Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Rockley Beach, St. James Parish, Barbados


We first 'discovered' Rockley Beach on about our sixth visit to Barbados. We spent our first five visits doing ship's excursions or hiring a taxi for an island tour. Barbados is a gorgeous island, not as mountainous as St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Dominica or Grenada, but hilly in the northeast with breathtaking Atlantic seascapes on the eastern coast. We've done ATV and dune buggy tours here, snorkeled with turtles off a catamaran sailboat, and, once, when our ship wasn't departing until 10pm, took a sunset sail that, due to the liberal distribution of liquid libations, I scarcely remember.

Yes, we do love Barbados.

But, as with most islands, the more we visited, the more comfortable we became with striking out on our own.  Barbados made that very easy. As I mentioned the last time we were here, there is a highly organized public bus system that covers most of the beaches on the island's western Caribbean coastline. This time we packed our gear for a beach day, and headed to the port terminal to begin the roughly 20-30 minute walk to the southbound bus terminal in Bridgetown.

We didn't get far before we were approached by a couple from California traveling with their college-aged son. Linda said they approached us because we had confident appearances and seemed to know where we were going. We told her that we planted that look on our faces to barrel our way past the numerous aggressive taxi drivers wanting to take us somewhere...anywhere.

We told them our plans but warned them that it might take us an hour to get there, but they would travel as the locals do and get some exercise too. They were up for the adventure, and traveled with us to Rockley Beach. Once there, we pointed out to them the end of the beach that we enjoy, with lots of palm trees providing natural shade.

Our view for the day was pretty darn nice, but we also took turns playing in the waves with our little inflatable float from Target.

Have I mentioned how much we're loving that thing?

And, yes, that's G in the yellow shirt and Tilley hat. He really does have several of that same shirt, and thank God he does. Not only does it prevent us from being flattened by a car when we're walking along a street, but it makes him very easy to find in a crowd.