Barbados - Island Tour - Day 4
We got up early and went for a walk on the beach. I went to get some food for breakfast but the petrol pump was closed today and would open at 9am. So I got some bananas and some pastry from the other petrol station. The orange pastry was really nice and we all had some foos before getting ready for our private island tour.
We had booked our cab driver, Mark for a full day of island sight seeing, and we had agreed to pay him $300. He was a local and knew a lot about the island. The normal price was about USD 300 and we had booked him for half that price. We had asked him to come at 9:30am to our hotel. We were all ready and waiting for him outside the hotel on time. I went to the ATM and took out $500.
We started off the trip by going into Bridgetown. We saw the rum factory of Mount Gay, which is exported worldwide. Rum is made from sugarcane. We saw the port, saw the Kensington Oval cricket ground and then went to see Rihanna's home. The place where she grew up. It was fascinating to see how well she had grown into fame coming from such humble background.
As we drove out of Bridgetown, we saw a street vendor selling coconut water. We stopped and had loads of coconut water. Each coconut was for $3. We all had one each and then when we asked for the coconut inside, he started cutting out about 8-10 coconuts and started feeding us, he would not stop until we had our hearts content of coconuts. He was collecting the coconut water and bottling them up. We bought a bottle of the water as well for $13. It was so much fun and it filled us up, ready to continue our journey.
We then drove along the west coast of the island. It was also called the golden coast. It was home to a lot of celebrities and the houses were massive. If at all there was a place to buy a house on the island it has to be the west coast. Each house had their view of the ocean and was mostly owned by British or Americans.
We drove along the golf course and it was absolutely stunning. We kept driving along the island right to the north and we could notice that the places on the west coast were really nice and posh. We then took an inward turn into the island.
We stopped for a bit at Fisherman's Bar, which was a very popular pub. We clicked some pictures and then continued with out trip. We saw some of the oldest sugarcane mills. We also saw some sugar factories, where slaves were held and were forced to do work. It was fascinating to see those places where slaves were forced to work, sort of sends a chill down the spine where you think of the atrocities that were done to them.
We then went to the Barbados Wildlife Reserve Park. The tickets cost us $90. The place was really nice and there were loads of turtles, roosters, deers, turkeys and peacocks. We loved the vegetation and it was like a little jungle. We climbed up to the aviary section and it was absolutely stunning to see the ocean in the distance. We spent over an hour over there and enjoyed the place. We then went to the monkey section, we spotted loads of monkeys. They were small ones and we were not too keen to spend more time with them although the kids wanted to. We had a great time at the wildlife park.
We were now hungry and wanted to stop at a place to have some food. Mark, our driver took us to a local food place and we were not too sure how it will be. So we ordered just 2 portions of the chicken curry and vegetable rice. The kids loved the food and Nimi devoured the entire portion by herself. I had to go and get another portion of rice and yet another portion of the sweet potatoes and dumpling. The kids were starving and Nimi had a lot of the sweet potatoes as well. We had a lot of food and after all that the bill came to just $68 and that included Marks's food and the 3 drinks as well. The food was cheap, if you knew where to get it from, and for that we had to thank Mark.
We then set off to the botanical garden. We reached there, and on the way we again spotted some massive houses. These were houses inland and did not have any access to beach. On reaching the botanical garden we realised that most of the sections of the park were closed due to covid and the tickets were also pricey, so we decided not to go in there.
We then wanted to go to the Cherry Hill View. We drove past the eastern coast of the island. This was the Atlantic ocean on this side of the island and the waves was very rough and choppy. There was not much habitation on this side of the island. We reached the Cherry Hill and clicked a few pics there.
We also saw a few other ports, which were mainly private ports, they had accommodation in them and businessmen would come stay there do their business and go. They will not go inside the island. There was port called Nikki port as well.
We then tried to buy some run punch, so Mark drove us past his neighbourhood and we could see that there was so much poverty in the island when there was affluence in another section of the island. We did not find any rum punch. We drove back to our hotel, it was about 3pm when we came back. We took some rest as we were very full from our lunch.
Later Nimi and I went for a swim in the sea. The water was warm and it relaxed us a lot after the days travels. Deepika and Niki joined us at the beach after a while. We decided to have pizza for dinner. So after getting fresh we walked to Mamma Mia pizza. There was no chicken option so we had the vegetarian option. But the pizza did not fill us up and we picked up a portion of the chicken chowmein on our way back to the hotel.
Deepika and I had some of the chowmein and then we watched Arya 2 before going to sleep.
