The existential crisis kicked off by COVID and the current state of the world had me thinking I needed to get out. I tried planning a trip to Fiji (which fell through due to not enough vacation time let to absorb all the travel-time) and then Belize (which I just wasn't feeling). So I opted to just pick a random place. I figured "eastern-most island in the West Indies" was good, so off I went.

"Off seasons" in tourist destinations occur for a number of reasons: the school year of nearby tourists, rain/hurricane season... and apparently for Barbados: too-damn-hot. My dive guide, David, said that this was the hottest September he remembers with the worst Sargasso seaweed. Luckily the seaweed problem was just at the shore (so no problems diving), and actually mostly cleared up halfway thru my stay.

I went with a nice easy schedule of 2 days of morning dives, a 4x4 tour of the island, 2 more days of diving, then a walking food tour of Bridgetown. It fit perfectly with my desire to just unplug and chill. Frankly, lots of sitting on the beach reading and having a few drinks. Exactly what i was after.

The diving was all pretty shallow (mostly 40') and not particularly remarkable. Some nice reefs, plenty of fishes, eels, and turtles. It was turtle nesting season so lots of turtles hanging around (which David said was a problem because of all the seaweed on the beaches was making it hard for the turtles to come lay eggs, the seaweed on the worst days was literally a foot deep and 4 feet wide). Also the first time I'd ever seen a flying gurnard... they're not uncommon, so maybe I'd seen one before but don't recall.

Overall a fantastic stay at Bougainvillea Barbados. The resort was fabulous, but the only drawback is it was like one mile walk to get to restaurants. Diving with David at Seahorse Divers was lots of fun. I much prefer small dive operations.

Barbados Compilation