Sam's Letter Misfortune Bad Bajans! History and Transportation Housing Fauna Submarine Trip Croton Inn Not-so-good Tour Good Tour		Real Tourist Sight-Seeing I send these out whenever I have a chance so I'm never quite done with them. So I'd like to tell you a few more things about Croton Inn. Except when Harry is playing steel pan, the music in the bar is American jazz CDs from Tyrone's extensive collection. Very nice, not rap, not rasta, not schlock. Oh, and Tyrone's last name is Stoute. (StCente -- not that far off, trying to read that English schoolboy hand writing). And the older cynical cook is his mother, who apparently only helps with pudding and souse at this point. And the younger cook is not very young, just kinda servile. And the maid is an Indian (Amerind I mean) from Guana in the Bahamas (north of Cuba) The "real" tour I took on Monday was through a tour company, Williams Tours, one of the oldest on the island. The rate was good, $100 BDS ($50 US) for a half day tour, half of the money for admission to the facilities; half for the driving around. There were only five of us and we had an excellent tour guide, Kim, a single mother of two, a former basketball player who knew about all there was to know about basketball teams in the U.S. Guess what? I didn't tell her I was from Portland. How far have we sunk?* The first stop was Harrison's Cave. Although it gets pretty short shrift in most of the guide books, other than saying it's Barbados' "most famous site," it is spectacular, I learned a lot about the formation of Barbados, information I didn't find anywhere else. It seems that although the ring of islands that is the West Indies was formed mostly by volcanic action, Barbados, a significant distance east of that atoll-looking ring, was not. The lecture went back to Pangaea, hope I have the essentials right. (If not, our resident geologist, Sheila, will let me know and then I'll tell you.) When the single large continent of Pangaea split up, the Atlantic plate and the Caribbean plate did some serious creaking and smashing for millions of years. In the valley formed by the two overlapping plates, coral built up, turned to limestone and continued to build. Several tectonic pushes began lifting the land mass above the water, first forming the hilly northeast area in Barbados known as the Scotland Distict and, eventually, pushing the lower land mass up above sea level to form the island, only 60,000 years ago. This series of caves has been carved out of the limestone by dripping water and running streams. It's extremely damp in the caves, but there is an astonishing array of stalactites and stalagmites of all sizes. Our guide said the stalactites cling "tight" to the ceiling and the stalagmites stand "mightily" or somesuch nonsense. Of course we all know the way to remember is "when the mites run up, the tights come down." Access to the caves appears to be designed for the cruise ship set--a multi-seat tram that drives you around, stopping at strategic spots for pictures--but it seems okay. Also, they're designing an "adventure tour" where you get to crawl in the original opening, and apparently fall into the 8 foot lake the way the discoverers did. I would have passed on that even it had been available. The other cool thing I learned was this. The temperature of every cave in the world is the average annual temperature of its surrounding countryside. In Barbados it's 78 degrees Farenheit. In Belize, it's a bit warmer; the caves I "crawled" in my high school days in South Dakota were, understandably, downright chilly. Out next stop was Orchid World, set on a hill in the middle of fields of sugar cane. There are thousands of orchids and at any given visit at least a quarter of them will be in bloom so you can't go wrong. Not being a flower writer, I can't begin to do this justice. There are many styles, sizes, colors, from all over the world. Air orchids that usually grow on the top of the forest canopy have been "planted" tied to fencing, others that grow down a bit into the folaige are raised under netting to simulate the light they like best. Anyone who has read or seen "The Orchid Thief" or, for that matter, the Brenda Starr, girl reporter comic strip, knows that a large percentage of orchid fanciers are nuts. Put one in this garden and they would never come out. Our guide Kim also told us lots of interesting things about the country and the country-side and took us on a few little side trips. One was to Gun Hill, one of six (I think) signal stations established by the sugar plantation owners after Barbados' first and only slave revolt in 1816. The plan was to be able to signal by flags and lanterns to alert the garrison in Bridgetown if they needed help. The stations were abandoned with the arrival of the telephone in 1887, but Gun Hill was restored by the national historic trust in the 1980s. Just down the hill is "The Lion of Gun Hill" a larger-than- life (but not by much) British military statement carved of limestone. It's worth a look too. Most important to me, on this and the Sunday sprint, I got to look at some of the countryside and learn some things not in the guide books. They actually have a dairy here and all the fresh milk is local, but they don't make cheese. They don't import sugar (of course), peanuts or coconut. They import wheat and grind it here, and bake a lot, not all, of the bread and rolls that are consumed. Probably import very few cucumbers and yams from the looks of the roadside stands. Pretty much everything else has to come in. The county seems just ripe for some row crop subsidies, even other tropical plants like pineapple (well, that's a row crop too). Um, mangos and papayas and avocados, all those things tourists expect to find in the tropics. There were a few fields of tomatoes and cabbages, but nothing on a very large scale. And I saw a field of cotton badly in need of picking. Speaking of cotton, I took a taxi whose horn played "Oh, I Wish I Was (in de land ob cotton)." Pretty sure the driver doesn't wish that. As a matter of fact I was talking to (listening to) a man at the bus stop the other day who said that he thought class-consciousness was becoming a real problem in Barbados. The current middle class professionals he said, come from a background in which their parents were domestics or sugar cane truck drivers, but they now refuse to acknowledge it, and refuse to associate with people currently holding such jobs. An article in the paper last week talked about the effort to diversify the agricultural base (away from sugar cane) and concluded that it wasn't possible because no one wanted to do the work. With an unemployment rate of about 10%, surely something could be worked out. But, it must not be seen as a big problem, because Barbados certainly seems to solve them when they need to. Health care is free, education is free. The water and sewer systems in this parish are being re-worked in anticipation of the cricket World Cup in 2007. They've attracted enough investment money to beef up the number of luxury hotel rooms for that event, the cricket field itself is getting a total makeover. So, I guess I'll leave their priority- setting alone. So I guess this is a wrap. I'm not sure Barbados is a place I would be anxious to return to. Although I would if opportunity offered an easy way to do it, of course. p.s. Here's a tid-bit for the proofers, which the rest of you will find too geeky for words (that's why it's a p.s.). In written British English, commas and periods are always outside the quote marks. Thus: The Constable said, "Don't give me that attitude". Takes a little getting used to. Hope the VP is going well. *Remember, this was a time when our boys were known as the "Jail Blazers" and with good reason.