Sights of Barbados 2019

Even the local monkeys are laid back in Barbados where Anne and I just enjoyed two and a half weeks courtesy Bishop Wilfred and Ina Wood. Highlight was the Barbados Wildlife Reserve where only snakes were caged and the monkeys were particularly entertaining. 

A ‘laid back’ image from Barbados I loved was this 1936 Gentleman’s Chair from St Nicholas Abbey Plantation House. It features adjustable tables, book holder, reading lamp, back and foot rests. Should the gentleman’s snoring disturb others the chair could be wheeled elsewhere for the duration of his nap!

Barbados has many hidden treasures. The deer are scarce so very hidden, indeed the Barbados Wildlife Reserve keeps them going. This shy specimen lent its head to my phone when Anne and I visited the Reserve. We hired a car to get there but it was worth the expense

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch’s forbears ran St Nicholas Plantation, Barbados which still makes rum separating heads, heart and tails. The ‘heads’ boiled off between 60-77C are poisonous acetone, methanol and ethylene acetate. The ‘hearts’ boiled off 78C are ethanol with flavouring. The ‘tails’ are acidic residue no good to drink.

These monkeys have got their eyes on something other than the photographer behind them! Green monkeys were brought to Barbados from Africa. Anne and I loved the antics of those in the Wildlife Reserve as well as the ones that played on our roof in Oistins. Not all good news - they stripped our mango tree of ripe fruit!

Breakfast at the Atlantis Historic Inn in Tent Bay was reward for an early drive from Oistins to Bathsheba and a walk along the old railway line to the luxury hotel. Anne and I are drawn to Barbados by sea baths at Oistins in the south. Swimming is banned on the eastern Atlantic coast but views of the dramatic sea compensate. 

Intimacy between tortoises is hard to imagine! Darby and Joan here seem content to share a quiet life of mutual devotion fed and watered at Barbados Wildlife Reserve. Visiting with sun reddened limbs, Anne and I felt empathy with the captive Red Footed tortoises trotting round the Reserve, though we were free to go home!

No visit to Barbados without dropping in at Codrington College! Links go back to my training indigenous priests for Guyana’s interior 1987-1990. We had time with Principal Fr Michael Clarke and Guyanese Ordinand Raymon Cummings and learned about the financial appeal linked to the College’s 275th anniversary.

Barbados Wildlife Reserve’s imported Cuban iguanas reminded us of Guyana’s imported Cuban doctors.  Anne and I lived in the interior an hour’s drive from the friendly Cuban with the book ‘Where there is no doctor’ just in case! Iguanas in Cuba do worse than doctors - they’re endangered. We ate Iguana in Guyana and found them tasty!

The Mass is central to my life and to Christianity - hence ‘Christmas’! On our visit to Barbados I was privileged to be invited to celebrate Solemn Mass and preach at St David’s Church dating back to 1840 where my friend Canon Noel Burke is Rector. What a difference well trained choir and servers make to this sacred action!

   

St John the Evangelist is patron of one of the finest Churches in Barbados. Overlooking the Atlantic it was erected 1645, destroyed by fire, rebuilt 1676, laid low by hurricane and rededicated 1836. Its closeness to beautiful natural surrounds is symbolised by the birds flying in and out and here resting on the pulpit.

Surrounded by Barbadian traffic ‘Bussa’, the Emancipation Statue (1985) symbolises the breaking of the chains of slavery at Emancipation. Bussa was a slave who inspired a revolt against slavery in 1816 though the statue is not actually sculpted to be him. Anne and I passed Bussa on the way to visit Freedom Village, the first community of freed slaves. 

One highlight of our visit to Barbados was attending the Thursday Changing of the Sentry Ceremony at the Garrison built from the Buckingham Palace ceremony. The colourful Zouave uniform worn in the exercise was approved by Queen Victoria in 1858 after she had seen and admired it in Paris worn by Algerian soldiers.

A new day dawns on the beach at Oistins, Barbados. On our visit I walked most days to early Mass at St Dominic’s along this beach in the relative cool of dawn enjoying the quiet beauty of nature and the friendliness of Bajans out like me for an early stroll. ‘By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us’ Luke 1:78