Traditional travel log boredom disclaimer:
If you've read this much of this email you're doing well.  Since you've come so far you might as well continue to the end.

So Barbados.  For the first two days it was warm and wet.  Really really wet.  Every cricket oval on the island was flooded, which basically means the whole island was flooded.  I spent those two days walking through flooded gutters and sleeping at rather incorrect times of the day.  My first night I ended up trying to watch the sunrise through the clouds from some Barbadian stranger's balcony, then getting driven home in a soggy jeep by a drunk Guyanese in a hurry.  'Twas a good start to the holiday.

I met quite a few of the locals early on.  The Bajan's are all very nice, but a lot of them seemed to think I was looking for a bloke named Charlie, or wanted to sell me their lawn clippings.  Almost as prevalent as drug dealers are vendors of aloe vera and dodgy expensive "jewellery".

The beaches were quite nice where I stayed.  Good sand and warm, clear water, but no waves at all.  There was a sign over the steps down to one of the beaches warning "Danger!  Steps out of order".  I managed to navigate these mixed up steps by completely ignoring the order and going down from top to bottom.  I noticed that in the confusion the bottom steps had gone missing altogether.

For the most part Barbados is very expensive, particularly taxis.  Luckily there were the crazy ZR went most places I wanted to gouses.  These are mini buses with a conductor, whose main job was to squeeze in as many people as possible.  No matter how full they might look they can always squeeze six more in.  They also play the music loud, so for the bargain price of $1.50 you get to experience something like a cross between a rave party and the navigator's seat in a rally car, just with someone sitting on your feet.  Very exciting.

The three days of ultimate were great.  It was a good bunch of about 24 people with skills ranging from complete beginner to worlds.  The first day we played on the beach, and the next two days we played with two teams on grass, and mixed them up each day.  This might sound a bit too much like pick-up ultimate, but both days the games were quite competitive.  All quite terrific, but very disappointing for myself to lose the all important last game of the last day by one point.

Other things we did in Barbados were a cruise and some snorkelling, went out until the wee hours drinking rum and getting mobbed by Canadian girls, and spending time in the water.  There's not too much to do in water with no surf.  We found studying the dynamics of throwing an empty beer bottle into the water the most entertaining.  Of course we had to empty the bottles first.  We also perfected the art of bouncing a disc off still water.

And that's my Barbados trip.  I spent the next couple of days in airports, but eventually made it to LA.

Hooray!

Wally