monkey time

So as you should know, I recently went on a Caribbean cruise. Our first port of call was Bridgetown, Barbados. Now, if you're unfamiliar with the way cruises work, they have activities you can purchase for each port. Royal Caribbean calls them Excursions, or sometimes Explorations. Our excursion for Barbados was a 4x4 ride with a monkey encounter type thing. We weren't really sure what to expect, and the description didn't guarantee we'd see any monkey's on the trip, but we wanted to give it a shot.

So we got to the meeting point and there were these yellow jeep looking things, and some tour guides standing around. One of the guys was quite the character and started chatting with the crowd. It was clear to me that this guy was either going to be the best guide, or worst, but no in-between. So when they started dividing us up into smaller groups, we managed to get in his group. And thank goodness we did; he was a delight. The tour turned out to be unbelievably fun, and much of it was thanks to his guidance and commentary on Barbados.

And boy did we see some monkeys. In the preserve they were everywhere. They weren't necessarily afraid of humans, but they weren't to be treated as domesticated. You also had to be careful if you were standing for any period of time. They told us to look down at our feet before we took our first step, because more than likely there was a monkey down there now. One guy got chased a little by one when he accidentally stepped on a tail!

After the preserve, we got a tour of the island, which was very informational. On the drive back traffic was starting to get bad (relatively bad.. for Barbados), so they decided to take us on a shortcut. This shortcut was basically a dirt road through some fields, and although it was a lot of fun, we hit some pretty serious mud and everyone got all muddy. My shirt from that day might be salvageable, but only after 3 or 4 washes. I'd say it was worth it though.