Today, we are in the port town of Bridgetown, Barbados. The ship arrived on time at 8:00 AM, but we were a little late getting up, and were not ready to get off the ship when they opened the gangway. The plan for today was to take the city bus to the northern end of the island to an attraction called the Animal Flower Cave. We were not planning on going to the attraction, but it was the starting point for a hike along the coastline. This side of the island is on the Atlantic Ocean, and the coastline is very rocky and rugged from the constant pounding of the waves.
We first took a short free shuttle bus from the ship to the Port Terminal, it was quite a walk form the ship to the terminal from where were were berthed. From the terminal, we had instructions on how to walk to the Princess Alice bus station to catch the bus to the northern end of the island, near the town of Connell Town. The walk was about 1 km. and took us about 10 minutes. We had not entirely planned this bus trip in the most efficient manner, we knew the buses left on the hour, but we had not gotten up early enough to get ready and make it to the station for the 9:00 AM bus, so we missed it by about 15 minutes. We waited for the 10:00 AM bus and boarded, paying our $1 US bus fare each.
I had thought the ride was about an hour to our stop, based on information I had read online, but it actually took about 75 minutes, and the bus driver dropped us off on a side road leading to the animal flower cave attraction. We walked about 15 minutes before we actually got to the coast. The northern end of the island of Barbados was pretty sparse, mostly farm land, and looked to be pretty low income.
Once we got to the animal flower cave attraction, we headed out to the rocky coast and began our walk along the coast to the River Bay Park. The walk was supposed to take about an hour based on information I read that was posted online.
The views were really spectacular. In most places, it was about 30-40 feet down from the top of the rocky shoreline to the water.
The waves were not really large today, but at times were big enough to crash into the shoreline and spray above the top of the rocks. There were several places where holes had been washed into the rocks and we could look down through them and see the water. I am sure if the waves had been larger, there would have been many “blow holes” where the water would have pushed out the air and water.
We had to be careful, the rocks were very rough and jagged. We did see many areas where seaweed had recently washed onto the top where we were walking. This must have been caused by some very large waves.
There was a little bit of a worn trail to follow, but in some areas, it was just rocky, sort of like coral, but dark in color. We had to be careful when we were walking because it was easy to step awkwardly on the rocks, which might cause a fall.
We finally made it to the River Bay Park, it was just past an abandoned hotel complex that had been built in the late 1960’s. We had known the old hotel was there, but it was a much larger facility that we had anticipated. There were several individual 2-3 story buildings that were in complete ruin.
Once we realized we had actually gotten to the River Bay Park, we had to backtrack a little to find a way down to a much lower area to get over to the other side. The park was actually situated at what appeared to be a natural drainage valley going into the ocean, so we could not have accidentally passed it because we needed to cross the stream that ended up being quite a large opening at the shoreline, blocking us from going any farther along the edge of the rocky cliffs. We had to cross a make shift “bridge” on the small stream, someone had put some logs across that we had to walk on to get to the other side. There were actual buildings in the park that appeared to be some restrooms, but we did not venture over to them. There was no one at the park today, so we did not see any need to wander around.
We walked along the entry road to the park and found the bus stop. While we were walking, within about five minutes of our arrival at the park, one of the city buses came by. The identification sign on the top front of the bus said “Connell Town”, which was on the same route as the bus we had originally taken from Bridgetown to get to the Animal Flower Cave access road, so we did not try to attempt to get on it.
We surmised it was heading the few more stops to the end of the route at Connell Town, and would return as the “Bridgetown” bus, heading back to Bridgetown, which was what we needed to board. We walked a little farther along and picked a bus stop near some houses, adding a little security to our wait. We thought it should be only about a 20 minute wait for the bus to return from the end of the route since we were already pretty close to Connell Town, but there was no bus in sight after waiting about 50 minutes. We were getting a little nervous due to the time, knowing we needed to be back in Bridgetown and on the ship by 3:30 PM, and it was now about 12:30 PM. We decided that no matter what, we would get on the next bus that came by, whether it was Connell Town or Bridgetown, just to know we were going somewhere, and not just waiting in a remote part of Barbados. We had seen a young man walk by us earlier, heading down the road, and so we thought we might need to go to a different bus stop to catch our bus, even though all of the bus stops we had walked to so far had direction signs indicating “To City”, what we needed, and “Away From City, what we had taken to get here, located on opposite sides of the road so you knew what side to wait on for the appropriate bus.
In my research on this adventure, I had seen the actual bus stop listing on the web site for the Barbados Public Transportation, and it had shown the River Bay stop on the Connell Town bus route coming from Bridgetown that we had taken to get here, but not on the return listing for the bus back to Bridgetown. I had even asked at the bus station this morning about this, but was not really given a good answer on where we needed to wait. What really confused us was the “To/From” bus stop signs that were at every stop. From my research, I had actually though we might need to go from the park down to the highway to catch the return bus, based on the route listing of the stops. We decided to walk to some additional stops and actually found one with a young man waiting at it, and we asked if he was waiting for the Bridgetown bus, and he said he was. We asked when it was scheduled to come by, and he said on the hour, but it was no where in site at 12:00 PM. By about 12:25 PM, another Connell Town bus came by, and headed onto the road to the River Bay Park, about four blocks from where we were now waiting. A few minutes later, it was coming back out of the park, but then turned to go away from us, instead of toward us. We asked the young man about this and he said it was still heading to Connell Town and would return soon as the Bridgetown bus. After about 20 minutes, it did indeed reappear as the Bridgetown bus, but this time it did not go onto the road leading to the River Bay Park, just as the route map had indicated. Apparently, even though there are the To/From City signs at the about three different bus stops on the River Bay access road, you have to take the Connell Town bus if you want to go anywhere from that road. It was just as confusing to us as it probably is reading this, but it did confirm what the route schedule had shown, only the Connell Town bus stops at the three or four stops on the road leading to the River Bay Park.
It was now about 12:45 PM, and we were just glad that we were finally on a Bridgetown Bus. We rode the hour and fifteen minutes back into Bridgetown to the bus station, and then walked to the port. After looking at a few shops in the port terminal, we took the free shuttle from the port terminal to the ship. It was just after 2:00 PM, which had been our chosen time to be back to the ship, so we were well within our window of time designated for this adventure, but it had been a little stressful. In the end, we had enjoyed the walk along the coast, and it would be really easy to repeat now that we knew the bus schedules and how the bus stops worked at the River Bay Park. We could have set up the tripod and taken a few more photos of the shoreline with us in them, but had passed on taking the time to do this due to the uncertainty of the duration of the walk along the shoreline.
We were tired, partly due to the walk and partly due to the stress of waiting for the return bus, but we had seen a lot of Barbados. As a little side note, the full size city buses go really fast on some very narrow and winding roads, it was amazing, and at times a little scary how the bus driver handled the bus on these roads.
We dropped off our gear and put on our bathing suits to relax by the pool until our scheduled ship’s departure time at 4:00 PM. We enjoyed the sail away, and remained out by the pool until the sun set at around 6:00 PM.
We headed back to the room and got ready for dinner in the dining room. After dinner, we walked around the ship and listened to some music in the Atrium before heading back for the night. I was not feeling 100% by this time, sometime during the day I had acquired a scratchy throat, and it had gotten a little worse as the day progressed, so we did not want to stay out late.
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