Barbados and the caves

Day 10  Tuesday, January 29, 2019   Bridgetown, Barbados

We are departing Barbados in this photo, enjoying the 5 o'Clock Somewhere Bar and the warm weather. We had a relaxed morning since our excursion did not depart until 12:15. We visited the Harrison Caves in the center of the island (see below, a red star just above Sturges).

Barbados is way south, and the farthest eastern island of the West Indies (so much so that it officially is an Atlantic Ocean island, not a Caribbean island). It was our only island not formed from volcanic activity. Rather, it was from the uplifting of the Caribbean and South American Plates. Thus, it was pretty flat - no mountains. It's just 21 miles long and 14 miles wide, but still has 285,000 people, which makes it one of the world's most densely populated islands.

As with the other West Indies, the Spanish were the first to claim it, but they never settled. In 1627, the first permanent settlers arrived from England, and it became a British colony. As a wealthy sugar colony, it became a center of the African slave trade until it was outlawed in 1807. It was given its independence from Britain in 1966. As in other Caribbean countries of British colonial heritage, cricket is the national sport.

We were docked head in, so we had another spectacular view from our room window. This four-mast sailing ship, The Sea Cloud, I recognized from recent Facebook postings from cycling friend Tim Toft, who was on that ship for 10 days and had just gone home two days earlier.

With our afternoon excursion time, we had a late breakfast in O'Sheehan's, the first time in a long time that we didn't have breakfast at Margaritaville. We went out to Deck 8 to relax, and I uploaded photos to my computer, and did another Facebook posting.

Our tour bus drove through the crowded city of Bridgetown, passing the birthplace and childhood street of Rihanna. We then drove by the Mount Gay Rum Distillery, the oldest in the world (1703), a bottle of which we have purchased before.

 We then crossed the flat countryside to Harrison Caves, and this photo was near its entrance. They had nice displays and a little movie to explain the formation of the island and the caves. Since it is not volcanic, it is a coral-limestone island, which means that Barbados is highly permeable to seepage of surface water into the earth, hence the caves. They were first mentioned in historical documents in 1795, but were rediscovered only in the early 1970s by a Danish geologist and a local Barbadian cave enthusiast who had played in them growing up. 

Finally, it was time to go into the caves. Turns out, it was on a tram, not walking, so it was quite "commercial" and tame instead of "natural".

Since we had been in Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Caves in the U.S., this was not as spectacular as we thought it might be. Still, it looked pretty cool with the stalactites and stalagmites growing toward each other.

What a cute cave couple!

Much water down there, with some falls and rushing rivers. The government has placed great emphasis on protecting the catchment areas that lead directly into the huge network of underground aquifers and streams.

This was a "flowstone", resembling a frozen waterfall - curtains of thin, wavy sheets of calcite hanging downward. We took this photo as our tram rolled past.

Final photo from the tour, and this was outside Harrison Caves.

We then drove on small roads directly west to the coastal highway, and came home past the luxury hotels along the waterfront. The guide liked to tell how much the various resorts cost to stay. Once we got back to the ship, we heard about how about a mile farther was the George Washington House, where our future leader visited for six weeks in 1751. He was only 19 at the time and traveling with his ailing half-brother, Lawrence. This was the only country George ever visited, and the house was the only one he ever lived in outside of the continental United States. (Poor Lawrence got worse and went on to Bermuda, while George went home. Lawrence never did recover, and died the next year. George actually contracted small pox while in Barbados, but acquired immunity, which they say saved his life during the Revolutionary War when his troops were dying from small pox, but George remained healthy.)

Once back onboard, we scurried to the buffet for a snack and cookies. For the first time since we left NYC, we could serve ourselves! The norovirus emergency was finally over, thanks to the hard-working crew. As you can see in this photo, we ventured back to our favorite area on Deck 8 to upload photos and read (and sip). Such pleasant weather, especially when we knew that back home in Monroe, it was getting close to zero degrees, and snowing.

Here, the ship is backing out. It backed up for a long ways before turning to head north.

Now we're turning counter-clockwise, and the sun is beginning to hit us, which means that we moved to the other side of the ship, and our Jimmy Buffett...

Yes, our Waterfront favorite.

This was the first time we found open seats right at the bar! The waiter was lots of fun, playing song requests and singing along off key. When he did Sweet Caroline, he banged his equipment and hit his bell during the "Bah bah bah" parts.

Being on the starboard side not only meant the shade, but we could watch the shoreline as we headed off toward St. Kitts, 360 miles away.

After a nice long time outside at the bar, we watched a comedian, Gary, in the Headliners Comedy Club, and cracked up the entire time. Dinner in the Manhattan main dining room, and then we went to our room so early - about 9:00! There, we watched more MSNBC and read. In addition to them lifting the ban on serving ourselves at the buffet, they also opened the library for the first time. Thus, I checked out Fear, by Bob Woodward that had been released only 7 months earlier.