I liked the Bahamas. Some people say it has sold its soul to America and Vegas style hotel chains, which it has in part, but I think it has plenty of soul left to go round.

They love eating conch basicaly all the time, which mystifies me as it's a bit tasteless, but somehow this is endearing. They have this beautiful millions of tiny islands thing going on, so the sea views are always different and you're a mere boat ride away from an uninhabited cay. And it feels very James Bond at times - not only does it have sharks (you should leave the beachesa t sundown because that's when they come into feed), but it also ahs Sean Connery (retired and living it up) and part of Casino Royale was also filmed there

There's also the other side of the island, which is that things don't work that well, there's big brain drain with all the successful people trying to escape to the US if they can. They have few local businesses, and all the US chains like Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, and Macdonalds are cleaning up. And a fair bit of serious poverty to balance out the extreme wealth, and one of the highest HIV rates in the region. But this kind of stuff is pretty common in the region in general...

'Duncan' donuts

Relaxing with the cruise ships (my family visited, was amazing)

Sharks. You can do dives without cages and watch them be fed. Yikes.

Part of one of the luxury hotels where Casino Royale was filmed.

Antigua

So, I promised I’d do an entry once a month, and I’m going to quickly try and catch up on June, July August by briefly covering a few countries in next few entries.

Antigua – pretty but dull. I went there on a Sunday morning, and nothing was open. Nobody was in the streets. Nobody in fact seemed to be on the island apart from one stray family I saw on a jetty. Felt a bit like a zombie movie with all the deserted streets, except without the undead nightlife.

But I will give it points for prettiness. It was lush and green, and had an amazing naval dockyard. But then all the islands are pretty. Apparently it also scores high for corruption, by some accounts the most corrupt in the region, with legions of dodgy banks and pyramid schemes. They were hit pretty hard though in the downturn and now everyone in Antigua mentions this and looks a bit glum. I have also heard that it really picks up in the sailing season, whereas during hurricane season all the fancy yachts with their money and glamour go to safer climes.

Pros of Antigua: unusual shape (kind of splattered), green, pretty, and great if you like pyramid schemes. Cons of Antigua: too quiet, difficult to get anything done. Overall score: I would in fact rank it lowest in my Caribbean island league table. I feel bad about it because it's still lovely. But someone has to be at the bottom. But they need all the tourists they can get in the downturn so don’t let this put you off…

Empty streets... (and tiny banks, no longer propped up by stolen money...)

Sunsets (and zombie hands?)

Mangoes! Beautiful green everything.

Pretty indeed.

Sandtastic

So, there are all sorts of sand in the Caribbean. White sand, yellow sand, black sand, brown sand and pink sand. Sand that gets in your shoes, in your socks, in your hair, your eyes, your shower, t your bed. There is the really fine sand that gusts into your face just after you've put on really thick factor 30 suncream and then won't come off for hours despite scrubbing. There are the three sand enemies of jogging - dry and fluffy so foot slips, wet and sticky so shoe is ripped off, or scretely aerated so foot falls right through. There is the sand that gets into your sandwich and makes it slightly crunchy. There is the sand with holes where cute crabs live.

Anyway, you get the point. I could name more types. But all can be tamed and turned into SANDCASTLES!! Yes, we're cool. Check out our skillz. We're still learning, but we made an archway. Apparently the trick is in carving away to make shapes, not building in the shape you want.

This is black sand. Looks brownish in light, but trust me. Bit limiting as a materials go, as a bit coarse. This is on a beach in south St Lucia.

Check out the Arch! This was made with the help of Shanaz, photograph by Lucy.

Yep, a massive hole in the ground. Necessary part of sand castle making, but almost as fun as making the castle.

Giant pyramid sandcastle built by me and Irish Dave. We risked our lives climbing it for the photo opportunity.

(promise to write something a bit more sensible/descriptive next time, and to do it sooner. As long as I manage once a month though I think I'm ok)

Survivor

Bonjour,

So, it’s been a pretty tough month after my computer got stolen, it was going to be busy anyway but that just set me like a week behind and i’ve been trying to catch up since. But, it has also been an exciting time too.
I had the craziest business trip ever in panama. We were doing a project with remote areas, improving access to certain services (can’t go into detail), but this essentially meant we had to go to two of the most remote areas in the country. One, was in one the areas reserved for indigenous Panamanians, and was a collection of tiny islands. It is the most remote place i’ve been.

We (Amalia – an analyst who is based in panama) took this tiny plane, where i could see the pilots in the row in front, we landed in what was essentially a grassy field, and the airport was made of reeds. Then, we walked through some jungle, to get to our airport shuttle, which was a tree trunk canoe thing with the cutest old man, who let us help paddle to get to the other island where we were to be picked up.

It was surreal. I was there, with my suit, tie and fancy noise cancelling headphones – paddling in a canoe. I’m not quite sure what we were thinking wearing suits in the jungle, felt very colonial.

When we got there, we realised there was no mobile signal except on this one bit of the island, so people go take it in turns to stand there. There was no electricity after 10pm. I found out the hard way– and when it’s dark there, it’s so so dark. It was no moon, and when you looked out over the sea towards the rainforest on the mainland which you knew was there, there was just pure blackness, freaky. Now, try finding your bedroom and toothbrush in that dark and you'll see how happy I was at 10pm.

Anyway, enough from me, here are the photos, but it was a veritable adventure. Blogspot has kindly decided to put my photos in reverse order, so start at the bottom if you can.

Alleluia- we arrive at the hospital on another island and have a working lunch from the cafeteria. in the background is the Darien - one of the densest pieces of rainforest in the world, apparently home to some drug smuggling.
Amalia rows the boat ashore
Jungle Mike feels like he might have picked the wrong clothes.
This was the airport. Customs was very quick.
Who needs a runway when you can land on grass. Amalia is standing here proud to have survived

Computer stolen

They flippin came into my room while I was sleeping and took it out of my bag. They took my flatmates too, but nothing else. I was all packed and ready to go to Panama, so i guess could have been worse, they could have taken my hand luggage with passport etc.

Am in airport now computer-less but the business class airlounge lady let me use their one in sympathy. And I heard someone giggle downstairs in the night and thought that it sounded strange, but thought I must have been hearing things. So annoying, hadn't backed hardly anything up.... photos and work especially.

(this is also my excuse if I don't write for a bit)

Rasta weekend

So, it was Bob Marley’s birthday this weekend, and I happened to be in Jamaica. Score. As I left the lab Friday, I put on the ‘King of Reggae’ himself on my mp3 player and decided to make it this weekend as rasta as possible. I think I succeeded. I went to two reggae concerts, visited Bob’s house, had vegetarian rasta food all weekend, and stayed over in a rasta guest house before climbing the highest peak in Jamaica. I even am now the proud owner of an understated rasta toiletry bag purchased in the Bob Marley gift shop.

The concerts were jammin – dreads were abundant, songs were about either oppression (mental slavery), religion, or showin your woman some love. There was a lot of people shouting ‘Ayree!’ which I think is like the Jamaican equivalent of a cockney ‘alright!’. Bob’s house was cool – is a museum now. Saw bullet holes from where he was shot at, photos of him when he used to be in a clean cut barbershop-quartet outfit in his early youth, and I even saw his blender. His original blender apparently. And I know his second favourite colours now, thanks to the tour guide – beige and brown. And the rasta food throughout weekend was so good. I may have to revise my opinions on vegans. I even had cornmeal porridge a la No Woman No Cry ('Of which, I'll share witchu...').

Best though was the rasta guesthouse/mountain hike. We set off at 2.30am – as an afterthought he gave me two mini bananas for breakfast, which added up to less than 1 banana. We then proceeded to do an 7 hour hike up and down the hill, with no other rations (not possible), and the mountain was freezing, and I was drenched in sweat(=doubly freezing), and we go there 45min before sunrise so waited curled up in a ball hoping I wouldn’t die. Luckily, some other people came just before sunrise and gave me food. I’ve never been so happy to see a twix and will forever be grateful to that Irish lady. The ridiculousness peaked as we said goodbye, and I realized that I still had a pair of boxer shorts on my head, which I had put there in my frozen desperate state in an effort to keep my wet head warm.

Anyway, I’m alive, just about. No photos as my 5th camera seems to be lost in post from UK, so only had a throwaway. But here are some other music related photos (and videos at end) to link in with the reggae.
(Barbados music festival with friends)

(these steelpan dudes live in the Trinidad airport. Love em)
More Barbados Music festival

Barbados music festival Reggae and Trinidad gospel gang.

Geography lesson

Ok, trying to get an entry in before end of Jan, keeping to my slightly shocking rate of one update a month. This time, at popular request, going to give you some Geography basics of the Caribbean.

First things first, I do not live in Bermuda. It’s not in the Caribbean for a start, but way up by itself in the Atlantic - level where Florida meets the main US. It has a triangle and people disappear there, that’s all I know really. I also do not live in The Bahamas. I’ll let you off for that one, as I was thinking of moving there this year, and it is in the Caribbean, but it is an entirely different country from where I live. ‘The Bahamas’ is a plural, it’s a group of hundreds of islands right up by Florida, in fact a continuation of the Florida land mass. Shakira lives in The Bahamas now (in a tiny wealthy tax haven island), it has sharks, beautiful beaches and is a bit americanised but nice.

Where I live is Barbados. Yes, it also begins with a B (along with 16 other countries in the world), but this does not make it the same. Here is a map. Note the differences, the BaHamas is High, BarBados is Below, and BerMuda is in Middle of nowhere.
Barbados is one tiny island, much closer to South America than Florida, proper south Caribbean. They play cricket here, they have their own money, the accent has a kind of Geordie twang to it, there is good surfing, no sharks, but plenty of turtles. No Shakira unfortunately, but we do have Rihanna, who was born and bred here (with her umbrella), in a slightly dodgy neighbourhood by all accounts. People reminisce occasionally of when she used to be in local talent shows and older people raise their eyebrows at her skimpy outfits today.

Ok, more generally some facts about the Caribbean, as requested by some of you:
- Population: the big hitter islands are Cuba (11m), Dominican Republic (10m) and then unfortunate Haiti (9m). Mid range players are Puerto Rico (3.9M), Jamaica (2.7m), Trinidad (1.3M). The rest are much smaller, all under 500K if not under 200K.
- Languages: So, there are only a few Spanish islands, but they’re big -Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico. Then the big Frenchy one is Haiti, but there are also a few French territories – Martinique and Guadeloupe in particular. The rest are pretty much English speaking, though there are a few tiny Dutch ones too.
- Caribbean non-islands: Guyana, Suriname and Belize, though part of Central American and S America on the map, culturally feel part of the Caribbean, so are included often in this.
- Pirates: there drug smugglers but no more pirates, BUT a certain Mr. Depp and Ms. Knightley were frequenting the islands for quite a while the last few years. In fact, I went to a couple of the islands they filmed in, was beautiful, although pretty remote. It could have got pretty dull spending months filming there.

There are many more facts, so just let me know if you’ve any further things you want to know. I cannot reveal the capital cities though, as I am saving this for pub quizzes when I get back to the UK. And now for some random photos.

Union Island, part of the St Vincent and the Grenadines, population 3000 people! They had a revolution and were independent for 2 days. Visited a friend there on a long weekend

Precarious runway on Union Island, way to close to the sea for my liking, but it works usually. A few years ago, a guy was sucked into the propellers of the plane as he cycled down the runway to wave off his girlfriend, pretty awful...

Tobago Cays - part of Grenadines still. Tiny uninhabited islands, national park. These were where some of pirates of the Caribbean was filmed. There are lots of turtles just hanging out under the water grazing on sea grass.
See giant coolbox at foot of picture. This was full of beer and rum and gin. Pirate like behaviour ensued.
Random sunset from Barbados. Sunset's my favourite time here.