Here's an excerpt from our Legend Cruise Day 5 report- Barbados
Today we get into port late, arriving in Barbados at 11 AM. We?ve never been here before and am not really sure what to expect. Should be fun? We?ll see. Being a late port day, activity on the ship is different this morning. It would appear that many of the passengers have chosen to take advantage of the situation and sleep in late. Good call as we are here late tonight, passengers expected back on board at 10:30 PM with sailing away time planned for 11 PM. There will be neither gift shops nor the casino open today till we set sail tonight. We don?t have any definite plans for the day and haven?t booked any ships tours as none really contained the magic word for us: ?beach?.
Lisa wasn?t feeling all that well, pretty drained from our excellent day in St Maarten the day before so we decided to sleep in. About ten I woke everybody up to get ready to go. I figured that there would be one of those mass exodus situations in the debarkation area since it was a late port arrival and that proved to be true. By 10 the deck was packed with people ready to get off the ship slathered with sun block, beach bags packed and cameras at the ready. I moved our debarkation plans up till 1:00 PM. I hate standing in that line, crammed in with everybody else, waiting to get off the ship. There seems to always be some people that want to complain about how slow the process is going. I wondered how many of these people would get a negative attitude about the day.
As we approached this new port I saw that there were two other ships in port. The Ventadam and Star Clipper, much smaller ships, were in berths ahead of us. The dock here kind of reminds me of a really long Ocho Rios Jamaica dock, extending far out from shore. In fact, shuttle busses were available, lined up and ready to go, from where we would be docked, delivering passengers to a nice terminal that boasted a variety of stores looking for cruise passenger bucks.
The currency here is Barbados dollars that exchange at a convenient 2 for 1 rate. Although we paid for everything with American dollars, we received change in dollars and Barbados coins. Nice for the kids to play with. Prices here were reasonable and there is a well stocked convenience store just inside the terminal where one could pick up any little odds and ends you might need at a decent price. Sydney found an international phone calling station that DID accept her pre-paid phone card picked up at Sam?s Club before we left. She had had no such luck in St Maarten. The minute?s exchange rate was high though and it cost her many of her minutes to make the call. Nonetheless it was nice to finally hear her boyfriend?s voice and be able to communicate with him live rather than through emails. She spent most of the time we were in the terminal accomplishing this task, running her card down from 500+ minutes to less than 100 for a 30 minute phone call. Don?t even ask me how that works.
Whitney was also able to talk to one of her friends from the (she?ll kill me for saying this) ?Boy? band B2K. (?They are NOT a boy band dad!?) It was a short phone call but surely the highlight of her day if not of the entire cruise. Sometimes I think if I were to be able to make phone calls work for these girls that the ship could sink and they wouldn?t care much.
Lisa and I wandered around the terminal, bought a few souvenirs, and stopped by the Travel and Tourism office to see what they had to say about stuff to do here. I asked about a tour of the island and the very helpful man hooked us up with a great taxi driver for the day ($20 per person). If you?ve read our previous cruise reports you know that this is something we really like to do and have had great success with it. Today was to be no exception.
Our driver, Mr. Riggs, was a life-long native of the island who looked as though when he spoke of the history of the island that he could speak from personal experience. He started out driving and talking, telling us the facts and numbers of the island. 98% of the people that live here are liberate, that the government provides free education through college, complete health care, even subsidized housing and bus service. These people seem to be a genuinely happy people, glad to see us but not glad like ?we want your money? glad. They are just nice.
All through the tour people would wave at us, smiling.
Our first stop was Harrison?s cave. Mr. Riggs touted this place as one of the wonders of the world. Unless there are 8 of them now I?m not so sure about that but it was impressive nonetheless. Here, you ride through an underground cave full of stalactites and stalagmites that have formed some unusual configurations. Lisa and the kids thought, as others have reviewed, that this was just an awesome sight. I had some different feelings.
After Harrison?s cave we continued our tour of the island which, to me, looked a lot like most of the others we had done this kind of tour on. Until we got to the Atlantic Ocean side of the island. There we were greeted by a truly spectacular beach with huge (to me anyway) waves coming in to shore having not been broken by land, Africa being the closest land mass, 3000 miles away. Lisa thought it was the coolest thing she had seen on any of these islands and I agreed. It is a totally different experience. We associate Caribbean islands with pretty blue water, relaxation and a pleasant, laid back atmosphere.
Here people surfed!
Next trip here we will get a cab and tell them to go directly to the Atlantic side. Bypass the cave please.
