All at sea: in the Caribbean

IF YOU DON'T LIKE HOLIDAY SNAPS LOOK AWAY NOW.

Landfall, British Virgin Islands.

Look who is delighted to be off their great big hulk of a cruise ship and onto a real boat, a racing catamaran. We are in Tortola, heading out from Road Town across the Sir Francis Drake Channel to go snorkelling around the nearby islands.

The sails aren't rigged yet, so we are still standing up, but you'll notice that we are holding on firmly, (and at this point only drinking fruit punch!)

Wonderful snorkeling, with beautiful corals, Sergeant majors and Coral Fins, after which excitement we need a little lie down,

followed by a swim at Peter Island.

Back under sail with a good rum punch.

We arrived in Antigua on Independence Day and docked alongside a British navy ship busily decking itself out with celebration bunting.

 

Judging Antigua to be a flat island we had pre-booked a jeep in England from Tropical Rentals. Oh, goody, it's red!

The view from Shirley Heights was amazing.

And Independence Day flags were everywhere.

Just look at Himself in Nelson's Dockyard.

Can you feel the heat? 

Can you see the tropical downpour gathering?

Can you imagine our race back to the jeep in time to get the roof back on?

 
After a terrific downpour the sun came out, the roof came back down, and the intrepid travelers headed to a beach to stretch out in the sunshine.

Another day, another island, another beach, this time Grand Anse in Grenada. We picnic under the shade of a tree in the heat of the day and spend our time luxuriously and aimlessly floating and swimming about in the warm, turquoise water - my idea of heaven.

 

Blissed out on the water taxi heading back to port.

St George, the capital of Grenada is claimed to be a pretty place, with a mixture of French provincial architecture and robust Georgian stone buildings and coloured wooden houses on the hillside beyond. I asked any number of locals for the best areas to see this architecture but they didn't have the faintest idea, so in true tourist fashion I did a bit of aimless wandering but didn't discover very much.

Then it was back to our balcony

 and the end of a perfect day in Grenada.

Eyes bigger than belly? 

No, belly and eyes both big.(Or perhaps it's just the glasses.)

In Bridgetown, Barbados, Himself chats to a couple who live near us in England.

We've come to take a look at Nelson while he is still on his column. The monument was erected in 1813, seventeen years before the one in London's Trafalgar Square. This Nelson has become a controversial figure, seen by some as a symbol of colonialism, and there is talk of him being replaced by a national hero. We spoke to a couple of locals. Waste of money, they thought, to take Nelson down. He had already been moved to look the other way some time past, at great expense. Leave Nelson where he is, was their opinion, and place a national hero somewhere else.

It is blisteringly hot and ambitious plans for sight-seeing are abandoned in preference to a seat in the shade.

I'm still eating, (but who can resist a chocolate milkshake?)

And we are still dressing up.

By now we know no shame, and when the Bagen Doo Flicky Show invite us on stage on our final evening, up we go.  I am shown how to 'shake ma booty'

which, after time at sea, is a size worth shaking!

"Look at me" says the stilt man, "do what I do."

The Y&F show them how

and the stilt man jumps over them!

Our last morning in Barbados and the Anderson Sealy Steel Orchestra gives it all they've got. 

And this Y&F hasn't put on so much as a pound!

Goodbye Caribbean.