Wednesday 12th April

Again up at 6.15 to see our arrival at Bridgetown, Barbados, before breakfast.

As we had been before we were in no hurry but at about 9am we walked towards the town & took a local bus to St Andrew's Church on the north west of the island for $US 1 each. This turned out to be a good idea although we arrived at the church to find it at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, so declined to get off. The island is quite hilly & there are many settlements but the housing still seemed to be mostly rather sad & shabby, despite the bright colours of the walls. We stayed on the bus for about an hour until the end of its route, on a high ridge, when we asked the driver to pinpoint where we were on our map. He gave us a rough location & we then just returned to Bridgetown with him, on an incredibly bone shaking ride through the country side.

We left the bus in town & walked to a restaurant where we consumed some 4 beers & hot chips for $US10 so we felt it was worth it. To clear our heads we moved on to have a coffee & then walked back to the ship where we had to shower & change, as our clothes were damp with sweat.

Bridgetown is bigger than Castries but doesn’t look as smart & the general effect is of a somewhat run down & tired town. As each of the islands is independent it must be very hard for them to compete for external investment & assistance for their economies. Tourism is their major hope but it doesn’t employ enough people.