Author: ajeanneinthekitchen

And now for the diving. When I go to dive destinations, whether or not we go back is ALWAYS determined by the quality of the diving. Most of the time, my answer is “YES”, I will go back, though there a couple of places that the answer is “NO”. Barbados is a DEFINTE YES!!!!!! The diving was great. The water was the brightest turquoise I’ve ever seen. It was so clear and warm, and so full of life too. Always good signs. We saw large turtles, both green and hawksbills and southern stingrays on almost every dive, if not every dive. We even saw a bat ray flying at the surface one day. So yes, Barbados is a definite DO-OVER, again, and again and again. 🙂 🙂 🙂

We dived with Roger’s Scuba Shack all week. I highly recommend Roger’s too. Roger is a lot of fun and has a great personality. We immediately felt like family with Roger and Shanikah, our dive master. They were both fantastic. 🙂 Roger and Shanikah are on both ends.

Roger was having his front repainted while we were there, so this is all brand new, just for you.

This type of mask I will gladly wear at all times. 🙂

We did not dive with Seth, but next time I hope we get to dive with him as well. He too has a great personality and is a lot of fun, as well as being a wealth of knowledge and information.

Sean is a newbie dive master and still has a lot to learn, but he is a lot of fun. We dived with him a couple of times towards the end.

Roger and Sean hamming it up for the camera.

And now for the real stars of the trip …. Sadly, I don’t have an underwater camera at the moment, so none of these are my shots. They are much better than what I could take anyway though. 🙂

Green turtles

Hawksbills turtles. They tend to be a little friendlier to visitors than green turtles. Green turtles are little more shy and reserved.

Talk to the flipper.

Southern stingrays.

Bat rays.

I will dive anytime, all the time, every time given the opportunity to do so. Larry doesn’t dive as much as I do anymore, so I do cut back on SOME of my diving to do other things with Larry. My preference is definitely to dive, though I do also enjoy all the other activities and adventures on our trips as well. 🙂

We dined at our hotel’s restaurant one night. They offered a delicious buffet, and then followed it up with some local entertainment. First their was a guy playing the steel drums. Next came the fire dancer. WOW! Some of his moves were just amazing. I was scared just watching him, but he was fearless.

First the dinner, with an ocean view. Walking to the restaurant we noticed out hotel has a fountain that changes colors.

Tiki torches lit up the pathway.

We even splurged (calorie wise) and got a bread pudding to share for dessert. I have really been trying to not eat a lot of sweets, but every now and then I cheat. Sometimes, you just have to, right?! 🙂

And the evening’s entertainment.

He was good, but the real entertainment was the fire dancer. He was amazing!

I don’t know how he does it! He was very entertaining though.

It was yet another deliciously fun evening.

I know you you are thinking that I was above water for most of our trip since I have been posting about all the other things we did and saw. And we did do a lot too. But, you would be wrong. I am saving the best for later. 🙂

That being said, I do have some more views from above the water level to share with you. The views were spectacular and so many beautifully, brightly colored flowers too.

I’ll start with the flowers and plants. They are a lot of the same tropical flowers we see all over the place, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still beautiful. There were also some beautiful new flowers too. 🙂

I love bougainvillea. They come in so many different colors.

Look at these gianormous cacti!!!!!

This flower, that has been unofficially named “Pride and Industry” is the national flower of Barbados.

We had bottle brush like this, and many other tropical plants, in my backyard when I was growing up.

I have no idea what this fruit is, but it was too good of a picture to pass up. 🙂

These are sea grapes. Apparently when they are ripe, they are very good to eat.

These avocados were so good. They had a hint of sweetness to them too.

These succulents were growing out of the rocks.

Have a bright, colorful day and color your world beautiful.

My friend, and virtual dive buddy, over at ScubaHankNYC at https://scubahanknyc.com/ just informed me it is world manta day. I LOVE my rays, all of them. It doesn’t matter if they are southern stingrays, eagle rays, bat rays or mantas. They are so graceful and magical. But the BIG, graceful mantas are really special.

Southern Stingrays. I took these in Belize and Grand Cayman. This one, obviously our divemaster took for us.

Eagle Rays. We see so many eagle rays in Cozumel, particularly from November-March. I did not take these other pictures unfortunately. We have killed so many underwater cameras.

Bat Rays. We saw a bunch of these in Cabo San Lucas and we saw one in Barbados too.

Manta Rays. We dived with a whole bunch in Kona, Hawai’i. They are so beautiful, majestic and graceful.

I wish everyday was manta day. 🙂

One of the many pleasures of travel is finding new places to eat. There are always good restaurants and places to eat, everywhere we go Good food is appreciated all over the world, and comes in so many delicious opportunities and styles. be adventurous and dine like the locals do. One of our good restaurant finds was at The Harlequin in St. Lawrence Gap.

We were strolling around, looking for a place to dine, and the bright, colorful lights caught my eye. The food just deliciously spoke to us, and the staff was very friendly and fun. We took the long way to the restaurant, unbeknownst to us at the time. We drove around and found it, but in reality, we could have walked across the grounds of our hotel. We didn’t learn this until after the fact though. 🙂

The food was good Creole style food, just like what we would find in New Orleans. We did what we normally do when trying a new place. We ordered some appetizers and shared a meal between us. We started off with a dark and stormy rum drink. I love these. 🙂

Then came some fish cakes and chicken samosas.

Followed by some blackened kingfish. DELICIOUS!

As we were waiting for our food I was busy taking pictures of some of the nearby signs.

This one had me in stitches.

We loved Harlequin. I wish we had a chance to go back again. Next time.

I dived (yes, that is really the way it is said) almost everyday while in Barbados. Larry did not. I only took 2 days off from diving, and those are the days we did a lot of the driving and sightseeing for things that were further away from where we were staying and needed more time to explore. But I was done diving by about 1:30, then a quick shower and change, and we were off and running again. We did a lot of things after diving too. One of those activities was to visit the Barbados Museum, which ironically is located in the old military prison. We tend to visit a lot of military forts and prisons on our travels.

The museum was filled with interesting history and artifacts about Barbados history. We learned a lot and it was very informative. The only issue we had with it though, was that it was oppressively hot. It was hotter inside than it was outside, and believe me, that is saying a lot.

Life for early Barbadans.

The sea is obviously a very important part of the life for Barbadans, both then and now.

But there are so many other things that are significant to the Barbadans as well, like the wildlife and the birds.

And the lifestyles influenced by the Europeans.

We already know how important rum is to the island.

Rich mahogany is also an important product from the island. It was used to construct a lot of furniture and decorative additions.

Cricket is the national sport of Barbados.

But one of the most important aspects of life in Barbados, is the ongoing fight for their freedom.

This statue was not in the museum, but it is definitely a symbol of their fight for freedom. It was on the main highway going up north.

We signed the wall letting everyone know that we were there too.

The Barbados Museum, like everything else we experienced on the island, was well done, very interesting and very informative.

While we were up at the Mount Gay Rum Distillery, we decided to venture on to the Barbados Wildlife Reserve too. We wanted to go anyway, but they were so close together, that it just made it easy to do them both on the same day.

We saw all kinds of animals, native to the Caribbean islands and Barbados. There were, green monkeys, originally from Africa; tortoises; goats, peacocks, chickens and brocket deer, that all roamed the grounds freely. They also had some caimans penned up in their watering area, along with some large iguanas from Cuba, some guinea fowl, tropical birds of all colors and kinds, and even a couple of snakes, that I quickly bypassed.

The goats were outside the gates. I think they were privately owned, but they all looked very happy, and loved the camera.

Lots of babies too.

The green monkeys were everywhere. We have seen these green monkeys in St. Kitts, Nevis and Gibraltar too.

There were quite a few babies, sticking close to their mommies.

They are not afraid of people at all. But DON’T touch them, particularly at feeding time. They go crazy during feeding time, and can and do bite.

We caught the tortoises in some awkward situations more than a few times. They used to roam freely around the island, but now are only found in the Wildlife Reserve or are privately owned.

This rooster and peacock were close friends.

Larry and his flock of peacocks.

At first we didn’t see any of the brocket deer, but then they started to come out, especially at feeding time.

Feeding time was a hoot. The staff dumped a whole bunch of fruit and vegetables into a couple of locations and ALL the animals came out and dined together. The monkeys were hilarious. A few of them even sat on top of the tortoises.

Caimans and turtles.

The Iguana.

And of course, lots of tropical birds. The caimans, birds, iguanas, and snakes were all caged or penned, but they all had plenty of room to move around freely.

The animals were all well fed and well loved. I loved seeing how all the friendly animals had free reign of the park. It made it seem like they were truly in their natural environments. It did not seem invasive at all. I definitely recommend a trip to the Wildlife Reserve. It is fun and enjoyable, plus it helps the preservation and care of some of these endangered species.

We did two rum tours on our trip. The first was the self-guided tour at Foursquare Distillery Barbados – Part 6 – The Rum – Foursquare Distillery and the second was a guided tour at Mount Gay. The Foursquare tour was interesting, but the tour at Mount Gay was much better. It should be at $55 per person vs. free though. We learned so much about rum and rum production, and our guide, Ramal was a wealth of knowledge. He was a lot of fun too.

Mount Gay has a very long history, and is the oldest rum distillery in the world. It has been producing world class rums since 1705.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the rum distilleries were originally on private plantations, where the people actually lived. Mount Gay was no different. This used to the be the family’s private residence. Today, it is used as the meeting rooms for tours and parties.

Ramal preparing our welcome rum cocktail before starting the tour.

Different flavors often found in rums.

After giving us the history of Mount Gay Distillery, Ramal led us into the actual factory, where the rum is made, and gave us a very thorough rum lesson. Before entering the rum factory, we all had to don our hard hats.

If you can see the no smoking sign behind me, there is a story for that too. Rum, is alcohol, and alcohol is highly volatile. There are NO SMOKING signs all over the premises and Ramal clearly stated there is NO SMOKING allowed anywhere on the premises. Fire hazards are very real at a rum factory.

This is the meeting place in case of a fire.

However, there is always going to be that one stupid person that thinks the rules don’t apply to them. Sure enough, there was one stupid man that left for a cigarette or two. By so doing, he endangered all of us, the employees and the rum factory itself. Fortunately, he was caught and escorted out. At first he said he had been arrested, but then he rejoined the group towards the end of the tour. I have no idea what his punishment was, but I hope it was a strong one. I just hate stupid people like this.

Anyway. Back to the tour.

These are all the ingredients actually used to make the rum. The main ingredient is molasses. They use molasses from Barbados itself and from other Caribbean countries. There is a very distinct difference in the tastes. Ramal let us all taste both kinds of molasses.

This is the mixing room. We could not get any other pictures of the blending itself. That is a trademark secret and no photos were allowed.

The processing room. These tanks are in operation 24/7, around the clock.

The aging rooms.

Each of these buildings is filled with rum aging in barrels until it is ready to bottle.

After touring the grounds, we all went back to the meeting rooms to do some sampling. These are the rums we all sampled.

All of the rums were very good. Again, I liked the higher end rums. Surprise, surprise! The picture behind Ramal is a picture of the current rum blender. He told us that there is only one blender at a time, and each blender adds their own personal styles and techniques to the rums.

Ramal showing off his fun personality along with an expensive, top shelf bottle of rum. We didn’t get to try this one though. Darn. It only sells for about $400 per bottle. 🙂

Taking this tour is a definite must-do while in Barbados, even if you are not a rum drinker. It is very interesting and informative, giving lots of history about rum and the island itself.

While in the area, after the tour, we went to the Wildlife Animal Reserve too, but more on that later.

The Caribbean Islands are all known for their rum. Rum has been a major industry since the 1600’s. Barbados’ rum, in particular, is known as some of the best rum in the world by rum connoisseurs. Sugar cane was introduced to the island in 1627, and in 1647 rum was one of Barbados’ major industries, and has been ever since.

Rum has gone by many names. First, it was known as “kill-devil”, because of its early, hot, strong, hellish and terrible flavor. But it has come a long way since those early days. It was also known as rumbullion, which is an old English term referring to the riots and uproars created by large, crowds of noisy disruptive people. HMMMMM! I wonder how it got that name???? From the name rumbullion, it was shortened to just rum, which is the name the world knows it by today.

In the early days of rum, the water was so bad, that people were told to drink rum or spirits instead of the water. It was cleaner and less harmful than the water. Rum was also part of the daily rations for sailors. The term “proofed”, used for alcohols of all kinds, originally came from the days when the sailors would pour a little rum over gunpowder and ignite it. If the rum was too diluted, the gunpowder would not ignite. If it ignited, it was considered “proofed” to be strong.

There are three large rum factories and distilleries in Barbados – 1) Mount Gay, the oldest continuous distillery in the world, operating since 1705; 2) St. Nicolas Abbey; and 3) Foursquare. We toured both Foursquare Distillery and Mount Gay. We tried to go to St. Nicolas, but it was closed on the one day we went there. Next time.

The Foursquare Distillery was a self-guided tour, that was free.

In the early days of rum making, the distilleries were on people’s personal plantations, and they lived on the premises.

There was even an old outside museum of old rum machinery parts.

The sugar cane fields. The cane is stripped and burned down to make molasses, which is in turn used as one of the major ingredients for the rum production.

After the tour, we had to sample the rums of course. Our rum guide was very knowledgeable and walked us through the different stages of rum and rum processing.

We tried small amounts of 6 different rums this day. I liked the upper end, smoother sipping rums. I know. You’re all shocked. Surprise, surprise! 🙂

Tapas was a restaurant we passed many times. It is a restaurant that specializes in ….. you guessed it, tapas. I love tapas, and I thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant Tapas as well. It was located right on the beach and the food was delicious! Our server, Jessie, was great too. She was so full of personality and was very attentive to every detail.

After we ordered, we were started off with some warm bread and a garlic aioli.

Then we tried a variety of tapas including some calamari, peppered shrimp and Thai fish cakes.

Next came some lamb curry.

We were very full and very satisfied after.

I totally recommend a dinner or two at Tapas when visiting Christ Church or just Barbados in general.