Two drifters off to see the world …
Tony has been such a funny and great help/driver/host!!!
We really enjoyed our month on this amazing island and especially it’s people.
And we finished our stay how we started it when we arrived on 31st Dec, with a meal from the ever present Chefette on Barbados ;D
Now it will be Jamaica waiting to be explored 😀
It was very hot today and being in the wet makes life more bearable. But as the beach at Crane is full of red algae and high waves this was not an option. Going to one of the west coast beaches means another bus experience which we refused because of the heat. So we thought about other options.
The crane is not only the name of this area but also the name of a 5-star resort next to us. Therefore there must be a pool inside. Quick check in the internet, Yeap, pools available. But could we use them as non residence of the resort? Well, no risk no fun. Let’s do it.
We took the back door: pass the beach, up with the elevator, cross the appartmens, waved and greeted if somebody saw us. „Be brave and act normal“ we thought.
Yes we did it!
It was really cool and refreshing. And we felt a bit naughty. But doesn’t that keep us young?
First we start with really lazy mornings, drinking a coffee in bed, reading some news/chats/mails on the mobile, checking, if there is anything we have to do … then deciding what we will do today (depending on the weather, on our mood, if we have some water/food/beer/rum left in the fridge, if Andy has some work to do aso), then taking a shower (the nights are always quite hot here ^^), packing our stuff, doing some housework, if need be, and then … out into the heat, waiting for a bus to take us to the westcoast (no algae there!!!). That means waiting, waiting, waiting. No bus plans. The bus will come or not. Sometimes you wait an hour or more, sometimes you are more lucky.
Waiting for the bus, you might think the Barbadians invented coolness, no one just looks ordinary, everybody has his hair differently, a real pleasure to look at!
After approx. 45 min drive in a more or less crowded bus (often we are the only whites in the big local buses that take the workers or school children home), we arrive at the beach, buy some delicious spicy fish cakes from a local and enjoy 😉
And yes, it’s still unbelievable for me to see these water colours! Like watching a picture that looks like a fake, but is real. I love these turquoise beaches and the wonderful clear water with just perfect temperatures. Only “kind of problem” (what a word ^^): the sun is really really hot here, so you better stay in the shades or get burned (no matter how high your sunblocker is) and shades cost money (renting an umbrella, what we never do), or are rare and therefore crowded. And weird fact: I still get sea sick from floating in the waves for too long … haha, that’s why we will go on a cruise ship in February for two weeks 😉
But here, it’s no problem, if you have troubles with the sea:
After enough of sun and floatings in the sea, we do some shopping in the supermarket and still get quite shocked by the prizes (remember: everything is imported here). Just buy, what we really need or want, or are willing to pay for things that we want anyway (bottle of wine, vegetables, sweets).
Then the way back, waiting for a bus again. Unfortunately all smaller buses are full and just pass by, the bigger ones even don’t show up. So after approx. 1 1/2 h we give up. Time for Plan B: There seems to be a nice Café not far away, let’s just go there! And, how lucky we were to have not gotten a ride home, as this was one of the most terrific locations we have been so far here to watch the sun set (these are the moments we think: Let’s forget about the money and just have fun! Behave like tourists 😉
So after a small snack and some drinks we head again to the bus stop and are lucky, after about 10 min a bus arrives, completely overloaded, but as long as we hold firmly to the grip above our heads we manage the 1 hour ride back savely.
Yeah, that’s how you can spend your time on Barbados (if you don’t take taxis) 😀 Feels like a real life for us!
After my post stating that the beaches here in Barbados were so beautiful, below is the beach a few hundred metres from our new apartment. Here in Crane we are no longer facing the Caribbean Ocean, like on the Westside, but the Atlantic.
Directly above the beach are two really posh resorts, The Crane and Hilton Resort. So these guys staying there pay at least 400€/night for a room and have this kind of beach full of seagrass and algae to swim in! According to the internet and lots of ads everywhere this should be one of the most beautiful beaches on Barbados. But nowadays you really never know what nature and the environment will present you when you finally arrive at your booked holiday destination.
For me it looks like these posh guys are definitely one of the poorest tourists here …
Yesterday we arrived at our new airbnb apartment (more expensive this time: about 55€/night instead of 35€ as our last ones) and YES, we really enjoy it!
Can you guess what? Having hot water for taking a shower or doing the dishes, having a good mattress that is about queen size, where we both can sleep without doing synchronic nightly movements, mosquito nets at the windows, means not being eating alive at night … and: a huge TV to watch some nice Netflix movies in the evening (much better than a laptop)! Not to mention: a decent aircon in the bedroom, quite good furniture standards, some items even completely new, e.g. the bath mat (better don’t ask how they look/feel like sometimes …).
Yes, that’s what is luxury for us now! A few years ago we booked hotel rooms for double as much as today. Funny to realize how you get used to quite different standards and surroundings than you were used to, even when you passed your fifties already 😉
After 3 weeks on Barbados we can say without doubt: many great beaches and even more great people! So many countries boast themselves for their friendliness (especially Bali, which we both thought is completely overrated, see our older blogs). But Barbadians or Bajans, how they are called, are really one of the friendliest people we have ever met (next to Hawaiians). From our first second on this island till now we saw so many friendly faces, heard so many nice greetings, got in contact with so many polite people who really wanted to help us. For us taxi drivers and street vendors are always a good example for real politeness. Here Bali was quite horrible for us, walking down a street you really got annoyed very soon about the shouting taxi drivers and vendors every two steps and you really needed to be unfriendly or stare at your feet down on the street all the time to be left alone. Here it’s completely different. The taxi drivers ask you friendly and in a decent voice, if you need a taxi, you answer politely ‘no, thanks’ and then they even wish you a nice day. No shouting vendors. What a pleasure! It’s also no problem to walk alone on a street/beach as a woman (which was quite different in Guadeloupe, not to mention Malaysia). So, after 3 weeks we would honestly proclaim: Barbados is really what you would call a very friendly island! 😀
PS: Can’t finish this blog without a last big hug for Gary!
Thanks to Gary we spent a beautiful day in a lovely small park with funny monkeys, turtles, maras, deer and some birds around us 🙂
In a world where the news are often bad and frightening and you read and hear about racism, right wing political disaster, environment pollution and burning continents you could lose trust and faith in the human race.
In these times it is even more important to realize not everybody is mad and foolish, there are millions of ‘good’ people out there. People who act in an absolutely unselfish way. Not for profit, nor power, nor honor that they are acting for. Just because they are human and they love other humans. These people I call angels. And today we met one of them, and while writing this post I again get tears of joy in my eyes.
So here is the story, this is for you Gary!
This morning we decided it’s time to have some contact to animals again ( unbelievable that the most remembering part of today is the contact with a human being). Well, back to the story. There is a wildlife center on Barbados, not far away from out current location. They have monkeys, turtles, deer, and some other small animals so we thought it is worth going there. The wildlife park won a prize “most popular place on Barbados” so we didn’t even thought about that we need to pay everything in cash. But after a short bus trip and a few steps to the entrance the lovely woman at the desk told us: Cash only. Hmm, we had some cash, but not enough to pay the fee and the bus ticket back to our home. So no chance, we needed to skip the visit and drive back, that’s what we thought. We went back to the street, started walking down the hill, made a short detour into the wilderness, come back to the street and continued walking down. After a few seconds a car passed, stopped 100 meter in front of us, geared back and asked us if we would like a ride. Sure, a car is anyhow more comfortable than walking in the sun to the next bus or minibus and you guess right, it was Gary. So we jumped in, Gary started driving, we talked about the day and Faye told him that we wished to visit the wildlife center, but we couldn’t because they take no credit cards, just cash.
Gary slowed down and suddenly pulled the breaks. He turned the car and said: “You know what, if you really like to see the park, and it is worth seeing it, you should.” In the first step we didn’t understand, but Gary continued: “Well, 60 BDollar (about 30 Euros) is not that much for me. I take it for you.” Wow, Faye and I were speachless. There is a foreigner who is just willing to pay a fee for an entrance for us. Out of nowhere. We even didn’t have his phone number or address or anything else to get the chance to pay it back. But Gary even didn’t want it back. He about said to me “I do what I can in life. And the only thing I would like to ask you is: Do the same for someone else”. So impressive. So unselfish. So human.
Thank you again, Gary! You made our day. And you gave us hope that the human race is not at its end. We will follow your path and we will do what we can!
We came across several miracles while our drifting tour and we wish that one of the future miracles would be meeting you again sometime. We wish you all the best. For you, your beloved and all creatures in the universe. Keep on being as you are.
If you didn’t think until now we are freaky and/or weird I guess now you will 🙂
Yesterday, after a full day of research from Faye about our next location, we finally decided to have some vacation. You are wondering what will be the difference from our last 13 months life? Well, it will be a vacation from our normal activities. As we need to have a look on our expenses most of the accommodations are not that luxury, with walking to the grocery and self cooking. 99% Faye did the trip planning, scheduling and booking, which results in heavy internet searching and she got a bit frustrated of doing that, especially in those extremely expensive countries. So that’s the reason of a ‘vacation’.
But what could we do to have an other way of living? Ohh, if you know us a bit, you will never ever guess!
We do a 14 days ship cruise. Bähhhm. Not kidding. This is what it is:
If you still can’t believe what we are going to do and still wonder why, here are our decision making arguments:
Funny anecdote at the end. 3 days ago we visited Bridgetown which has also a large harbor with incoming cruisers. We saw one of them and Faye said to me: “If I ever tell you that I want to make such a trip, shoot me!” Well, I didn’t 🙂
… when you’ve smashed the mosquito that has sucked the blood out of you 😛
Remember that I wrote in one of my last posts that we booked two airbnb apartments that were listed completely new, had no ratings and were quite inexpensive? As Barbados is a very expensive island we try to manage staying here with as little money as possible anyhow. And airbnb is the only chance to do so. So our last little apartment in Bridgetown had some pros and cons. Arriving at this one in Speightstown, I hoped a little bit to get a ‘normally’ sized double bed again (like it was mentioned in the listing), but this one is as small as our last one and to even beat it, it has an old mattress and the bed bumps every time one of us tries to move (which we have to do synchronically). We also hear every little step of the person living above us and we have quite a few mosquitos. I was also looking forward to warm water under the shower again, but we were told: warm water is not working at the moment :/
The interior I would call kind of shabby style (without the important: ‘chic’ ^^). But we have more space than before and what’s definitely best: the view! We can watch the sunset, what is really nice (just shouldn’t forget to jump in again right after the sunset to be not biten by mosquitos all over 😉
So that was my ‘lesson learned’ moment concerning my statement: No risk, no fun 😀 Just don’t know, if I really learned that lesson now … maybe I just forget these not so comfortable issues and look forward to our next apartment (which is not that cheap and hope it looks like the pictures and works better for us ^^)
Here you can see some of the lovely interior details:
Don’t know what the living room is for, there’s no TV or anything in there … maybe sitting there and counting mosquitos would be a funny fame?
BUT: a nice view 🙂
And a really loud and really nasty (and also somehow cute) kitten, that has no teeth in the front:
Nothing unusual in the Caribbean that the power is switched off for a while. And we had that this morning.
Interesting to realize how much we are dependent on ongoing power. Heating or cooling, depending where you are. Light, fridge, hot water, cooking, most of these things won’t work without regular power.
But the most important thing about not having power is: no router is working. And no router means no wifi. No wifi means no internet. And for us, even if we are middle aged, the internet is something we use permanently. Surfing, posting, gaming, chatting, working – but also having music, movies, books. Everything is online. No internet meens having nothing of it.
Clever us, we had some offline music to listen 😉
But besides music what did we do while being offline for a while? Ahhh, not that. Shame on you .
We talked together. We just layed down and listened to the sound of nature. We got aware of ourselves. We let the thoughts go through us. It was a very peacefull experience, I can highly recommend to everybody trying it from time to time:
This is one of the main internal changes I went through the last year: If there happens to be an annoying or disturbing situation that I just cannot change (which is not that unusual when you travel on low budget most of the time), at the beginning of our trip I tried to ignore these moments or get rid of them as fast as possible or direct my attention somewhere else. That worked out, but it cost me a lot of energy and there was no real aliveness in these moments. It’s like you turn to stone … waiting for things to pass by … nothing can hurt you that much, but you cannot feel anything either.
This kind of attitude I used for nasty people in my surrounding, unbearable hot temperatures, dirty streets or whenever there was a situation that was not really enjoyable. Closing myself up as good as possible and waiting till it’s gone.
In the last weeks/months I tried a totally new attitude: staying wide open, attentive and child-like curious. When something frightening happened for example, like walking on a street with no sidewalks, between very fast cars that I only saw last minute due to mountains blocking my view, I became very attentive and alive, opened completely up to the situation and it felt very different right away. Like you have a feeling of a car driving just an inch away from you round the corner before it is there (with so much noise that you cannot trust your ears). The same with people we pass by or talk to, I do no longer try to cut the nasty or frightening ones out of my life, but stay open and very curious for this very moment. And then everything gets so much more exciting, as if you suddenly enhance the colors in your life.
That does not mean I become friends with everyone, but it means I become a friend with this moment. I savor it in its depth, how it feels, how it smells, what it looks like and what reactions I feel inside of me. Like an alien witness that does not know yet how being a human feels like and that enjoys every moment, even if it is very profane or simple or even what’s usually called unpleasant.
So funny now to think about how much energy I always spent in blocking annoying situations out of my life. I also worked and lived like this for a long time before we went on our journey. How frustrating, how lifeless I felt sometimes. Like imprisoned in a kind of shell suit I did not enjoy wearing in order not to get in contact with the disturbing outside world. The cost of it? Aliveness! Real aliveness! Enjoying what life presented me every second. Even if it is something I formerly would have called annoying. If I stay open, it always becomes a very interesting situation, if I do not block it, it is just another facet of this wonderous ever changing life. If I ignore all the adjectives I have learned so far and imposed on situations or people, every second feels so very fresh and new! Every touch (even the broken plastic seats in the buses here) is a new sensation! Every person a whole universe to explore!
I don’t know, if anybody knows or understands what I tried to describe here. But I wrote it anyway and maybe someone does? 😉
And if that means that you have to drink 3 beer and 2 cocktails, so what?
Yesterday we arrived at our new apartment that we booked for a week. It was one of the cheapest airbnb apartments we could find. No pictures from the outside, only a few from the inside, but hey: only a short walk to the beach! Sounded great! (At our last apartment we had to walk about 30 min to the beach, mostly on a street with no sidewalk for pedestrians, so quite hot and risky sometimes 😉
And now it’s again living with what we’ve got. To give you a small impression, here some of our thoughts and pics (we live in the extremely beautiful grey left part of the house).
Pros: Short walk to the beach, everything quite new, nice decoration, huge tv screen, walk in shower, good aircon, nearly no mosquitos (great!!!), supermarket and bus station only 5-10 min walk
Cons: sitting outside is not a real option, only 1,20 m wide bed (for the two of us!), cold shower water only, very poor tv sound, no real table to eat at, very little cooking stuff
As we are the only ‘white tourists’ in this residential area, it is really interesting to see how the locals live, but also a little bit strange … as if we don’t belong here.
While sitting at the beach and looking at the sea that’s how the colours amazingly change with the clouds and sunlight:
Swimming with sea turtles, enjoying a great dinner at the Oistins Fish Fry, seeing green parrots in the morning flying by while we drink our coffee and Andy doing some work now to get all that great living paid for us. That’s really as good as it can get. Especially for me 😀
What shall we say? It’s just unbelievable … the people are so relaxed and friendly … everyone wished us a good afternoon when we waited at the bus stop yesterday 🙂 … the beaches we’ve seen till now are gorgeous … crystal clear turquoise water and white powdery or even slightly pink sand (tried to show it in the pictures below)… to beat it all you can swim with sea turtles just between the ships at the beach … really great vibes here 🙂
Only negative so far: the food in the supermarket is very expensive 🙁 We think it’s even worse than Guadeloupe. As Barbados has no own agriculture they have to import everything. When I asked our airbnb host yesterday, if there are any local markets here to get vegetables cheaper, he had a good laugh and told me that they do not have any local food. So no wonder the prices are so high. Only thing that’s not expensive, guess what? The local rum!!! And it’s really tasty 😛
So we decided to stay at least 3 more weeks here. And as we got used to taking some risks in our lives, we again booked two airbnb apartments that were listed completely new (as in Guadeloupe) and thus offer special beginner prices. Therefore you really have no clue what you will get at the end, the pictures and descriptions are no guarantee for anything. But: No risk, no fun, isn’t it? 😛
Lunch made by our hosts for New Year’s Day. Simple and very delicious!
View from our apartment
New Year’s Day, our first morning in Barbados. We walk down the street from our apartment, being curious as always what the beaches here will really look like. Most of the time the pictures from the ads or in the internet are not what you really get, so we learned to stay open to every kind of experience. And then: Woohoo! Unbelievable, what a beach!!! (our pictures are no fakes, not photoshoped)
