We're on our way to another cruise, this time in the southern Caribbean, starting in the Lesser Antilles and ending in the Leeward Antilles, just near Venezuela. We arrive in Barbados, the most easterly island of the Lesser Antilles, bordering the Atlantic Ocean in the southeastern Caribbean Sea and sitting on the boundary of the South American and Caribbean tectonic plates.
We are staying in Hastings, a small village and beach resort in the parish of Christ Church, just south of Bridgetown. Known for its beautiful white sandy beaches, the village also hosts the longest boardwalk in Barbados (Richard Haynes Boardwalk), starting at our hotel and running to the nearby community of Rockley.
We drop our luggage at the hotel and start down the boardwalk.
In the morning, we wake and take another walk on the boardwalk, return to our hotel, and then stroll north from the hotel along the beach toward Bridgetown and the larger resort hotels.
Heading north, past the end of the boardwalk, we take off our sandals and walk on the beautiful, soft, cool white sand beaches, strolling from beach to beach up the coast, passing large resorts and small residences, until we can get no farther at high tide. We then return to our hotel, have a great lunch of grilled mahi mahi, and look for a taxi to our ship. In a great island story, our taxi stops in town and the driver invites a friend who is walking back to work to join us - he turns out to be an immigration agent at the port who is returning to work after leaving to have lunch with his mother. He checks our papers and passports in the taxi and just waves at the guards on duty as we breeze into the port and over to our ship.
We board our ship, the Wind Surf, depart Barbados on the start of our journey, and watch our second lower-Caribbean sunset as the ship raises her sails and heads out to sea.
We're off to a great start on another adventure!
