Barbados is ringed by azure water and white-sand beaches. Barbados has lush scenery among rolling hills dotted with fascinating survivors of the colonial past. Vast plantation homes show the wealth of European settlers while several botanical gardens exploit the beauty possible from the perfect growing conditions.

After taking-off from Antigua we fly now South via Guadeloupe – Dominica – Martinique to Barbados. Caribbean feeling comes up listening to radio traffic; after the English with Caribbean accent we hear now French, sometimes with an English accent.

Landing in Barbados is perfect, handling, immigration and customs the best so far and we are in the hotel within an hour. The pilots decide to hit the beach whereas the webmaster and Herbie hire a Taxi to explore the island. Along the coast there are tons „For Sale“ signs with houses and villas and there are a lot of abandoned building projects. The recession hit pretty hard here! The center of Barbados is still very agriculture and a lot of sugar cane fields. There are also several national  park areas. Unfortunately everything is closed today (museums, etc.) due to Whit Monday. Even for St. Nicholas Abbey, a former plantation and now home of one of Barbado‘s most famous rums; we are too late. So we go up to Mount Hillaby, the highest point of Barbados and visit an old windmill that was used for the sugar production in the old days. Relaxing at the pool and a dinner at one of the best restaurants on the island.

Barbados is thought to have been originally inhabited by Arawak Indians. By the time Europeans explored the island, however, it was uninhabited. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to set foot on the island, but it was the British who first established a colony there in 1627. Colonists first cultivated tobacco and cotton, but by the 1640s they had switched to sugar, which was enormously profitable. Slaves were brought in from Africa to work sugar plantations, and eventually the population was about 90% black. A slave revolt took place in 1816; slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834.

Barbados was the administrative headquarters of the Windward Islands until it became a separate colony in 1885. Barbados was a member of the Federation of the West Indies from 1958 to 1962. Britain granted the colony independence on Nov. 30, 1966, and it became a parliamentary democracy within the Commonwealth. Since independence, Barbados has been politically stable.