The perfect way to spend a day in Barbados

Well it’s all about the sea out here isn’t it? The cool water of the Caribbean. You can either sit on the beach and watch it or you can get in it. And swim / jet ski / lie on a Catamaran. Or do what we do.

Go on a glass bottomed boat and spent the day sitting in the sun drinking rum whilst you peer at the homes of the rich and famous or jump off it and swim with turtles.

And yesterday we did just that with our mate Marvin and another family we have met whilst here. That’s other thing about this place, you strike up friendships very easily and within hours of meeting it feels perfectly natural to say “wanna come and spend the day with us on Friday”. It is another part of what makes this a great place to come on holiday.

So off we set with a cool box of drinks and a bag of sandwiches, two bottles of Factor 30 and our new snorkels.

Marvin pulled the boat on to the beach for us and then it was up to us to set our own agenda

Note there is not soul on that beach. 10.30am and the beach is deserted, as so many of them often are.

Marvin had also brought along essentials for our trip:

We got to swim with turtles, lots of turtles, so close you could touch them

So close we could feed them by hand:

We dodged the rain a couple of times (what does it matter, you are wet anyway) and as we cruised along Marvin fished and we helped land them:

Little M at the age of 6 and the youngest member of our crew was the best fisherman on board! She caught lots and wasn’t afraid to hold them to proudly show off to her mum. Nothing came close, however, to a small fishing boat we saw just in front of us. Marvin could tell from the way the boys on board were pulling that they had landed “a big one”. And he wasn’t wrong.

Look at the size of this bad boy. They thought it was about 100lbs. Caught with a stick with fishing line around it. No fancy rod and no fancy boat. Two guys in a small rowing boat and this fish was the width of the boat.

They had been out for just two hours and had caught that one and a cool box full of snapper. “You want a couple for dinner?” Did we! At about £3 each we couldn’t refuse. And Marvin obliged with the gutting and filleting so the turtles could have the left overs.

And then it was back to the turtles. And cooling down by jumping off the roof of the boat. And drinking rum. And trailing our feet in the sea. And saying “ooh the bloke who owns Matalan owns that one” or “that one is Trevor Eve’s”. And getting burnt. Ahem. Yes, some of us got a tad burnt.

It was quite possibly the best day we have ever had.