A bit of a journal - four.

Today, with nothing pressing to do, we decided to go off piste. Now obviously in a place this bloody hot it hasn’t anything to do with skiing or snow. It’s all about maplessness. Yes maplessness, such a brave move on an Island that’s only twelve miles wide and eighteen miles long but:

-       Maps are meaningless on Barbados. Roads that should exist don’t, and those that shouldn’t exist do.

-       Signposts are only there to trick you into going the way they are pointing.

-       There are no ‘you are entering’ place names on Barbados, in fact I’m not even sure anywhere has a name.

-       Roads can be highways one moment, then turn a corner and they become a potted dirt track in the blink of an eye and often stop in a set from a bad slash movie.

-       The roads are really a spider’s web.

-       Though it’s not in the Bermuda Triangle it should be, as compasses do not work here.

-       Even though you can see the coast, and think you can drive towards it, you can’t.

-       The potholes look shallow, but are bottomless.

-       Other drivers can’t see you as you are driving down, or up, that one in four hill. You are invisible to them.

Yes, driving and navigating has its challenges on Barbados. Even so we set out full of gung-ho spirit to explore mapless - what a jolly jape you might say.

Of course within minutes of leaving we were hopelessly lost. ‘I think it’s up there.’ I said. Not really knowing what it was and not realising the slight incline was actually a steep hill that went on for miles and then ended abruptly  in a village that seemed only to be inhabited with barking dogs, no way forward, and too narrow (due to the three feet drainage gullies on each side of the very narrow track) to turn. We reversed carefully and slowly, trying not to draw attention to ourselves and took a road to the right. This was better. The road was okay, not too steep but after a mile or so became a dar gulley full of rusting cars and vans with shacks either side. Surely nobody lived in those tumbledown dwellings? And then a door opened…

This time there was room for a hasty turn, and (after barely missing a detached fender lying in the road) we were off once again. How jolly (as I said before).

Back on a road, with some semblance of tarmac, we breathed a sigh of relief. We were definitely on the right road, up high but on the right road, up very high, but definitely the right road. We could see the coast in the far distance as we entered a mass of trees and then… no more road. A great view though.

Into reverse once more until we found a place to turn, then down, down, down and bump, bump, bump.

And so it continued our mapless adventure. Through burning fields of burning cane sugar stubble, the smoke so thick you could barely see, the flames so close to the road you could feel their heat, through villages we will probably never come across again full of smiling children coming home from school, down roads through deep gullies until we found a sign pointing to the ABC Highway, a road we do know, and strangely enough we did.