I'm playing catch up for the last few days as I've been down sick. Excuse the rapid posts!
Today we got up at 5am so we could catch our WinAir flight to Barbuda. The plane held about 14 people - pretty small plane. We arrived 20 minutes later in Barbuda. The airport building was about the size of a postage stamp. Tiny! There was no security, no "baggage claim" and just a handful of chairs. Cute little place. Codrington is the only town on the island and there are only about 1500 people that live there. After arrival, we knew we'd be winging it to find a rental car.
We had several people approach us for taxi service. We expressed that we wanted to rent a car and continued to get the 'white man special'. I'd done my research and knew that $50 a day was the going rate, but we were quoted $70 and up. I stood my ground and told them NO. A gentleman pushing a baby in a stroller approached us. He was not pushy and was super friendly. He asked us if we were interested in going to the Frigate Bird Sanctuary. We asked him how much and were pleasantly suprised! $50 total for all 4 of us! I had read about tours that were $60 per person! The gentleman told us his name was Glass and gave us a phone number. He told us to call when we were ready to go and asked us what we were doing for transportation. I told him we needed to rent a car, but were only willing to pay $50 for the day. He said he could help and had us follow him to the bakery where he dropped off the baby. He made a few calls and wa-la, we had a car for $50!
There are no official car rental places in Barbuda. You are essentially borrowing someones car for a fee. There was a contract, but no walk around process. It was pretty funny. Glass accompanied us on this whole process. I told him that we were ready to go see the Frigate Birds as soon as we had breakfast so he hopped into the car with us and directed us to one of the two restaurants in town. The first didn't have breakfast anymore, so we were off to the other one. This one had breakfast. The lady behind the counter was super nice. They are not used to tourists coming to town...most come to stay in the posh resorts and don't leave them. There was no menu...she said "How about some eggs and bacon?". Sounded good to us!She prepared us a breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. It was perfect!
With full bellies, we headed to the Wharf to meet Glass. Glass took us out on the lagoon to the Frigate Bird Sanctuary. Apparently these birds are really rare and they have the largest nesting area in Barbuda. They can't walk, so they either fly or sit in the mangroves. It was not mating season, so we were not able to see the red chins they puff out. In fact it was mostly juveniles who were not large enough to fly yet, waiting for their moms to bring them food. They cannot swim either. In fact, Glass said they hunt in groups so that if one gets its feathers wet, two other birds will grab that bird, fly it way up high and then let it go so the feathers dry.
The lagoon bottom was covered in what looked like sea anenome's, but in fact they were jelly fish. They were colorful and neat looking and apparently harmless. Glass picked them up for the kids to touch. Only Hayley was brave enough.
After our frigate bird adventure, we headed out to discover the beaches. Glass has recommended Coco Point or Spanish Point for snorkeling. We headed down the one highway that quickly turned to gravel. We found Coco Point with no real trouble. The beach was on a closed resort called K-Club. When we first arrived, I was quite unsure as there were piles of donkey poop EVERYWHERE! I told Liem "There is no place to safely set our towels!". Cohen and I decided to explore down the beach a ways. We ended up finding a completely poo free stretch of beach that had rock outcrops on either side for snorkeling and perfect water for swimming as well. We drug all our stuff there and planted. The sand was as white as I've seen. There was no seaweed, no rocks, no shells, just perfectly white sand. And the water was amazing. We've been to a lot of islands and seen a lot of beaches, but this is the one to beat...tied only with Culebrita's Tortuga Beach. The water was, no joke, as clear as a glass of water. It was like being in a swimming pool. I could see my feet in 6 feet of water like I was in a crystal clear pool. The locals call it "gin clear". It was truly amazing. We spent several hours here basking and swimming and snorkeling and then decided to try and find Spanish Point.
We headed off looking for Spanish Point but were disappointed in what we found. The water was still beautiful but it was rough and we weren't quite there yet. The road had become rock. We decided to turn around and see if we could find the famous pink sand beach. We ended up calling Glass for directions. When we arrived, the sand was indeed pink tinted, but not as much as they'd made it sound. Again the water was rough and the wind was high. We decided that we'd found the Holy Grail at Coco Point Bay Beach so we headed back there to spend a few more hours. It was the kind of beach you have a hard time leaving. I could hardly bring myself to even get out of those crystal waters when it was time to go. We realized that we'd had quite a bit of sun for the day and should play it safe and go.
We headed back to Codrington to explore the town a little and get a bite to eat. There were really no tourist shops or anything because they just don't get tourists. Everyone was so darn friendly too! We ran into Glass a few more times. Chatted it up with him for a bit. He's done a lot of traveling in his lifetime, which is unusual for Barbudans. He was a very famous Calypso singer under the name Golden Locks. This has afforded him a lot of travel not only for competitions, but also for cultural sharing type conferences. We decided we were all hungry so we chose a BBQ on the side of the road. I had the BBQ chicken, Cohen and Liem opted for the fried chicken and Hayley had a cheeseburger. It was cheap, it was tastey, and it was really more of a snack. We tried to find something sweet to follow it up with but there had been some delays in deliveries to the island so we couldn't find anything. We ended up back at the place we'd had breakfast for some french fries before finally boarding the flight home.
We arrived back at the house around 8pm. By 9pm, both kids had gone to bed exhausted and I had fallen asleep on the couch. I woke up with an upset tummy so decided to go to bed. I slept like total crap and never did kick the tummy thing. I'm thinking it might be a slight case of heat stroke. We'll see!
