Better Late Than Never: Sandy Lane gets its own Crop Over

"SANDY LANE'S MARIO LINSKEE ALLEYNE proved too hot to handle with a performance worthy of the Party Monarch crown, when the five-diamond resort hosted its all-inclusive Crop-Over Lime at the Old Nine Clubhouse for its coaches and champions (management and staff) last weekend...."

Click here for NationNews.com article.

First, It Was Conrad - Now Rihanna & Chris Land On Paynes Bay

This blogger is not much of a celebrity fan but it would be a mistake for a blog purporting to over the west coast of Barbados not to mention that two of the leading lights of the pop music scene were recently in our neck of the woods. That’s right, Rihanna herself recently vacationed in her homeland, Barbados, with her famous ‘just friend,’ Chris Brown. I don’t know where they stayed but by now probably all of their fans around the world have heard about Paynes Bay because that’s where they were photographed frolicking on the sand and sea. One would have thought that with their money and celebrity they would have gravitated to the more upmarket beach just a few yards to the north - Sandy Lane - whatwith all the Louis Vutton and/or Yves St. Laurent luggage, etc., that Rihanna was spotted with at the airport. From the photos now making the rounds on the Internet it looks like the couple had fun although Rihanna looked more pensive (some might say apprehensive) than Chris. Be that as it may, Paynes Bay probably has not had such wide exposure since the Cubana air disaster off its shores in the 1970s or even the day ‘Conrad, the duppy’ landed there and immortalized the beach and himself.

AirOne Still Standing By For Takeoff

"AirOne Ventures Limited, which bills its yet-to-be-named airline as the Caribbean's first low-budget carrier, says that it will begin service to nine regional and United States destinations between March to April 2009.

Fares will be as low as US$10 but on average 40-70 per cent cheaper than existing airlines, said Airone commercial director Tara Playfair during an interview with Business Observer yesterday..."

Click here for entire interview.

Did Jesus Play Beach Cricket?

This blogger certainly played and enjoyed it as a boy, and we know Prince Edward enjoyed it on the west coast four years ago, or at least appears that way in this NationNews.com photo, although he is holding the bat a little funny; but did Jesus also play beach cricket? Since the Da Vinci Hoax, oops, 'Code' more and more smarter people have come to the recognition that not everything you read in books is true, particularly "old" books. Such may be the case in this latest claim that Jesus also played cricket on the beach.

For the record, this blogger believes in the historical Jesus and the traditional Christian understanding of his life and ministry. However, I also believe that he had a normal childhood and could have played a game similar to cricket as a boy. With that caveat and for what it is worth I post the following excerpts from The Age:

"It is possible that cricket, a game venerated all over the Commonwealth, is older than currently thought. In fact, Jesus may very well have played the game (or a similar bat and ball contraption) as a child himself, according to an ancient Armenian manuscript."

"Dr Abraham Terian, recently a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, points to a rare manuscript as his source.

He notes that in the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy, translated into Armenian in the 6th century from a much older lost Syriac original, a passage tells of Jesus playing what may well be the precursor of cricket, with a club and ball."

""Jesus is instructed to watch Israel's house and not leave the place while the master goes away on a tour to collect clothes to be dyed. But no sooner has Israel left the house, than Jesus runs out with the boys,'' Terian says.

"The most amazing part of the story of the nine-year-old Jesus playing a form of cricket with the boys at the sea shore, is that he would go on playing the game on water, over the sea waves.''"

Read entire article here.

Coconut Wildies

The west coast still has its fair share of bird life even with the steady loss of tree cover on the shoreline and elsewhere to make way for vacation condos and villas. You can still spot the busy hummingbird and the occasional gaulin out fishing on a mossy reef. Then there are the ubiquitous sparrows (some might say finches) and blackbirds that have grown so bold that sometimes it has become quite a task keeping them out of homes and hotel restaurants. Making a comeback from near extinction is one of the larger birds seen on the west coast, the Ramier Pigeon, which Bajans call 'wildies.' The pair in the photo above [click photo to enlarge] built their nest in the coconut tree they are sitting on but lost two of their young which tumbled to the ground in high winds from the nest they weren't quite ready to leave. It is interesting to watch the antics of this species but you don't want to be under it when nature calls, or as some suspect, when it commands nature.

Black Bess - Green Golf Resort In the Making

click image to enlarge
One of my chief complaints over the last few years as a blogger trying to cover tourism development on the west coast has been the complete lack of information on the web or anywhere else on almost all of the largest projects in the area. I have contended that it contributes to the sense of alienation and distrust on the part of locals and the sense that their homeland is being stolen right from under their noses. More often than not the press releases and plans for these developments were appearing in overseas media (mostly British) long before anything appeared the locally or some enterprising blogger or journalist (mostly the former) caught on to what was going on. This is why I welcome the virtual treasure trove of information the development at Black Bess has recently dumped on the web.

This is indeed a refreshing departure from the norm of how business is done in Barbados since it is the most complete set of plans this blogger has seen for any tourism development project on the island. There is almost too much detail. What stands out is the attention and emphasis being placed on the environment. Indeed, in the humble opinion of this blogger, if they only succeed in keeping half their promises, Black Bess would still be a shining example of a green resort not only in Barbados but throughout most of the rest of the region. Of particular note is the plan to use wind power to pump water from a huge manmade lake to irrigate the golf course. The windmills would be an interesting 'back-to-the-future' for Barbados which is still dotted with the walls of scores of windmills used in the production of sugar and pumping of potable water since the 17th century.

It is doubtful many locals will ever catch a glimpse of this new generation of windmills since the Black Bess resort is so secluded and off the beaten path. Only a small portion of the Banyan Tree section of the resort is visible from the highway peeking over a steep cliff overlooking the west coast. Plans call for Banyan Tree to open by the end of the year but it would take nothing short of a miracle for that to happen given the rumors circulating about the project’s cash flow situation. In any event even if the other sections of the sprawling 360-acre resort never get built, Banyan Tree with only 47 pool-villas (less than half the hotel rooms of Sandy Lane and the upcoming Four Seasons) will definitely redefine luxury in Barbados.

Lancaster Shenanigans

We have known for about a year (at least this blogger covered it last November) of the expansion plans of Royal Westmoreland to a 750-acre golf resort with the purchase of the adjoining Lancaster Plantation in St. James, Barbados, including adding another golf course and clubhouse, 250 more villas, an upscale shopping mall, and perhaps also a 5-star hotel. Well, a strange thing happened last Friday, July 25, 2008, the Lancashire Evening Post out of the city of Preston in England carried a story titled “Tycoon tees up plans to create golf resort” covering the Lancaster expansion plans of Royal Westmoreland as if they were all announced last week for the first time.

Don’t laugh yet! If we are charitable enough to say that the Lancashire Evening Post isn’t too quick, we would also have to say that the architects Royal Westmoreland have hired to design the Lancaster expansion aren’t too bright (well, at least their PR staff anyway).


(click image to enlarge)

On their “In The News” page on their website (see screenshot above) they quoted verbatim from the article in the Lancashire Evening Post (Preston, England) but curiously cited the quote from the “Lancaster Evening Post (Lancaster, England)” [emphasis supplied]. Mercifully, the hyperlink takes the reader to the correct web address. Let’s all hope that the architects themselves do a better job on the Lancaster expansion in Barbados than their PR people did with "Lancashire" on the World Wide Web.

Now, this blogger realizes that this booboo may or may not be partially blamed on an "American" spell-checker, but still it is not like the PR people had more "big" news in July 2008 to report. One would have thought they had more than enough time to get their one and only news item for the entire month right? Laugh now!

Meanwhile, and I am not sure if this isn't another shenanigan but it is certainly no laughing matter if you are looking to get your hands on one of those fancy new villas or apartments at RW. According to their new interactive sales map of the estate be prepared to fork over between ½M - 7M USDs. Ouch!

Has The Sun Set On Sunset Crest?

They were state-of-the-art when they were completed in the late 1960s and early 1970s to house the influx of Canadian visitors who could not get enough of our shores. The concept was simple - build a village of vacation cottages on an old sugar plantation and rent them out to the Canadian snowbirds for a few weeks at a time. It seemed to work for a while, in fact, it transformed Holetown from a sleepy little backwater into the dynamo it is today at the center of tourism on what has come to be called the Platinum Coast. But something happened on the way the bank - Suntours, the Canadian outfit behind the project went belly-up.

From that time onwards the cottages and apartments at Sunset Crest have had some serious challenges. Many of them were sold off as residences to locals as well as visitors to the island. Some were purchased as tourism investments and many of these have sadly fallen into disrepair. The area itself has seen probably more than its fair share of criminal and other dubious activity. An acquaintance who rented an apartment there last year moved out after a few months after it became clear that the apartment above hers was really a brothel, and it did not help when its clients were knocking in error on her door all hours of the night.

Another acquaintance bought several apartments which were then pooled with others through a tourism rental agency. Not only did this acquaintance make no money on the venture, but was finally forced to sell because of the high cost of the agency’s frequent and suspected unnecessary maintenance and the lost of furniture and other appliances which the agency was farming out to other apartments in the pool that were in better repair to meet its guest demand. Heavy rains still create havoc in the area as most of the houses were built flat on the ground in a known flood-prone area.

The ongoing spate of hotel and restaurant closings on the West Coast together with the whole movement to condos and apartments demonstrate how unpredictable and indeed dynamic the business of tourism can be. Just because the objects we see today are set in stone is no guarantee they will be there tomorrow. The lesson in it all for the rest of us locals and visitors looking on is to be as adaptable and as flexible as the changes we see, for in the age of globalization the world is rapidly running out of options just the way we like them, for those options have all become as mercurial as the crest of a sunset.

West Coast Restaurant Update Needed

Click here to read post.

Barbados TravelAdvisor: The Dubaification Of Barbados: Road to riches or Faustian bargain?

Barbados TravelAdvisor: The Dubaification Of Barbados: Road to riches or Faustian bargain?