Typically Tropical ... part 2

With, as far as the Rumsey festival was concerned, Monday being a free day, Dave and I wandered down to the Chattel Village in Holetown after having breakfast in Europa. We browsed round the cute little shops eyeing up possible gifts for ourselves as well as those left behind. We ventured as far as the Bean 'n' Bagel in the West Coast Mall which had been one of our favourite breakfast venues last year, and had lunch during which Dave discovered the Pirate's Punch - a potent mixture ice cream, a shot of espresso and rum.

Having already sent Dave to the supermarket earlier on a mission to acquire cold cures and antihistamine cream (having managed to acquire both a small population of rhinoviruses in my throat and several (probably sandfly) bites on my legs) I figured a relaxing afternoon would be in order.

Broughts arrived in late afternoon and the Antiguan party checked in around 7.45 while we sat in the bar, supping Banks and contemplating dinner at Just Grillin'. The guys had all had a fabulous time and seemed somewhat subdued from their previous few evening's shenanigans! We'd decided as a group that a price of BD$110 and BD$90 for the children was far too much for a night out at Harbour Lights - where Monday night is family show night - particularly as we had almost all been at least once. The decision to try the former pizza restaurant which had re-invented itself as a BBQ pit since our previous visit was a good one, and we had chicken (jerk for Dave and BBQ for me) with rice and coleslaw - all of which was beautiful, and the place was assured of our return.

Before heading home for a night in with my cold viruses, we joined the early part of Hanger Lights, enjoying a reasonably low potency rum and ginger beer and some entertaining banter. The evening was considered a huge success by those that can remember it, though that certainly didn't include Tim, who missed that majority of the next day, and Andy Beevers who, as he himself admitted, failed the rum challenge! He, allegedly, fell over on the way back to their apartment, fell into the luggage rack on his way to the bathroom, and then after Sally had helped him to the bathroom door, fell into the shower. Not surprsingly, Andy only surfaced for about 20 minutes during the day, and then sporting a thick lip and damaged hand, before heading to the Beach House for the first of our festival events where he drank only water!

Our day was a leisurely one. After an early dip in the pool we went duty-free shopping at cave Shepherd and I got myself a cool wide-brimmed straw sunhat and a funky multi-coloured dress, while Dave got a cool white shirt, some new shorts and a pair of trunks - as having lost a couple of stone since last wearing his 2007 trunks he was rather short of swimwear options. We went to Cafe Moya for the first time, and had a lovely lunch of wraps and cold drinks before heading back and sitting around the pool reading until a massive rain cloud broke and pelted us with water for half an hour.

Having determined that the Beach House function was drinks only, we had a quick dinner of flying fish and chips at the bar, along with a couple of Banks' and then headed off. The beautiful sophisticated venue is a wonderful place for either dinner or a drinks party, with its gorgeous colour scheme of white and 2 rich blues, decking floors and range of styles of conservatory-style seating, all topped off with a fabric ceiling and views over the sea. We mingled with people we already knew, though some of the playing tourists re-acquainted themselves with some of the pros, including Shaun Udal, Craig White, Paul Franks, Alex Tudor and Gladstone Small. Darren Stevens chatted with the Cobbs and Masons until Ellis and Ollie fell out and were taken home. We sat with Andy and Sal, & Anna and Pete, and Dave managed to get stung twice at the bar, once getting Andy water - ironically the only non-free drink at the free bar, and once when he was seconds late ordering his 3rd rum and ginger beer and found the free-ness had stopped! The rum cocktails were hideously strong so mine was swiftly followed by a couple of fruit punchs, after which we headed home for a good night's sleep. All that vitamin C seems to have chased the worst of my cold away.

Wednesday morning saw us heading, bright and early, to Sandy Lane beach with our snorkel, where we were joined by the Yarwoods. We had a fabulous time looking at the amazing sights to be seen just a few yards off the beach and while still at chest height or so deep in water - and no, I don't mean Barry in his speedos. We saw fish of many various and gorgeous shapes, sizes, colours and patterns. There were lots of yellow and black stripey fish, big fish with iridescent blue, larger yellow ones, some long thin fish with yellow tails, some with black and white stripes and blue heads.

Dave saw a puffer fish, though with only one snorkel between us, I missed it. did see lots of black angel-type fish and one silvery cream one with funny whiskers. Just rubbing the tops of the big coral covered rocks attracts lots of fish by, presumably, releasing food and we had great fun watching them darting in and out of the rocks and around our feet. and all good practice for tomorrow when we had arranged our first group trip - a day on the catarmaran. Louisa had a lovely time and seemed very confident, while Bridget found she could manage after a bit of help getting her mask straight. Poor Ross wasn't so keen, but happily sat in the sun on the beach as we played in the water for over an hour.

Oh, and Wednesday saw the first of the cricket matches, with the Kibby boys split between the 2 tourist teams which were captained by Shaun Udal and Craig White. One of the teams won, and one lost, but to be honest I'm not sure which.

One of the things Dave and I love to do is check out the local wildlife, and we knew that in Andy and Sal, we had met folk who would share our enjoyment of seeking out the local birdlife. From our previous visit we were fairly well aware of the relatively few common local birds. We saw the grackles which look like evil starlings, the large, equally scary looking scaly-naped pigeons which are black with big red eye patches and the Zenaida pigeons which look like ordinary UK pigeons re-invented by someone with an eye for colour. There are also lots of birds which stay up in the trees including what might be common ground doves (much smaller than the pigeons), the stunning black and yellow bananaquits with their white eye flash, my favourites the gray king birds which also frequent the telegraph wires and the lovely fast moving humming birds. There were also a lot of what we thought were sparrows, but might turn out to be, on further investigation, Barbados bullfinches. Andy pointed out some small dark faced birds we seemed to have missed noticing in 2007, and we thought he might be right in suggesting they were black-faced grassquits.

Gray kingbird

Barbados bullfinch

Zenaida pigeon

Common grackle

Typically tropical..part one

Not having to go to work on a Monday morning is but a minor addition to the reasons to be cheerful when you're sitting on the veranda of your apartment, watching the boyfriend dive into the pool just a dozen yards away through the palm-rich and gloriously sunny surroundings of the All-Seasons Europa apartments. And it's only 7 a.m. and already in the early thirties.

We left England on a later flight than in previous years, departing Gatwick at 1.15pm, meaning we had a later arrival at Grantley Adams airport in Bridgetown, just before 6pm Bajan time. I watched and enjoyed the Ed Norton and Liv Tyler version of the newer Incredible Hulk movies, and saw most of Mamma Mia on the plane (but was frustrated at not ebing able to sing along!), and we were fed pretty well - the cottage pie was terrific- but somehow (and I can't quite put my finger on why) the BA experience wasn't as good as the Virgin one. The staff were slightly on the grumpy side and althought the choice of films was pretty good they did only show 2 cycles of programmes - leaving quite a stretch with nothing to watch but the map!

There were several bouts of significant turbulence, notably during the serving of lunch and resulting in Jo Hanger's red wine being thrown across the floor just when she needed it most. Ellis and Ollie spent equal parts of the flight bestest mates and direst enemies - neither state being particularly conducive to a relaxing snooze to wile away the time. The flight seemed to take ages, but finally we were being treated to the circumnavigation of the island prior to landing that is rather impressive and allowed us to try and point out familiar land-marks to the first-timers.

Our unexpectedly speedy exit through passport control/customs was offset by an extraordinarily long wait for the baggage which seemed to be being offloaded a handful at a time by a Bajan porter who wandered back and forth from the plane to the terminal in his own sweet time! During the wait we missed the sun setting, and our drive to the apartments was therefore necessarily devoid of sightseeing, except for spotting a large well-lit gazebo-type construction in a field full of sugar-cane which our driver informed us was the starting station for spot of nocturnal car rallying - judging by the number of parked vehicles, this was pretty popular (either that or each car in the rally contained about 8 people!)

We also, anticipating that the local supermarket would be shut, persuaded our driver to stop at a garage, and supplies of milk, bread and miscellaneous breakfast items were purchased.

On arrival at Europa there was a slight annoyance on finding that they planned to charge us an extra US$12 a night for the now fully installed air conditioning. In the absence of Russ (who had taken the offer to travel to the Stanford Twenty20 in Antigua), Julie was able to successfully argue that we'd paid for this in the inflated room prices we'd been charged by Rumsey/Tempus and eventually they relented and handed over the room key/activation cards. Fortunately, Dave had brought his padlock with us, which meant that in the evening we were able to lock our door while the card was still in the A/C activation slot - this ensured the room was lovely and cool before we retired of an evening.

Sunday morning followed swiftly on from a couple of welcome bottles of Banks' beer and a rather early night for all, smug in the knowledge that despite hitting the pillow at local time 10p.m., it was in fact 2a.m. UK time. And at least Europa had added breakfast to it's significantly expanded list of restaurant options. And I was first in the pool!! 6.15a.m. and it was warm and refreshing and a real sign of the holiday having started. I wasn't alone for long.



After our on-site Bajan breakfast of flying fish, scrambled eggs, garlic fries and toast we walked to the supermarket (which we had established opened at 9a.m on Sundays) both to reacquaint ourselves with the locale, and because the Europa's complimentary bus doesn't run on a church day. We were joined by the Renshaws and our neighbours Andy and Sally Beevers, the latter needing a quick tour of the important local highlights. We stocked up on useful bits, noting again the high price of the fruit and veg, buying plenty of soft drink options as well as a bottle of Cockspur rum and some Hersheys chocolate.

We took a card from the taxi-driver we got a lift back with in case of future need, and then took Sally and Andy for a walk down to the beach, via the Italian coffee shop (and a milk-shake and mocha frappe).There is a new entrance, through the Divi Heritage Resort, which comes out further north up the beach, but access to the Sandy lane beach is still possible - although the tide seemed to be in and rather high.

After a quick look at the beautiful expanse of sand and the gorgeous clear sea, we wandered back.

A couple of changes of note were the completion of the change from the Pizzazz of 2004 to Just Grillin', and the shutting of Chefette, but we were to find plenty of great places so eat in the course of the next 2 weeks.

More soon....