the rest of my life: 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.