It was overwhelming at first, but now the sort moves smoothly. List on Marketplace. Pack for BC. Give to charity. Leave for next tenant. Paddle boards back to Mary. Give spices to Neil, so he can practice after the cooking lesson I gave him last week. Drop off memory foam, coffee grinder and drying rack … Continue reading Leaving Barbados
“Your fourth year in Barbados! You are living the dream!” Well, yes. It is pretty amazing. But I often feel that people are picturing us on vacation all the time, just multiplying their tropical holiday by 20. When you live here you experience a lot that someone visiting might not even notice. Storm is past … Continue reading Living in a Tropical Paradise: the Flip Side
How do you evoke a Caribbean paradise, without sounding like a thousand other descriptions of a hundred different islands? Your table is waiting. ✔️ Warm tropical breezes?✔️ Sandy beaches lapped by turquoise water? ✔️ Hot tropical sun, then a sudden shower of rain, soon over?✔️ Palm trees and lush flowering shrubs?✔️ Quaint fishing villages?✔️ Beach … Continue reading Grenada: Another Caribbean Paradise
“Scott! Look at this! It was made in Barbados!” I’m holding up a leotard/unitard/one piece shorty exercise outfit. Exuberant tropical flowers, red, orange, pink, are splashed large across a white background. What’s surprising is not so much that it was made in the country we now live in, but that I’d bought it 25 years … Continue reading Beautiful Barbados Broad
We took our friend Richard to the airport. We’ve been neighbours for a year and a half; we’ve shared a rental car for a year. We would walk into each other’s houses after yelling a token “knock knock!” would see each other almost daily on the water, surfing, and would get together for drinks and … Continue reading Coming Back to Barbados?
The DNA results came back. I’m 100% Finnish. It was a surprise— I expected some Swedish, maybe a little Russian. Family myth had that there was some Roma in the bloodlines. Yup. No measurable amount of anything but Finnish. I’m 100% Canadian. I was born there, educated there, from kindergarten to all three of my … Continue reading 100% Finnish. 100% Canadian. Or Bajan?
BANG! The car started veering so I looked for a place to pull over— not so easy on Maxwell Main Road. Fortunately there was a wide sidewalk in front of one house so I drove onto it and got out to look at the damage. What had I hit? It could have been a deep … Continue reading I’m Glad It’s a Rental: Driving in Barbados
“Wow,” messaged Ruochen, a former student who had just seen my blog. “There’s a lot of content!” It’s true. As I write this post, on December 2, 2021, the third anniversary of my first post, it is my 120th. I started my blog as writing practice, and it was supposed to be a travelogue for … Continue reading Welcome to Brave Travels!
The five of us walked into the beach bar after pulling our paddleboards above the waterline and digging face masks out of our dry bags. “Wow, we watched you come in,” said a man at the waterside table. “We’ve mostly just seen people falling in all day. You are impressive!” I was secretly pleased, because … Continue reading Barbados Paddle Board Adventures
“I’m heading home.” But what does that mean? It’s a fundamental question for me right now. Sometimes I solved it by putting air quotes around “home.” Other times I avoided it altogether by specifying: back to Canada, back to Barbados. Which way is the plane facing, when I’m going home? I thought Canada, my home, … Continue reading Home After a Year— or After a Month?
Brave Travels 