Beach Culture

Beaches in Barbados are varied- from calm waters great for swimming to big waves for surfing.

Accra Beach is on the south shore and is said to be the most popular with tourists and locals alike. It has very calm and clear water almost as if you are standing in a pool. The water is so comfortable, I could have spent hours wading and playing in the ocean. This probably surprises many people who know that I don't like to be more than knee high at the New Jersey shore! You can't see more than a few inches deep in NJ, but in the Caribbean I could be neck deep and still see my toes. You can rent lounge chairs and umbrellas for a very small fee and there are food/drink/craft kiosks right on the beach. There are also restaurants and stores across the street to give relief from the hot sun.


We also took a full day trip to the Malibu Beach Club and Visitor Centre. You get about a 5 hour visit for $40US per person and includes a rum distillery tour, lunch, full use of the beach and amenities, 5 complimentary drinks, and shuttle service. Strangely enough, they don't make Malibu rum at this distillery (even though it's branded Malibu), instead they make Cockspur rum. But we'll get into the rum in a later post. The distillery happens to be at Brighton Beach- which is on the west coast. The water is still calm and clear and there are a lot of jet skiers and boats of all kinds passing by. We even saw horses taking a walk on the beach. There are some vendors selling crafts and dudes selling trinkets or finding riders on their jet skis. But the nice part is that they don't harass you like you would expect. If you kindly tell them no, they say that it's a nice day for whatever you do and leave you alone for the rest of the day.


As a side note, the rum distillery has a quality control laboratory that tests for the purity of the rum. When the tour guide embarassingly fumbled through the words "gas chromatograph", Joe and I took some sideways glances. He's got job options on a tropical island!


Our hotel stay was at Silver Sands beach which is on the southeast coast. Tour books recommend this beach more for the watersports and not so much for the swimming. The water here is more like Jersey, a little choppier and the sand gets whirled around from the waves. You definitely get sand in your shorts if you swim here! Some dude named Brian "DeAction" Talma owns the beach shop on the shore and offers kite surfing and wind surfing rentals and instruction. We watched all the surfers catch air from our cabana and soaked in the lively action.