Sunday, January 12 - Georgetown, Barbados

 Sunday morning means champagne and caviar at breakfast.  Michael has a glass of champagne and I have the little caviar serving.  We had a tour scheduled for 4-1/2 hours which included rum tasting.  In looking at the offerings I saw that we could do an identical tour an hour earlier without the tasting for 3-1/2 hours.  We took our tickets down to the check-in at the theater to see if we could get on the earlier tour.  At the desk there was a couple who wanted to do the exact opposite, so they just swapped our tickets. Sometimes timing is everything.  Before boarding the bus, we had to sign some kind of a waver with the tour company.  Of course, no one took the time to read it on the iPad, so who knows what we just agreed to.  Then it was off on a bus ride/tour to Harrison's Cave Eco-Adventure Park where we boarded an electric tram down in the cave for an hour tour.  It wasn't as cold as I expected and was actually rather warm at times due to the high humidity (97%) and warm temp of 78 degrees.  We had to wear hard hats for some reason, but all that fell on us was lots of dripping water.  It was much better than the caves we toured in Japan where at times we had to get down on our hands/knees to get through narrow openings.  Harrison's has been in operation for 40+ years and they keep adding to it.  I was surprised at how clean and modern it is.  Ziplining, a small swimming pool, a nature walk, and an aviary are available.  You can also do a self-tour of a small area dedicated to the history of rum and do the tasting of the local Mount Gay rum (included in the tour we didn't do).  

First comes the protective covering

Then comes the stylish hard hat

One of the three sections of the tram

Barbados is not a volcanic island, so it isn't as lush as most of the Caribbean islands.  But their water is very clean and abundant since it is filtered through the limestone that makes up the island.  They have enough to actually sell to cruise ships.  We saw lots of solar water heaters on houses, and some commercial buildings had solar energy panels.  Harrison's is run off of their solar panels and they sell the excess to the island grid.

We got back after 2 pm so did a quick stop at the poolside buffet for a salad to tide us over until dinner.

Trivia was great!  It was only Roger and us - not sure what happened to Bo and Bob and Alice seems to have joined another group.  But the three of us managed to score 14/15 to get the first place points.  There were 5 or 6 other teams who had that score also mind you, but we'll take it.

Tonight we had dinner reservations at Prime 7 (the steak restaurant) at a sharing table.  We dined with Bob and Lily from Southern California and Don and Jean from Kirkland, WA.  Bob is a retired internal medicine doctor and Don and Jean still ride their bikes on group tours and ski downhill.  Amazing.  They were delightful and we had a wonderful dinner together.  We've certainly been lucky with our dining companions.