Cognigen Travel Center - ALL INCLUSIVE RESORTS IN BARBADOS

ALL INCLUSIVE RESORTS IN BARBADOS

Bajans like to think of their island as "England in the tropics," but endless pink- and white-sand beaches are what really put Barbados on the map. Although it doesn't offer casinos, it has more than beach life. It's a rich destination for travelers interested in learning about West Indian culture, and it offers more sightseeing attractions than many of the other Caribbean islands.

Barbados is easily reached from the United States and has a grand array of hotels (many of them super-expensive). Although it doesn't offer casinos, it has more than just beach life. It's a terrific destination for travelers interested in learning about West Indian culture, and it offers more sightseeing attractions than most Caribbean islands.

After morning mists burn off to expose panoramas of valley and ocean, the Bajan landscape is one of the most majestic in the southern Caribbean. It's an ideal place to go on lovely driving tours to take in all the little seaside villages, plantations, gardens, and English country churches, some dating from the 17th century.

Barbados is known as "Little England" in the Caribbean. Afternoon tea remains a tradition in many places, cricket is still the national sport, and many Bajans speak with a British accent. Despite this legacy, islanders are weighing the possibility of a divorce from the mother country.

Don't rule out Barbados if you're seeking a peaceful island getaway. Although the south coast is known for its nightlife and the west-coast beach strip is completely built up, some of the island remains undeveloped. The east coast is fairly tranquil, and you can often be alone here (but because it faces the Atlantic, the waters aren't as calm as they are on the Caribbean side). Many escapists, especially Canadians seeking a low-cost place to stay in winter, don't seem to mind the Atlantic waters at all. Not only does the Atlantic Coast have Bathsheba Beach going for it, but it is also home to some of the most visited attractions on the island. These include Andromeda Botanical Garden, Farley Hill National Park, Barbados Wildlife Reserve, and Harrison's Cave.

Although crime has been on the rise in recent years, Barbados is still a relatively safe destination. The difference between the haves and the have-nots doesn't result in the violence seen on other islands like Jamaica. Bajans have a long history of welcoming foreign visitors, and that tradition of hospitality is still ingrained in most locals.

Barbados is the 'Little England' of the Caribbean, but not so much so that the locals have given up rotis for kidney pies, or rum for bitter ale. Bajans, as the islanders call themselves, are as West Indian as any of their neighbours, and have tended to appropriate rather than adopt English customs.

You'll notice this the first time you check out a local cricket match, since the gentlemanly English game has a totally different rhythm here. Nonetheless, there are old stone Anglican churches in every parish, horse races on Saturdays and portraits of Queen Liz hanging on walls.

Tourism is big business on Barbados, and most visitors who come to the island are looking for that comfortable mix of the familiar peppered with just enough local flavor to feel 'exotic'. So if you're looking for a Caribbean island with plenty of amenities, watersports and nightlife, Barbados fits the bill. Travellers wanting to explore undeveloped areas and get off the beaten track should start looking for another island.

Full country name: Barbados
Area: 430 sq km
Population: 264,000
Capital City: Bridgetown
People: African (90%), English, Scottish & East Indians
Language: English
Religion: Protestant (67%), Roman Catholic (4%), none (17%), other (12%)
Government: independent state within the British Commonwealth
Head of State: Governor General Sir Clifford Husbands (representing Queen Elizabeth II)
Head of Government: Prime Minister Owen Arthur

GDP: US$2.9 billion
GDP per capita: US$11,200
Inflation: 2.6%
Major Industries: Tourism, sugar, light manufacturing, component assembly for export, agriculture, fishing.
Major Trading Partners: Caribbean Community (CARICOM), UK, US

Facts for the Traveler

Visas: Visas are required for citizens from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Pakistan, non-Commonwealth African countries and all South American countries except Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. All visitors are officially required to be in possession of an onward or return ticket.
Health risks: dengue fever (Unlike the malaria mosquito, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the dengue virus, is most active during the day, and is found mainly in urban areas, in and around human dwellings. Signs and symptoms of dengue fever include a sudden onset of high fever, headache, joint and muscle pains, nausea and vomiting. A rash of small red spots sometimes appears three to four days after the onset of fever. Severe complications do sometimes occur. You should seek medical attention as soon as possible if you think you may be infected. A blood test can indicate the possibility of the fever. There is no specific treatment. Aspirin should be avoided, as it increases the risk of haemorrhaging. There is no vaccine against dengue fever), diarrhoea (To prevent diarrhoea, avoid tap water unless it has been boiled, filtered, or chemically disinfected (e.g. with iodine tablets); only eat fresh fruits and vegetables if cooked or peeled; be wary of dairy products that might contain unpasteurised milk, and be highly selective when eating food from street vendors. If you develop diarrhoea, be sure to drink plenty of fluids, preferably an oral re-hydration solution containing lots of salt and sugar. A few loose stools don’t require treatment but, if you start experiencing more than four or five stools a day, you should start taking an antibiotic (usually a quinolone drug) and an antidiarrhoeal agent (such as loperamide). If diarrhoea is bloody, or persists for more than 72 hours, or is accompanied by fever, shaking chills or severe abdominal pain you should seek medical attention), intestinal worms (These parasites are most common in rural, tropical areas. The different worms have different ways of infecting people. Some may be ingested on food such as undercooked meat (eg, tapeworms) and some enter through your skin (eg, hookworms). Infestations may not show up for some time, and although they are generally not serious, if left untreated some can cause severe health problems later. Ascaris worm is common in East Africa. Consider having a stool test when you return home to check for worm infestation and determine the appropriate treatment)

Facts for the Traveler

When to Go

The best time to go to Barbados is during the cooler, drier months of late winter and early spring (February to May). Keep in mind that this is also the peak tourist season when prices are higher and places most crowded.

Events

The island's top event is the Crop-Over Festival, which originated in colonial times as a celebration of the sugar cane harvest. Festivities stretch over a three-week period beginning in mid-July. There are spirited calypso competitions and fairs around the island. The festival culminates with a Carnival-like costume parade on Kadooment Day (the first Monday in August).

In February, the Holetown Festival celebrates the 1627 arrival of the first English settlers on Barbados. Holetown's week-long festivities include street fairs, a music festival at the historic parish church and a road race. The Oistins Fish Festival, held over Easter weekend, commemorates the signing of the Charter of Barbados. It's a seaside event focusing on boat races, fish-boning competitions, local foods, crafts and dancing. The National Independence Festival of Creative Arts, held throughout November, features talent contests in dance, drama and singing. Performances by the finalists are held on Independence Day (30 November).

There are also a handful of international sporting events, including the Barbados Windsurfing World Cup, held at Silver Sands in January, and the Caribbean Surfing Championship, held in early November at Bathsheba.

Public Holidays

1 January - New Year's Day

21 January - Errol Barrow Day

March or April - Good Friday, Easter Monday

28 April - Heroes Day

1 May - Labour Day

Eighth Monday after Easter - Whit-Monday

1 August - Emancipation Day

First Monday in August - Kadooment Day

First Monday in October - United Nations Day

30 November - Independence Day

25 December - Christmas Day

26 December - Boxing Day

Money & Costs

Currency: Barbados Dollar

Meals

Budget: B$5-20
Mid-range: B$20-30
High: B$30-50
Deluxe: B$50+

Lodging

Budget: B$40-100
Mid-range: B$100-250
High: B$250-300
Deluxe: B$300+

Comfortable travel on Barbados can easily cost USD250 a day. A moderate budget will fall in the USD100-200 a day range if you hire a car occasionally and don't party too hard. Budget travelers can get by on between US$50 and US$75 a day if they confine themselves to public transport.

You'll want some Barbados dollars for incidentals, but most larger payments can be made in US dollars or with a credit card. Hotels and guesthouses quote rates in US dollars, although you can use either US or Barbadian currency to settle the account. Most restaurants, hotels and shops accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards, and a few also accept the Discover Card. Banks are easy to find in the larger towns and major tourist areas. Most hotels add a 10% service charge.

Attractions

Bridgetown

The capital of Barbados is a busy commercial city set on Carlisle Bay. It's short on must-see sights but certainly worth a saunter. It's an architectural mishmash of modern and colonial, with side streets leading off into residential neighbourhoods sprinkled with rum shops and chattel houses.

True to the island's British heritage, there are obelisks, gothic parliament buildings, and a large Anglican cathedral. More surprising is Bridgetown's distinctive 19th-century synagogue; the first synagogue on this site was built in the 1600s, when Barbados had a Jewish population of more than 300.

Holetown

Founded in the 1620s, Holetown is the oldest town in Barbados, but you'd hardly know it from its modern appearance. Now a major cog in the island's tourism machine, you can still absorb some of the town's history at the 19th-century St James Church.

Folkestone Park fronts a narrow beach where you can picnic, snorkel (there's a sunken barge nearby) when the water is calm or surf when the waves are up. What's more, there's a marine museum in the park with exhibits on fishing and boat building.

Sam Lord's Castle

This limestone coral mansion has an interesting, albeit embellished, history. The mansion was constructed by Sam Lord who, according to legend, hung 'wrecker' lanterns off the point to lure ships onto Cobbler's Reef. The ships thought they were entering a safe harbour, and when they crashed on the reef Lord purportedly went down to collect the cargo.

Although there's little doubt that Lord was a scoundrel, most historians discount the lantern story as folklore. Lord's former home looks like a stately residence rather than a castle and contains a modest collection of paintings and antique furnishings.

St Lawrence

Along the southwest coast of Barbados, there's a cluster of small, low-key towns with excellent beaches and much of the island's low to mid-range accommodations. St Lawrence, about 15km (9mi) southeast of Bridgetown, is Mr Popular, offering plenty of opportunities to chow down or party down.

Dover Beach, the town strand, has powdery white sand. A few minutes' walk west along the beach at low tide brings you to the towns of Worthing and Hastings, which have interesting local crafts and lovely pristine beaches.

Off the Beaten Track

Barbados Wildlife Reserve

A project of the non-profit Barbados Primate Research Center, this reserve is a walk-through zoo that features a colourful array of green monkeys, red-footed turtles, caimans, brocket deer, iguanas and agoutis. The monkeys are the main attraction so make sure you are there to see them being fed in the afternoon.

Flower Forest

About 20km (12mi) northeast of the capital sits the Flower Forest, 20ha (50 acres) of tropical flora and meandering paths on a former sugar estate where you can learn the name of virtually every plant on Barbados. The garden has sweeping views of the Chalky Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean.

A few kilometres south of the Flower Forest is Welchman's Hall Gully, where a trail winds through the island's only remaining rainforest. Nearby Harrison's Cave is a fascinating network of limestone caverns with stalactites and stalagmites, subterranean streams, pools and waterfalls.

Sunbury Plantation House

This atmospheric 17th-century plantation house is the only one on Barbados that can be explored in its entirety. The house has thick stone walls built of local coral blocks and ballast stones from the English sailing ships that picked up shipments of Barbadian sugar.

The interior retains its colonial ambience and is furnished with antiques, many made from Barbadian mahogany. The articulate guides are well-versed in local history, making this the finest plantation tour on the island. Buses from Oistins stop at the house gates.

Activities

The western coast of Barbados has reef dives with soft corals, gorgonians and colorful sponges. There are about a dozen accessible shipwrecks, some - such as the Berwyn in Carlisle Bay - lie at good snorkeling depths. The island has excellent windsurfing conditions from November to June at Maxwell and Silver Sands, and good surfing at the Soup Bowl, South Point and Rockley Beach.

The Barbados National Trust leads weekly guided hikes in the countryside on local history, geology, flora and fauna. You can also arrange horseback riding along the beach at Mullins Bay.

History

The original inhabitants of Barbados were Arawak Indians, who were driven off the island around 1200 AD by invading Carib Indians from Venezuela. The Caribs themselves abandoned Barbados around the time the first Europeans sailed into the region. Although the conditions of the Carib departure are unclear, some historians believe the Spanish might have landed on Barbados in the early 1500s and taken some of the Caribs as slaves, prompting the rest of the tribe to flee to neighbouring islands.

Portuguese explorer Pedro a Campos stopped on Barbados in 1536 en route to Brazil. Though he had no interest in settling the island, it's thought that he introduced pigs to Barbados with the intention of using them as a food source on return voyages. It was Campos who named the island Los Barbados ('the bearded ones'), presumably after the island's fig trees, whose long, hanging aerial roots have a beard-like resemblance.

Captain John Powell landed on Barbados in 1625 and claimed the uninhabited island for England. Two years later, his brother Captain Henry Powell landed with a party of 80 settlers and 10 slaves. The group established the island's first European settlement, Jamestown, on the western coast at what is now Holetown. More settlers followed in their wake and by the end of 1628 the colony's population had grown to 2000.

Within a few years the colonists had cleared much of the native forest and planted tobacco and cotton. They replanted their fields with sugar in the 1640s. To meet the labour demands of the new crop, planters who had previously relied upon indentured servants began to import large numbers of African slaves. Their estates, the first large sugar plantations in the Caribbean, proved immensely profitable, and by the mid-17th century the planters and merchants were thriving.

In 1639, island freeholders formed a Legislative Assembly, only the second such parliament established in a British colony (Bermuda was the first). Barbados was loyal to the Crown during Britain's civil wars and, following the beheading of King Charles I in 1649, Oliver Cromwell dispatched a force to establish his authority over Barbados. The invading fleet arrived in 1651 and by the following year Barbados had surrendered and signed the Articles of Capitulation, which formed the basis for the Charter of Barbados. The charter guaranteed government by a governor and a freely elected assembly, as well as freedom from taxation without local consent. When the British Crown was restored in 1660, this charter ironically provided Barbados with a greater measure of independence from the English monarchy than that of other British colonies.

The sugar industry continued to boom into the next century, even after abolition. Emancipation came in 1834 but failed to solve the poor living conditions of black islanders. Virtually all the island's arable land remained in the hands of large estates, and most former slaves had few options other than to stay on the plantations. Those who did leave often ended up in shanty towns.

During the economic depression of the 1930s, unemployment shot upwards, living conditions deteriorated and street riots broke out. As a consequence, the British Colonial Welfare and Development Office was established, providing sizeable sums of money for Barbados and other Caribbean colonies. To counter growing political unrest, the British reluctantly gave black reformers a role in the political process. One of those reformers, Grantley Adams, became the first premier of Barbados a decade later and was eventually knighted by the queen.

Barbados gained internal self-government in 1961 and became an independent nation five years later. As the sugar industry declined after WWII, tourism steadily increased its share of the island's economy. By the early 1990s it was the largest sector, and the sugar industry was in receivership.

Barbados in recent times has been a peaceful kind of place that doesn't make too many waves, so to speak. International incidents tend to be rather humble affairs - at least superficially - as was the case in December 2001, when the PM threatened trade retaliation when Trinidad arrested two fishermen. A similar flare-up in February 2004 caused Barbados to take the case to a UN-backed tribunal. Barbados, like many of its neighbours, was included on an OECD list of 35 countries accused of being uncooperative tax havens. A clean-up of its banking system led to its removal from the list in 2002.

Culture

Aside from its Portuguese name, very little Latin influence remains on Barbados. Its position in the Windwards made the island relatively safe from invasion, leaving British culture to incubate here for nearly 400 years. The chief example of this is the Bajan national sport, if not the national obsession: cricket. On a per capita basis, Bajans boast more world-class cricket players than any other nation. One of the game's best ever all-rounders was Barbados native Garfield Sobers, who was knighted in 1975. Another local cricket hero, Sir Frank Worrell, appears on the face of Barbados' five-dollar bill.

Despite the British influence, West Indian culture is strong in family life, food and music. Calypso artist the Mighty Gabby, whose songs on cultural identity and political protest speak for emerging black pride throughout the Caribbean, is from Barbados. It's not really surprising that Barbados is fertile ground for such voices since it still suffers from a history of racial segregation and discrimination by the white minority against the black majority.

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