Finally an update...

Saturday 2 June 2007

Hello from Barbados! Its been a long time since we've updated and its been a busy few weeks. Last week we were in Dominica (two islands north of Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean chain) for our anniversary. Dominica is called the "nature island" of the Caribbean, and is roughly twice the size of Barbados, with only 70,000 people (Barbados has almost 300,000). Dominica is very mountainous and lush, has 9 ("potentially active") volcanoes, 365 rivers and dozens of beautiful waterfalls. Flying over it as you approach the airport, you don't see anything except trees and mountains. Very beautiful. The beaches and coastline are rocky (what little sand there is is black) so its not at all typical Caribbean. The island is relatively undeveloped, with only a handful of small towns and villages, a couple of small hotels and compared to Barbados is very poor. The people were nice and the food was excellent and super cheap.

We were there for 7 days (6 nights). We brought only what we could carry in our backpacks, rented a 4WD jeep, and made no reservations except for our first night. We wanted to see as much of the island as we could, so each day after driving and hiking we found places to sleep. We ended up staying in 5 different places (an apartment in the north, a bamboo cottage in the rain forest, another apartment in the south, a bed & breakfast near the capital, then another wood hut in the rain forest), and circled the entire island during our stay.

We did a lot of driving, lots of hiking, saw 5 or 6 different waterfalls, swam in rivers, hot springs and fresh water pools. And of course Lara took a ton of pictures. We also saw a landslide (which completely isolated all the people at the top of one mountain for at least 2 days), and saw a huge tree fall into a river right next to our car. I also almost chopped off my finger in a fan at a grocery store. Given my tendency for accidents, we travel with an extensive first aid kit, so Lara cleaned the wound and patched me up pretty quickly. It was a bloody mess, but I'm fine Mom. And yes, I had a tetanus shot right before we left Wilmington.

When we got home we received some bad news about Jerry the van. Our friend Kerry dropped us off at the airport in the van, and on his way home punctured a tire and the van flipped. Kerry scraped up his arm pretty bad and hurt his shoulder, but is otherwise OK. Jerry on the other hand, is out of commission for a while. So, we now have a little rental car... and likely will have it for the remaining 24 days of our time here. Sad. We miss driving Jerry. Oh, we got the rental car around 8:00 PM on Thursday night, and drove straight to a sports bar to watch a very exciting 2OT Cavs/Pistons game 5. Labron is pretty amazing. I think I'm pulling for Detroit though.

My friend Dave "DK" Kelly and his girlfriend are coming to visit on Wednesday, so that should be fun. I've known Dave since college, when we played ultimate against each other. He went to ECU, who were our rivals. We also played together when I lived in Richmond, and have played on the same team since then. They'll be here for a week, and it will be nice to have company and show them around the island. We'll post some new pictures soon.

Love from Barbados,
Pete & Lara