Tuesday 1 January 2013

Barbados - Day 18

Calabaza Cruises provided our catamaran excursion today in Barbados. What a beautiful boat! And so clean too! Calabaza books a maximum of 12 guests on their boat so we were well cared for by owner Gina, Captain Danny and First Mate Chad.

Despite going to bed early last night, the kids were groggy when we woke them up at 8 am today. P made up for that by having a little snooze on the boat!

Our weather was fairly overcast with a bit of rain today, so not ideal for snorkelling and certainly not any too warm either! We wore bathing suits under rasher sun shirts and board shorts so once we got wet with the first splash at the front of the boat, I was a bit chilled throughout the morning.

We sailed north from Bridgetown on the west side of the island. We went past a very high end resort called Sandy Lane. It is where Tiger Woods got married and the least expensive room costs $3,000 per night.

We enjoyed some banana bread, then lox and cream cheese on a bun for snacks. After about an hour of sailing we got to our first snorkel stop where we saw lots of Green Turtles. Chad had some raw fish to feed them so it wasn't hard to attract a number of turtles.

After about half an hour of snorkelling, we packed up and sailed for another five minutes to our second snorkel stop. This time there was less to see in comparison to Bonaire but we did see a lot of Sargeant majors.

A traditional Caribbean lunch was served on the boat after our second snorkel. We had about 30 minutes to swim after lunch before we started heading back to the ship. This is when the sun finally broke through the clouds and I started to warm up (choosing to dry on the boat rather than swim).

After the sail back to the ship J and I and one other couple decided to walk to the ship rather than take the taxi. The kids didn't want to walk! We found a lovely painting for sale as we made our way back to the ship. It will cost about six times the purchase price to get it framed but it will be a nice keepsake!

The walk back was 20 to 30 minutes - we had just 25 minutes to spare before the all aboard call. I tried to use free WiFi for a few minutes in the terminal and J bought a Caribbean map to plot out our route as a keepsake.

Once back on board the ship we showered and changed. Trivia proved to be challenging again. Even with the use of an atlas we couldn't correctly answer which country shares a border with China and North Korea ( the answer is Russia for all interested parties!)

After dinner we retreated to our stateroom to build our scrap ship for the contest. As J says, the technical stuff is now done, just cosmetic stuff remains!

Photo 1: JG and P at the front of the boat

Photo 2: P enjoying a snooze!





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