masons-bajan-adventure

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Post-Travel Reflection - 01/21/2019

Being back at school for a couple days has given me a lot of clarity on the two wonderful weeks I spent in Barbados.

For one, it is a hell of a lot colder in Pennsylvania than it is in the Caribbean, coming as a surprise to no one. But it has been brutal the past few days, and going from weather in the low-80s to weather in the mid to high-teens is definitely a system shock.

On a much bigger scale however, it had been a couple days back at school of comparing and contrasting. When I talk to friends about their breaks, I get a few lines of highlights followed by "yeah, I basically did nothing."

While I can say that there were a few weeks of my break where I didn't do much besides catching up on sleep, catching up with friends, or catching flak for trying to skip out on chores at my house, I definitely can't say that I did nothing this winter break.

Barbados was an amazing, and (I hate to say it because it's so cliche) frankly life-changing experience. I experienced so much stuff! Culture, history, the importance of fine spirits, farming, island biogeography, the geologic history of a coralline island, and the ethnobotany of an entire island with a rich history of AmerIndians, enslaved western Africans, and folk-tradition of native Bajans. Going to Barbados has somehow reaffirmed everything I've figured out in the last few years when it comes to the question: "What do I want to be when I grow up?"

While in Barbados, we met so many amazing professors and educated people on all of the things we learned in the classroom environment, and every second on the island made it feel Real!

That's not typically something I get to experience. It's one thing to hear that Juniata provides students with classes on how to think and not what to think, but it's an entirely different experience to have accomplished professionals pick up on the fact that our ragtag team of college students actually gave a damn about what they were learning. Even on a tropical island surrounded by rum and beaches.

Many years down the line of paying back my academic debt, I will make a payment at some point that represents the money invested in the Plants, People, and Creole Culture course, and I will know that I wouldn't give up those experiences for the world.

The impressions of the time I spent with friends, established and new, with professors, Juniata and otherwise, and simply immersed in the world around me will stick around for a very, very long time.

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Final Tour, Foursquare Rum, and Freaky Phenomena: Day 12 - 01/13/2020

Today reperesented the final full day for the trip, and by god, did we carpe the diem.

We were up and at 'em this morning by 9:15, and we started the day by driving up to UWI Cave Hill Campus proper to start our final tour with Tony as interpreter.

The first stop this morning was a monument on campus called Quaw's Quest. A simple, black-painted, carved-wood bust of a man with stereotypically African features, Quaw's Quest doesn't attract much attention. In fact the overview of the Caribbean side of the island behind the statue probably attracts more attention from students and visitors.

In actuality, the bust is an important memorial marker for the entire campus area, as Cave Hill sits atop what was once the property of several different plantation estates, and that were once home to 295 enslaved people, some of whom were born in Barbados, and some of whom, like Quaw, were shipped in from African through the middle passage in droves.

The monument, besides providing information on Quaw William's life, also showcases 4 panels on the overlook that depict model ledgers, containing the names of Quaw, and the other 294 slaves that once lived where the college now stands.

Much like every other part of the island, finding out about land use history was incredibly sobering, and knowing that 295 people worked away their lives in squalor and under abusive conditions where an institution of higher learning now sits is somehow simultaneously frightening and uplifting, as a large percentage of the Cave Hill campus (80% if I remember correctly from Dr. Carrington's speech) of the student body is Bajan. These students are going to university atop the ruins of a society where many of them would not have even been allowed a higher education could they buy their way out of slavery, and I don't think there's a better analogy of determination and will that exists.

After Quaw's Quest, we went to Queen's Park in Bridgetown to see one of the most awe-inspiring sights if this trip. Maybe it's not as beautiful as the Caribbean sea or some of the outstanding wildlife we've witnessed on the island, but seeing a 300-year-old more-than-30-feet-around generally-regarded-as-African Baobab in the middle of a city park was insane, and I never thought I would get to see one, haha.

After we were done staring in wonder

(and getting a bunch of pictures)

Tony began to interpret for us, and talked about how it was most likely planted in the mid-1700s because it's roughly the same size as another baobab on the island that was planted at that time, and how it was a source of food, water, and a site of spiritual importance in many West African traditions, and how some of these were also probably the case in local communities in Barbados, even up to the modern day.

After a speech on the phallic nature of Christmas trees and it's adoption as a western symbol of fertility and rebirth, we said our goodbyes to Tony and navigated halfway across the island for lunch at Cutters Deli, home of Barbados' "Number 1 Rum Punch."

As Dr. Muth would put it, the "self-proclaimed, Number 1 Rum Punch."

I will admit that the Rum Punch ranks as one of my favorite on the island so far, thanks in part to a healthy shaving of fresh nutmeg, and a good balance of sweet, sour, and strong. However, it was overshadowed by the restaurant's far-overpriced food (I paid $59BDS for a half-cup of soup, salad, coffee, and the rum punch) and that prevents it from being my personal Number 1 Rum Punch, and that high status instead goes to...

Me, because I learned how to make it over the course of this trip and I'm just that full of myself.

After Cutters, it was time for the afternoon's main attraction, a factory-floor and grounds tour of Foursquare Distillery, followed by the most in-depth rum tasting so far.

The distillery tour was really interesting, as we got a much more in-depth look at the rum production process than we did at Mount Gay's Rum Experience (althought it doesn't overshadow the Mount Gay Plantation Experience), and because we were being given a tour by the acting director of the entire distillery, Mr. Richard Seale.

Thanks to Mr. Seale, we were able to see the parts of the rum-making process not typically open to the regular tour group, including the room containing the actual stills, and the section of the aging room reserved for special stock and production of molasses wine before the distillation process.

After the factory tour, we got a brief peek at the bottling plant (which wasn't actually bottling anything at that exact moment) and so we hurried along to everyone's favorite part: the tasting!

While I would usually say that the Mount Gay experience had my favorite rum, the set up for the Foursquare tasting... crushed it.

We were walked into the room, which had about 15 bottles of rum on the table, and Mr. Seale said let me grab some glasses, and walked into a back room. He came back out, passed out glasses, gave a brief introduction, and told us we could taste anything we wanted, only warning us that some of the cask-concentration ones were a doozy and we should only pour ourselves a little bit. (Since "a doozy" translates to 120 proof or higher in most cases here, we all followed his advice.)

After we had drunk to our hearts' desire (I'm a big fan of the Hereditas, which, as a specialty rum designed exclusively for the Whisky Exchange, has only 2500 bottles in existence and costs roughly $200 a bottle), Mr. Seale then addressed the large boxes that two of the men from the bottling plant had just brought in, which each contained bottles of 12-Year Aged Doorly's Rum that he handed out to us like some sort of strange Willy Wonka-esque scene of shock and awe.

We were all extremely caught off guard, after all, one person already gave us a bottle of free rum this trip, but he gave one bottle to a class of 16 students and 2 professors.

This was an individual bottle for each of the 16 students, professors, and one for Andre too. This was on another level of generosity.

After our rum excursion, it was time to head back to the dorm, and at that point, Rhiannon, Meghan, and I went down to the beach for one last Caribbean experience and to enjoy a nice cigar at sunset. And that experience topped off an awe-inspiring day.

At sunset we noticed some strange light in the water, something from a diver or a boat? The only boat was pretty far out and it didn't seem like we'd be able to see that from the shore. Something bioluminescent? That would be wild but it didn't seem like it.

After finally seeing it repeat for a couple of seconds, I realized it was something I'd only previously read about and seen in thinks like Pirates of the Caribbean.

What we were witnessing was the mythological "green flash," a phenomenon caused by refracting sunlight through the atmosphere and waves on the horizon that appears to flash green for a couple seconds repeatedly for as long as the sun is setting. In my mind, there's nothing else it could have been, but from our perspective, since it was cloudy, it wasn't the kind that appears over the setting sun, this looked like it was appearing from the horizon underwater. Maybe this sort of flash is just residual sunlight filtering through the crystal blue Caribbean water, but it was spectacular to see and just incredible to be able to witness.

We went back to the dorms after sunset and met up with another group of people waiting to shuttle with Tuten to the Roti Den for dinner, and after cramming 6 people into a car meant to comfortable sit 4, we migrated and had a wonderful Indian dinner (I had a lamb and veggie roti), sat around talking for about an hour, and got some ice cream before heading back to the dorms to hang out for our last night, finish up journal, and try to finish up some of the copious amounts of rum we purchased throughout the trip.

That's all for tonight, and so I guess I'll update after I'm home tomorrow? Woof. It's been a wild ride.

Thanks for the fun times Barbados, Muth, Tuten, and all the classmates that made everything such an interesting experience.

Let's give an edge to everyone who needs it in the coming semester!

(Oh and one last note! I made the Top 5 observers for Barbados on iNaturalist!!!)

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Pure Beach: Day 11 - 01/12/2020

I can't begin to describe today because it was simultaneously so long and oh so short and sweet. Me and many of the other Barbados class members are exhausted, dehydrated, sunburned, and most importantly, content of heart.

From about 11:15 to 5:30 we did the beach, the whole beach, and nothing but the beach. Swimming, looking around underwater with unfortunately ill-sized and over-expensive goggles, wading, trying our best to annoy one another in as playful a way as possible, and enjoying one or two or five rum cocktails in front of a beautiful ocean vista.

I have no more to say besides, "wow," so please enjoy this video clip of the ocean and some classmates hanging about:

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Shrines, Steel Drum Bands, and Sunsets: Day 10 - 01/11/2020

Having been given the chance to sleep in a little this morning, we all got ready and assembled on the bus by 9:30.

Our first visit was going to be to the nearby Orisha shrine, which as we were told, was relatively secret to most bajans, as Orisha, Obeah, and other spiritual and religious ceremonies originating from Africa are all still technically outlawed in Barbados.

We got an introduction on what to expect and some of the significance of Orisha from Tony, and then we were on our way.

When we arrived, we met Baba John, the keeper of this shrine, as well as his spiritual godfather, Baba Laua, who is originally from Nigeria and usually spends his time in Trinidad.

We listened to Baba Laua's (not entirely sure on the spelling) introduction about what exactly Ifa/Orisha is and its relevance in today's world.

The trip was informative, but I'm not sure if it was entirely what I was interested in experiencing at the shrine, and I would have loved to hear Baba John's side of things more, especially on his healing practices and plant use in ceremonies, but it was still a really cool visit.

After the shrine visit, we drove to Speightstown for the St. James Parish Church Flower show, which had the feeling of a Pennsylvania Church Bazaar mixed with a flea market. We grabbed lunch at a place that overlooked the sea:

and had a British rendition of pizza and sandwiches before meeting up in front of the church to watch a steel-pan band conducted by none other than our tour guide from a few days previous, Morris.

The performance was amazing, about 9 or 10 people ranging between probably 14 and late 20s who did steel pan renditions of famous classical songs, all culminating in the Waltz of the Flowers in celebration of the church festival.

We stayed around for a bit to appreciate the views of the Caribbean across the street and collect hermit crabs for a bit before heading out and finding the largest moth I've ever seen:

We left the flower show and headed back to UWI and since there was still some daylight, we elected to head down to the beach, where we found out that almost everyone else had also elected to go. We swam, enjoyed the amazing views, and got to watch the sun go down on the Caribbean, gettings lots of pictures and doing some class bonding, and then heading up and getting dinner at the Chicken Barn.

That was basically all for the day as I hung out for a bit watching The Bachelor with like half the people on the trip, and then later with Meghan and Rhiannon and played some card games for most of the rest of the evening.

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Osteology, Old School Rum, and Oistins: Day 9 - 01/10/2020

Although today was a pretty non-exertive day, we covered a lot of different places in Barbados in only a short while, and the cognitive shift from Rum and Rum History yesterday to some heavier topics today was interesting to say the least.

This morning, we met with Tony, his Mum, and Dr. Tara Innes-Gibbs, author of some of the texts we read over thr course of the semester, and she was to be our interpreter for the entire day.

Our first stop on the trip was to the Newton Plantation Slave Burial Site. And more or less? It was a field.

And so we discussed just about everything on why it was the way it was. Shouldn't a slave burial site, especially one with close to 600 bodies buried just below the surface on an otherwise unassuming ex-sugar cane field be more widely recognized? What issues would that cause? Why don't Bajans visit the site more often? Is it a spiritual site or something more? Should it be something more? In addition, Dr. Innes-Gibbs asked us questions about what we can interpret from the malnutrition and lead exposure in the studied bodies from the Newton Site, referencing the Osteology of a Slave Burial paper we'd discussed over the semester.

These types of questions flew back and forth for close to 45 minutes as we gazed out over the slightly raided burial mounds and overgrown grass throughout the field. And it was really interesting to get the perspective of someone who had done research on the very site we were standing in and on. Tony's interpretation was also really interesting, and his touching on the topics of Orisha and traditional spiritual beliefs made me even more excited to visit the Orisha shrine tomorrow.

After the visit to the burial site, we drove down to the coast and had lunch in a sea-side restaurant with very good views and an even better breeze.

With the chaos of getting lunch for ~20 visitors and a tour bus full of tourists while the power was out in the restaurant, Dr. Innes-Gibbs later told us that the area we had lunch in was once home to the poor white population that existed in the economic downturn after emancipation.

This was one of the perspectives we haven't heard anything about on the island, so it was interesting to get that info, even briefly.

After lunch, it was time for Stop 3: The St. Nicholas Abbey Rum Distillery.

The distillery has a long, long history of otherwise boring wealthy englishmen slighting each other and marrying into the rum family, so I won't bore you with that, but it was an amazing comparative study between this distillery and Mount Gay's plantation and distillery.

At Oxford Plantation, we toured the grounds of a plantation, looking at the overseer's house, the grounds, and being educated on the processes that Mount Gay is trying to put in place to further their sustainability practices.

At St. Nicholas Abbey, we learned about the history of the great house and the life and times of the family that owned the land in the 1930s. And that was basically it.

Maybe I'm embittered by the fact that St. Nicholas Abbey was trying to sell 5-Year Aged Rum for BD$130 ($65 a pop in USD), but it was insane to experience firsthand the almost total erasure of the involvement of enslaved people in rum production at St. Nicholas Abbey.

While maybe the Mount Gay employees didn't focus on slavery as much as they could have, the only thing that the St. Nicholas Abbey museum focused on older than the 1930s was the presence of AmerIndian artifacts found in the cane fields.

The stark differences between immersive experiences on the impacts of slavery in Barbados, thanks to Tony, Dr. Innes-Gibbs, and several other of the tour guided we've had over this trip and the experiences more catered toward tourists, and the erasure or hiding of history from the public eye really makes you think about how things have changed and how we just learn to accept injustices over time.

After the rum trip (and a vastly overhyped sip of $65 rum) we talked with Dr. Innes-Gibbs, Tony, and Tony's mum again and had kind of an overview discussion on everything we learned, Tony showed us some more cool plants (including an almost extirpated tree), and then we loaded back up on the bus to go to the dorm and then way down to Oistins.

At Oistins tonight we had a different variety of food at a different vendor, taking way too much time because of how crowded it was, experienced some deadly hot sauce (see picture below), and didn't really get to explore any further than we did the last time, which is kind of unfortunate.

Either way, now it's time for laundry and lounging around in the heat, so please enjoy this picture of me on an endorphin rush after some diabolical bajan pepper sauce.

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Monuments and Mount Gay Rum: Day 8 - 01/09/2020

Today started with a relatively early morning for a lot of people. The new dorm is taking some getting used to, as the airflow isn't great and our location on the street corner means a lot of horns, loud cars, and very loud roosters at early morning hours waking us up.

My morning started with a weird pinched nerve or pulled muscle in my neck that put me in a position where I can't really turn my neck to the left super well, and that made the next part of the day a bit more challenging.

After a simple breakfast we fended for on our own, we left for downtown Bridgetown to meet with Morris, our tour guide for the day.

Although the tour was a little long (9:00am to 12:30pm) we learned a lot about the history of Bridgetown.

The town was originally called Indian Bridge Town, after the construction of an indigenous root bridge spanning a body of water in the center of the town, even though there supposedly weren't any undigenous people on Barbados at the time.

After a tour of the many impressive and strangely European-Caribbean inspired buildings, we also learned a lot about the pirate history of the town and its relation to rum (Captain Morgan and Admiral Nelson were both in Barbados at some point), how the country defended itself from outside attacks (a huge number of fortresses with an innumerable number of cannons spaced about a half mile apart on most occasions), and about the town's troubled religious history (persecution of Methodists, Jews, and Quakers as they all believed that slaves should be allowed to attend church just the same as everyone).

(A "Full Bajan Breakfast," featuring eggs, fish cakers, and corned beef fritters.)

After lunch, and maybe a few too many rum punches, at the restaurant on the Marina, it was time to head for our next destination, the Mount Gay Rum Experience.

After another drink, this time a Mount Gay Specialty, it was time for the Rum Experience:

Although fairly tourist centric, the short tour and informational film about the history of rum-making in Barbados and about the Mount Gay Distillery really did teach me a lot about the process of harvesting, distilling, and aging rum, and I feel like I definitely have a bit more appreciation for it than I already did.

One of the crazy things to me was Mount Gay's high end rum collection, which includes casual favorites like the Pot-Still Rum at $150 a bottle, the 1703 Blend at $200, the Peat Smoke variety, aged in Irish whisky barrels, at $250 a bottle, all the way up to the limited edition Tricentennial Rum Blend, of which there were only 1000 bottles made, and only a few still exist. This one can be found at a bar in Barbados for $500 for a single shot!

After the rum experience, we headed back to UWI for a (much-needed after all that rum) nap, for some downtime, and finally, to go and get dinner.

I went with Meghan, Rhiannon, and Cassidy, and we went back to Flash Zone. I got Fried Shark and BBQ Pig Tail, which were both an interesting experience and also very tasty.

After dinner, we headed back to the dorm, and discussed the trip, highlights and low points, and the unfortunate transition from Codrington to Keith Hunte Hall.

In other news, Rhiannon and I are now 6th and 7th place for observers in Barbados!

[masons-bajan-adventure]

UWI, More Plants, Chefette, Even More Plants, Gully Hikes, and Karoke: Day 7 - 01/08/2020

Today was another long, long day.

We started at 8:00, our normal time, with much more scrambling than usual as we rushed around to do last minute packing and tidying before and after breakfast.

We were packed up and loaded onto the bus by 9:00 and ready to move into the UWI Cave Hill Campus. And so we did.

After a lengthy security sign-up process and a tutorial for how to use the laundry machines, we had a few minutes of downtime before the rest of the day began.

We started by catching a ride with Andre up to the rest of the Cave Hill campus, and we met again with Tony, and a department head at UWI named Sean Carrington, who among his many other accomplishments with botany and biology, also helped to write the Barbados A to Z book we read parts of in class.

Dr. Carrington introduced us to one of his pet projects on campus, a miniature botanical garden organized by taxonomy instead of just aesthetics. It was interesting to be given such a brief yet comprehensive guide on IDing plants by specific features, like members of x family have flowers with petals in multiples of 3 or that latex producing plants are one of two families, and that narrows down your search by a lot.

After a brief garden tour, he showed us to the campus's preserved insect collection and the herbarium, containing plants and records of ID from as far back as the late 1800s, and then we just talked about the college and his work for a bit afterward. It was interesting especially to find out all of the pies that Dr. Carrington has a thumb in around campus.

And that was then even furthered by a mini-tour from Tony, through UWI's Native Plant Garden and a lecture on his other interests beyond just plants in general.

Before we get to an afternoon filled with Tony's interests, however, I must say that we made a stop at Chefette, which happens to be Barbados's largest fast food chain, and it was pretty decent for fast food.

I got a chicken roti (been eating a lot of curry and indian food for being on a Caribbean island nation), chips (the British kind, so fries), and a soda, and that was exactly what I needed before an afternoon, mile-long hike (that was sarcasm).

Jokes aside, the hike was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip so far, with Tony and Dr. Muth stopping us every now and then on a hiking trail through a relatively untouched area of Bajan flora and fauna, and Rhiannon, Meghan, and I geeking out over large arthropods and iNaturalist high scores. I got so invested in iNaturalist and Tony's mini lectures, I sometimes forgot to look around and appreciate how beautiful everything was (so hopefully these couple iNaturalist photos can help with that:)

We learned about everything from early grain corn to "jungle toilet paper" to the name scheme of the so-called sandbox tree and its origin in writing tools from the 1700s.

Tony is a well of information, and I hope to be like him when I grow up, giving lectures to other interested professionals on bush teas and edible forage.

After the hike, we had a long drive back toward UWI, we stopped at a grocery store for breakfast goods, and when we finally made it home, had some time for settling in and hanging out before meeting Tuten and Muth again for dinner at a local bar called Flash Zone.

Flash Zone is one of the strangest bars I've ever been to. It's credited as a sports bar anywhere you can look up information on it, but upon walking in, you're greeted with the bar's motto:

"To Give Always and to Receive from a Loving & Kind Heart."

The bar is also famous among local Bajans for it's Wednesday night Karoke, something we got to experience up-close and personally.

And when I say that Barbadians take their Karoke seriously? Please take me at my word. Any of the half dozen Bajans that got up to sing could easily make it to some of the later rounds of American Idol, and some of them had such strange song picks that they managed to do so, so well on.

So there's the span of events from 8:00am to 10:00pm. At this point, it's time to sleep and rest up my ankle for another long day of walking around.

(Looks great, right? 💀💀💀)

[masons-bajan-adventure]

The Plantation and the Signaling Station: Day 6 - 01/07/2020

Today was a fairly average day for Barbados, and started similarly to the rest of the days here.

Breakfast and event-planning, followed by second-guessing myself on the decision to wear long pants all day long and running back to the house to throw a pair of shorts in my bag.

First on the agenda for today was a tour of the Oxford Plantation, a former sugar cane plantation still used by the Mount Gaye Rum company for producing the sugar cane they use in the rum making process. The company still uses the same fields they've been using since the company's founding in 1703.

The plantation grounds were beautiful, and we got a really interactive and in-depth presentation on what really goes into sugar cane farming, and the problems that exist in terms of pest, fertilizer, and disease among the sugar cane crop.

The plantation pests were funny to hear about because it turns out that ground-burrowing monkeys are a huge issue for the cane crop. The monkeys will come along and instead of just eating the top shoots, will pull an entire section of the cane out of the ground, uprooting an entire series of plants.

For fertilizer, the plantation manager Jackie told us about how the by-product of molasses production, which is rich in Potassium, is mixed with water and spread as a liquid fertilizer, making the whole process more cyclically sustainable. In addition, Jackie talked to us about the importance of nitrogen-fixing planta to replenish soil nutrients, and how Mount Gay tackles that issue is by planting crops like cassava, sweet potato, or pigeon pea in the fieldd they want to give a break to, and they make some of their money back by selling off these crops to markets as well!

Jackie also talked at length about the issues Oxford plantation has with a ratoon disease, meaning that while sugar cane should be able to grow, be cut, and start regrowing four times before it's fully harvested, Mount Gaye can only harvest twice before stripping out the old cane because a bacterial disease makes the cane of much lower sugar quality.

The fix for this is hot water treatment to kill the bacteria before the sugar cane bits are replanted in a nursery area.

It was especially interesting to not only hear about all this, but also to experience it visually on the driving tour we were given around the sprawling property.

Lastly, as part of Mount Gaye's attempts to be more sustainable and make up for the destructive monoculture planting of sugar cane, we learned about the plantation's planting of fruit trees and maintenance of native mahogany trees.

And we helped out a bit too!

The second part of the day was an afternoon at the Gun Hill Signaling Station.

While the site itself was really cool, it's history is less-so. The picturesque area on top of a large hill in central Barbados served it's purpose a few hundred years ago as an observation area stationed by British soldiers, who sat in the area for weeks or months on end, watching for threats to the island, things like enemy ships, hurricanes, fires, and slave rebellions, and signaling to the other stations across the island if anything had changed since the previous day or not.

We spent a long while taking in the surrounding vistas and historical artifacts, and after, we sat around for a bit and enjoyed some rum punch and snacks at the area's cafe until it was time to return to Codrington.

We had some downtime, in which I iced my throbbing ankle, and then it was time for the wonderful barbecue chicken wing dinner that Chef Ryan prepared for us.

It's also officially the last night we'll be staying the night at Codrington, meaning goodbye to the sweeping vistas, beautiful sunrises, and chirruping frogs and insects outside, and hello to the relative hustle and bustle of the Cave Hill campus tomorrow morning.

Goodbye Codrington, it's been real!

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Caves, Churches, and Coves: Day 5 - 01/06/2020

Today was an especially long day because we crammed four activities into an otherwise normal day.

In the morning, we started with breakfast and assembled shortly afterward and went to Harrison's Cave.

Simply put, it was awe-inspiring and pictures do it much more justice than words:

It was really fascinating to learn about the geographic history of the island, which is so much younger than anything I've ever seen on the geologic time scale. The entire cave is less than 60,000 years old!! That's insane on a geologic scale that spans hundreds of millions of years.

After the cave, I had a deep discussion with Rhiannon, Cassidy, and Karan on the dilemma of capitilizing on natural resources, and especially the moral dilemmas that come with destroying large parts of a cave just to show it to tourists which is ehhhh. But the cave was really cool either way.

After the cave it was time to go Barbados' oldest church:

St. James Anglican Parish Church.

The church was founded in 1625 and although nobody really knows how much of the original wooden church's structure was used in the creation of the stone church, this early founding date makes the St. James Church the oldest on the entire island.

Our tour guide Maurice was very helpful in giving us a better perspective on the history of the church, including that there are bodies buried in the floor of wealthy Englishmen who thought a church burial would help them get into heaven faster, the church's bell is a twin to the Liberty Bell, and the church's organ contains over 3000 pipes.

After our church tour, Tony brought us out into the church yard and gave a brief lecture on the black willow caper tree and handed out some native seeds from Barbados, like crab-eye vine and Job's tears, which both have pretty, colorful seeds.

After Tony's speech, it was time for the beach! This time, a beach on the Caribbean side of the island that was just beyond beautiful:

We spent a good two hours at the beach, most of which I spent in the water with Rhiannon and Meghan, occasionally diving under to look at sea creatures through some goggles or getting out to get a cup of rum punch.

It was a beautiful day, the water was great, and I just didn't want to leave. So suffice it to say, I'm now a bit sunburned.

After the beach, Muth, Tuten, and Andre had a meeting with a staff member at University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus to talk about the shuttle situation, and shortly after pulling in, I twisted my ankle on the bus steps (not fun 👎👎👎).

After the meeting, we went back to Codrington for dinner and downtime, and had a night filled with big bugs. That's all for my journal, so please enjoy these adorable pictures of a spider the size of a tea saucer and a long-horned beetle bigger than a silver dollar:

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Markets and Mills: Day 4 - 01/05/2020

The day started like the others so far, breakfast, a bit of downtime, and then our first waypoint of the day.

In the morning, we went to the Farmer's Market at Holders House Polo Field for some tasty food, cute souvenirs, and some analysis of Bajan culture firsthand.

We started by wandering around and shopping for a few souvenirs or fun food, but eventually, Cassidy, Meghan, Rhiannon, and I got wrapped up into an interesting (to say the least) conversation with a self-proclaimed shaman, who had also spent several years in Germany as a professional dancer.

The conversation started really well, and we all discussed the topic of where hard science meets spirituality, and the vitamin and health content of various plants and grasses around the island.

Then things took a hard left turn.

The unnamed shaman began touching on some more holistic topics, like a restorative elixir of Aloe Wine, a male-enhancement tonic made from Wormseed and a root plant caller Finger Gro, spell-casting by speaking, and finally, the conversation that got us all to leave, the location of a secret "Orchid Gland" in the male gonads.

Our personal favorite conversation topic was George Washington's partaking in "some good Bajan marijuana" while he visited the island in the 1700s.

After our shaman talk, Cassidy and I got lunch at a nice little shack cafe called Nadia and Priya's delicacies, and were eventually joined by Meghan, Rhiannon, and Fisher for a good Indian lunch of vegetable roti and some wonderfully refreshing fruity-floral iced tea with lemon.

After lunch, we wandered around a bit more, tried to crack open a coconut, were informed that we were doing it wrong by our bus driver and part-time guide Andre, and left for our afternoon destination: The Windmill.

Morgan Lewis Windmill is a major landmark on Barbados, as it is the last standing, most recently active, and tallest windmill on an island that used to have upwards of 500 windmills dotting its surface.

It was a beautiful property, with a beautiful view, and York from Yorkshire educated us on its use for sugar production, its setpiece design in Island in the Sun, and it's place among the endless cane fields that covered the island in the 50s and 60s.

The view was amazing and we got to enjoy a nice cup of real coffee as we sat around after climbing up into the mill.

After the windmill, it was time for downtime, laundry, naps, and hanging out on the porch in the rain, talking with the professors before dinner.

Over the course of dinner, Rhiannon and I discovered that in only 4 days, we're both in the top 20 of citizen science observers on iNaturalist with around 25~ observations each.

That's all for today, so enjoy a few pictures of the flora and fauna we've looked at so far:

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Blooms and Beaches: Day 3 - 01/04/2020

Today started as yesterday started, breakfast, followed by a little downtime, followed by our real activity for this morning, the Andromeda Botanical Gardens.

Andromeda was started in the 1950s by a self-taught Bajan woman named Iris Bannochie who was a scientist that wrote papers on the lifecycle of the whistling frog as well as on the Vitamin C content of the Barbadian Cherry.

The gardens were amazing, and thanks to a self-guided tour sheet and a helpful lecture series from Dr. Muth, I was able to see plenty of significant plants in terms of biodiversity, biogeographical differences, and just plain beauty.

In addition, my favorite site from Andromeda was the Angel's Trumpet plant:

This plant is insane.

Every part of the plant is poisonous, and contains deliriant compounds like Scopolamine and Hyascymine, which can cause visual and auditory hallucinations and caused users to completely lose touch with what is real and what is a hallucination, inducing temporary insanity.

Fun stuff.

So Professor Tuten decides to touch it to get a better look at the sign that says "Dangerous Plant: Do Not Touch."

He hasn't started freaking out or hallucinating yet, so it's probably safe to say he didn't lick his hands after touching it.

After Andromeda, we came back to Codrington, heard the announcement that our schedule would change and we would be doing a beach day this afternoon, and had a wonderful fried fish lunch courtesy of Ryan, the talented Chef at the college.

After lunch we headed out to Bottom Bay and it was more than words can describe. Surreal, incredible, nothing like anywhere I've ever been before.

A pristine, crushed shell beach with the bluest water I've ever been in, an ocean that doesn't end until you hit Africa, and a small bay surrounded by two huge coralline limestone formations made the area feel like an alien planet.

Drinking, swimming, exploring, finding a cave with a few roosting bats, and getting mildly toasted by the sun brings us to the end of another day on the island, with more groceries (mostly beer) and the promises of dinner not too far off.

Addendum: So we found out that the plant that had the sign saying it was the Angel's Trumpet was a lie. The real Angel's Trumpet was apparently behind the sign, and I'm very sad that I missed it.

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Gully Hikes and Gardens: Day 2 - 01/03/2020

This morning started off with a delicious and well rounded breakfast of toasted cheese, fruit salad, eggs, and and a vegetarian meat substitute of some kind, which were all delicious.

After breakfast, we had some time to explore around the house, so we looked at the trees, bugs, and birds of the surrounding area, before finding out that was what we would be doing for the better half of the morning with Tony.

(A bananaquit.)

We then walked around Codrington Campus and hiked down to the beach, with discussions on history, traditional use, and introduced vs. native species in the dozens of plants we encountered between the property and the dock.

We heard the stories of the breadfruit mutiny, the burial rituals surrounding the fowl's foot grass, and the dangers of the manchineel, all before lunch.

Lunch included some much, much needed fluid refreshment after the mile uphill hike, and afterward, we had some time to relax before visiting Hunte's Garden, which is a beautiful ornamental plant garden on the island, coined by its creator as the most enchanting place in the world.

The plants were beautiful and the entire place really did have a magical feeling to it, and it was also interesting to the juxtaposition of all of the surrounding wild native vegetation and the beautifully maintained ornamentals that were just the huge, outdoor versions of common houseplants.

We had the opportunity to sit down and talk with the owner/creator of the garden, and it was definitely interesting. We didn't talk for too long, but he ended up giving us a bottle of his own personal stock of 10-Year Aged rum...

...which evidently didn't stand a chance against the 16 college students and two professors living island-style.

We all went back to Codrington, changed, and journeyed on to Oystin's Fish Market.

After contending with the aggressively carnival-barker style advertisers pitching us on their various stalls of fish-vendors and chefs, we had a wonderful dinner of fresh fish, lots of miscellaneous starches, and some Banks beer, which is produced in Barbados.

We took a short pit stop at the grocery store, and finally made it back to Codrington for another relaxing night.

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Food and Frogs: Day 1 Journal - 01/02/2020

Today was the first official day of the Barbados trip!

My day started at 2:45am, when I got up, gathered all my stuff, and went down to the hotel's shuttle to catch a ride to the airport, oddly enough meeting Hunter on the way.

Most of the day was spent in airports or in transit, meaning that between 3:35am and 4:30pm, we traveled by foot, plane, and automobile until we got to the guesthouse at Codrington College, where we'll be staying for the first part of the trip.

(Near sunset view from the back porch of the guesthouse.)

We settled into the house and hung out as a group for a bit before dinner, which was great, and consisted of fish, chicken, chick peas, beans, and salad, as well as a considerable amount of gold rum in many forms (rum punch, rum and sorrel, and rum and coke).

(Poor quality picture of the spread, I'll try and take more artsy pictures over the next couple weeks.)

After dinner, Cassidy, Meghan, Rhiannon, Fisher and I went herping, and in one session, managed to find a half-dollar sized fishing spider, a giant african snail, and both of the amphibians listed on the wikipedia page for the amphibians and reptiles of Barbados:

The Cane Toad

(female and male)

and the Antillean Coqui

In addition, we had a weird find: on the male cane toad, we found a tick that had embedded itself. This is strange because ticks usually seek out warm-blooded creatures, and not necessarily toads, which I guess goes to show how prevalent some of the gross critters on Barbados really are.

So far the trip has proven incredibly exciting and cool, since we got some field experience and some good pictures for iNaturalist. Evidently, there's a lot more to Barbados than just the rum culture.

More to come tomorrow!

[masons-bajan-adventure]

Pre-Trip Journal - 12/28/2019

The Barbados trip is only a few days out at this point, and I just spent the last 10 minutes getting a thorough lost of (hopefully) all the stuff I'll be packing into my bags.

I am so, so excited to go and get away from the gloomy PA weather and into the sunny tropical weather of the Caribbean.

I'll be visiting a few friends near Philadelphia for New Years, so after that, I'll be making my way to a hotel for the overnight before the trip, and although it's been a while since I've navigated the Philly airport, I think the excitement is outweighing the nervousness pretty strongly.

I still need to do some last minute prep work in the form of printing the important stuff and calling my cell service provider about getting some data while abroad, but this is it! Only a few days out before I get to experience the plants, the people, the creole culture, the rum, the history, and the wonderful climate and ecosystems of Barbados!