9.05.08 Would you like to dance, grandmother?

On our last day I was keen to get some seaside action beyond swimming, so I took a bus to Holetown, a town that is supposed to have surfing, diving and snorkelling. The bus took us inland on its route north, so I saw a little more of the island. Unlike the hilly, green beauty of Jamaica, Barbados is flat scrubland or built up. The majority of the people live in shacks and bungalows, which would have once been a rainbow of bright colours. Now, however, all but the newest have been bleached in the sun.

For a country with hurricanes, the wooden buildings do not look like they would stand up to anything approaching extreme weather conditions. Wood, however, has the advantage that it bows and bends—some of the homes remain upright at angles that architecture students would not believe.

There was no surfing, instead I went snorkelling with sea turtles off a tourist boat, which was a wonderful experience. Back on land, I was approached by a garrulous fellow in a Ronaldo replica shirt who wanted to sell me coke – in all my 34 years, no one had ever introduced himself to me as Mr Cool before. I admired his chutzpah.

In the evening we went to the Oistin Fish Fry, a massive outdoor party with plenty of music, drinks and fish. Strangely, I met someone else called Mr Cool, a nightclub owner—so perhaps it’s a bit like being called James and Bajan (Barbadan) classrooms are full of kids called Mr and Miss Cool. Barbados is refreshingly safe after Jamaica, so it was a pleasure to be there and see some Caribbean dancing, which is really just simulated sex and must be awkward to do with elderly relatives at weddings.