Barbados was our first island in the Caribbean and we did not really know what to expect. We had arrived by night so when we woke up in Carlisle bay the next day, I stuck my head out of my bow-hatch and was amazed to see a white beach ahead and turquoise water surrounding us.
(Photos: our first breakfast, views from the boat)
There were quite a lot of other boats around and a lot of houses and beach bars along and behind the beach, with lots of watersports such as jetskies, bananaboats and those water-jetpack-things going on. Quite a shock to the system after 11 days of sailing all by ourselves!
We dinghied in to Bridgetown, where the dinghy parking is on a river inlet right in the middle of town. We went for a walk, looked around and found wifi in an italian coffee shop (with hot chocolate!) and get some food.
(Photos: Christmas in Bridgetown, buidings, boats and ice cream, hot sauche is everywhere!)
Tiffany from Wildest Dreams messages me to say that they had arrived in Barbados just a day before us. I immediately reply to say that we are here too and they are coming down to our anchorage the next day to meet up! They had originally planned to sail only in January but then changed their plan and left about a week before us from the Canaries, but had planned to go to Martinique so I was very surprised that they were in this area!
So the next day they came to pick me up from Moira and I met the other crew they had picked up, Elena and Krystof, and we spend the morning walking around town and exchanging our adventure stories from the crossing!
The following day we decided to go see what all the fuss was about and checked out the marine park near the anchorage, where there apparently are several wrecks very close to the surface to dive and snorkel on! I had given myself the gift of a proper diving mask and was very enthusiastic to try it out. We were snorkelling from the dinghy and had a great time playing in the water and exploring the wreck! And the visibility was much better than you'd think from the photos!
On Franzi's last day on Moira we got up early to go hiking in the east of the island. We tried to take a public bus and failed (it was Sunday) so we ended up hiring a taxi. We drove to Bath, a tiny place on the Atlantic coast of Barbados, while being fed interesting bits of information about the country by our driver Sweets. From Bath we walked/hiked for about 2 hours on a beautiful trail along the coastline to Bathsheba.
The trail first went through a forest with big rocks on the coastline, through green meadows and all sorts of cacti, back down to the beach and finally through beautiful swaying palmtrees where we then got lost but finally made our way to town.
After a well deserved lunch we drove back to Bridgetown, where we dropped Franzi off at shore and left Barbados to sail overnight to Tobago.
