Busted Knee in Barbados

 After a day at sea we got our first glimpse of the island of Barbados, land ho mateys!

The original European discovery of the island was by a Portuguese explorer named Pedro Campos who dropped in on his way to Brazil in 1536.  It’s believed that he found so many Bearded Fig Trees in his explorations here that he decided to name his discovery “Los Barbados” or “The Bearded One”.  Bridgetown itself was originally a village called Indian River Bridge, then St. Michael’s Town before it got its current moniker.  Locals today just call it “Town”.  The British arrived in 1627 to create a colony that would grow cotton and tobacco, the sugar industry was added in the 1640s. The vibe in this UNESCO city is “a distinctly English character with a laid-back West Indian feel”.

While Karl stuck with his usual dive trip here on Barbados I took a different route and signed up for a Bajan cooking class.  I had no idea what to expect really but figured I'd have a good time with the people who were going and it was something different to try.

Before we left the terminal we found a shop that had tons of beautiful and unique Christmas ornaments made from shells.  Somebody was extremely creative!  Lucky for my friends and I we decided to go ahead and buy ornaments when we saw them, the vendor wasn't there anymore by the time we returned.

Driving on the lefthand side of the road is always a bit disconcerting to me but it didn't feel quite so crazy on a bus as it does in a car.  Our drive to the class wandered through town for around 30-40 minutes.

I'm not sure what I expected when we got there but it definitely was not a food science center, new, clean and sterile, since we were there with "Lick de Bowl" tours.

And then before we could go in where the food was we had to suit up.  I wasn't sure if I was going to cook or perform surgery.  Gloves were added to the ensemble as well.

Our first task was to make the rum punch so that it could chill.  Again, I've no idea how it tasted but the rum smelled good.  My compatriots assured me the finished product was pretty potent.

All of the ingredients for our lamb stew were there ready for us to prepare, meat, vegetables, spices and herbs.

The lamb needed to get simmering first thing after being coated with spices.  We were told by Danica, our chef/teacher there on the right, that we had to "build" the stew, everything had to go in in a certain order to create the flavors.  Some of it was definitely a different order than I normally would have done.

Apparently in Barbados a stew needs a starch to go with it and while you might think that what's in the pot is potatoes I wanted to make sure you knew it was actually breadfruit, a plant brought to Barbados by the infamous Captain Bligh long, long ago.   It was a little trickier to peel and cut up but many hands made light work.

I couldn't help but think of Karl when that massive mixer got pulled out to make our fruitcake batter, talk about industrial strength!  Danica was a little surprised I knew cooking terms like roux, and was glad I stayed with her to help to the end of preparations.

And there we had it, our breadfruit coucou with the lamb stew on top.   The coucou was pretty glutinous but tasty.  The stew was the lamb and the gravy, all the veggies had just been for flavoring for the most part.  It was all delicious, but I don't know if I could ever recreate it!

Since I wasn't drinking rum punch they brought out a local drink called Sorrel, created from the bark of a plant.  It tasted to me like a wassail, only not as citrusy.  I really thought it would taste good warm but I also enjoyed it chilled.  In fact I enjoyed it so much I bought a bottle of it before we left.

Here were Cecilia and I before we tucked in to our meal..and just before taking off our attractive lab coats.

I'm not usually a fan of fruitcake but this one we'd made was really good.  It reminded me a lot of gingerbread in flavor and texture.  We had it warm and it was so scrumptious that I helped myself to a second piece!

I needed a quick picture with cute Danica and her assistant before we left.  She had just completed her Bachelor's Degree in Education with an emphasis on Culinary Arts.  They used to do this class out of their home but had gotten so many requests for it that they had moved it to a bigger venue.

After I returned from my tour Karl met me outside the port, along with our friends Steve and Cathy MacIntyre, so we could do a little exploring by foot in Bridgetown.  We headed off to Queen's Park and on the way saw this crab exodus towards the sea.  All those dots along the conrcete are little crabs, there were dozens of them.

We learned that every year in Barbados there are businesses and schools that sponsor Christmas trees.  Many of them had been done by schools in other Caribbean countries.  They were everywhere downtown and such fun to look at.

I loved the creativity and colors of the ornaments and thinking about the children who had made so many of them.

Just one of the many, many trees we walked by. Old Town and the Barbados Garrison are both UNESCO World Heritage Sites, known for their British Colonial architecture and history. During the 18th and 19th centuries this garrison was the largest in the colonies and in 1780 became the headquarters for the Imperial Forces in this part of the world.  It’s now home to the Barbados Defense Force.  In all honesty a lot of Bridgetown is pretty run down but then there are also parts that are lovely, like our walking destination.

Queen’s Park, which is slightly east of downtown, was formerly the grounds of the home of the commander of the British troops. There's even a former Queen's House on the grounds, so called after Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837 and apparently available for her use if she visited.

More Christmas trees on the grounds here, but the tree we were looking for was an enormous Boabab tree, that's pronounced opposite of what it looks like, with a long "a" sound followed by a long "o" at the beginning and a short "a" at the end.

Here it is in all its massive glory, 90 feet tall with a circumference of 81 feet, very impressive and sitting next to a playground, the park reference to look for to find the tree.

Stories about the origin of the tree differ, one says that the tree was brought to the island by an African slave, another version goes that a seed was blown to the island and that the tree that grew from it is now a thousand years old.  The latter is the one that the signs on site use but I'll leave it up to you to decide which you prefer.

Next is where the busted knee in the title of this post comes from.  Our time was limited to get to the park and back to the ship so Steve set a pretty quick walking pace to make sure we could do it.  Karl's pace got slower and slower as his left knee got more and more painful, he hadn't twisted it, just the walking did it in.  By the time we found the boabab tree he could barely walk and was limping pretty badly from the pain.  After we got our pictures and left the park Steve quickly found a cab, we didn't care that it was unofficial, dented, and that the driver had to move the child's car seat she had in front passenger side, we just needed to get Karl back so he could get that knee up.  Once we got back to port and back on the ship out came the Ibuprofen and Tylenol.  Needless to say our day was pretty much over.  To be continued.....