On Tuesday morning, we woke up first thing and went on a 6-hour “Island Safari.” (So fun!)
We had fantastic guides – that’s right. Guides. Plural, because we had Cory on his last training before he was about to be a grown-up guide by himself the next day.
They started by offering us rum punch. We quickly learned that you will be offered alcohol everywhere you go, always, all the time, in Barbados.
They took us up to Gun Hill where we sat on the famous lion statue. And they took us to every parish in Barbados – except for St. Philip (but I’ll get there later in the week).
We stopped by Bathsheba – which is like a famous beach/rock area.
And we off-roaded many times, tumbling around as much as possible being all thrown around in the back, which Alex couldn’t get enough of, because he loves rollercoasters and things of the like. (I obviously loved it too, but in part I just loved how much he loved it.)
We stopped off at Hackleton’s Cliff, which I think is maybe the 2nd highest point in Barbados? It’s a really nice view of the east coast!
We also stopped by Little Bay, which is VERY cool! It had all these little “blowholes” because of the shapes of the rocks, so the water would sort of bloop bloop up out of the ocean. Very cool!
We saw a lot of beautiful views, and a number of beaches.
Both of our favorite parts were going to Animal Flower Cave.
It’s all the way at the top of the island. It’s like this gorgeous little cove. We actually got there just in time to be last group who got to go down in the cove, as the weather was getting weird. It was cool, looked cool, felt cool, got cool pictures.
And then we made our way back down our side of the island, ending in Holetown (where we were staying).
Once we got back, we hung out a little at the pool again. I finished some scuba diving lessons on my phone, as I had to pass all the modules before I started a speciality certification the next day.
Also, I forgot to put this in our first day, so I’ll just put it here, that we met our new friend Jamie. He was sitting alone at dinner, so we invited him to sit with us. (He had just finished eating, so he didn’t take us up on it then, but later in the week he saw me and we exchanged instagram handles, and we all drank on our last night there… but we’ll get there.)
Anyway, I learned that the GIANT buffet was only a Monday night thing… which was fine, because all buffets were still FULL of options. But the big over-the-top, tons of cooking stations etc., that was a Monday night thing.
(There also was a whole upstairs restaurant we didn’t realize was it’s own special thing until later in the week, but we got there! The main buffet usually had a couple Barbados staples peppered in, but upstairs was all about local cuisine.)
[For anyone tracking my Barbados drinking haha, at this point, I’d barely drank anything… Just a few sips of the welcome drink from the hotel, and a few from the island guys. But I was mostly staying away from alcohol, because I had to be ready to scuba!]
After dinner, we just headed to bed. And then it was time to get up bright and early the next day!