caribbean's first resort hotel when it opened in 1887. It sits on a bluff above the most beautiful beach on the island.
Despite statues of cranes — the birds — in the lobby, the beach is actually named after a crane — the machine. A big one used to sit on the bluff, hauling supplies up from anchored ships.
All around the lovely old hotel, condos are sprouting. Part of the reason: cricket. Next year Barbados will host the World Cup of the most confusing major sport in the world. All over the island, hoteliers are rushing to cash in on the expected crush of visitors. But for now, it's quiet. I sit for a long time, enjoying the sand between my toes and watching the long shadows of the palm trees stretch toward the waterline.
When to go
The cost of a trip to Barbados varies wildly depending on the season. Prices are highest December to mid-March, when the island fills with North Americans and Europeans fleeing winter. Prices are moderate in the spring and plunge in the humid, stormy June-October hurricane season.
Where to stay
Prices are cheapest in the hotel strip between the airport and Bridgetown and in the far northwest and southeast coasts. A plus for families: Many hotels have two- and even three-bedroom units.
• Hilton Barbados. A full-service, American-style business hotel with a nice beach. It's a good choice for your first night on the island if you are arriving late. Rates from $140 to $500 depending on the season. 877-GO-HILTON.
• Little Good Harbour: Attractive, small hotel on a nice beach with a locally famous restaurant, the Fish Pot. My two-bedroom unit came with a full kitchen. Light sleepers may want earplugs to avoid truck noise in units near the street. One-bedroom units $279 to $468 per night, depending on the season. 246-439-3000.
• The Crane: Stay in the older part of the hotel, which dates to 1887. Many of the modern condo units have views of other condo units under construction — hardly a romantic vista. Rates start from $188 to $347 per night, depending on the season. 246-423-6220.
More information
Barbados Tourism Authority, 800-221-9831 or www.visitbarbados.org