Barbados adventure

Yup

I, thankfully, just got back from the worst "vacation" ever.

I should have known.

I guess every one at one time or another experiences a lampoon vacation.

This was my time.

Two days prior of leaving I was diagnosed with a raging case of the shingles.

The night that we left my birds had "night frights".

Two of the birds ended up with banged up beaks from thrashing around. I never went to bed that night in efforts to calm the birds down.

Of all the seats on the airplane I got stuck next to a father with a crying infant.

And it goes downhill from there.

It poured nonstop the entire week.

I mean, it poured F*&^ing buckets.

Roads were washed out and impassable. Our hotel lobby halls were flooded. I had to put my suitcase and sneakers on chairs so they would not get wet.

Our bed and pillows stunk like a dog rolled in something dead and then rolled around on the bed. I thought at first perhaps the maids forgot to change the bedding but it was actually the bed and pillows themselves. I told my husband to smell the pillow and he almost puked from the stench.

It was bad.

I wasn't sure if I should go diving since I was on all kinds of meds for the shingles but going on a tour or sitting in the sun wasn't happening because of the rain.

We figured, what the hell, we were going to get wet anyways so if the boats were going out why not do a a nice easy shallow dive?

The water had 6 foot swells.

The first dive of the day was a 130 foot depth wreck dive.

You have got to be kidding me.

My husband's dive watch cracked due to the pressure.

Believe it or not, I did OK.

The diving was pretty decent. There were large sea turtles on every dive.

Barbados has lots of wrecks to explore.

The only problem is that the dive masters control everything.

In some ways, that is a good thing. It's a good thing for beginners who need help with their gear and want to follow the dive master. Everyone goes down the same time and everyone comes up the same time.

I personally would prefer to be on my own and take my time poking around the wreck looking around for critters. The entire time during our stay my husband would say "I wish we were in Bonaire..because..."

We managed a total of only eight dives. In Bonaire, we would've done at least 15 dives.

We missed two days of diving because the dive shop got flooded out and was closed.

I suppose it was probably best I didn't dive as much due to the meds I was on. Some of the side effects of the antiviral meds and prednisone was vertigo, sleeplessness and heart palpations.

For six nights I never fell asleep. I was so exhausted but it was like I forgot how to fall asleep.

I also made the mistake of reading a really depressing book ( I did not realize it was going to be such a downer of a book. The book is titled "Of Parrots and People" by Mira Tweti) It was so sad, I wept. I should have brought a funny light trashy novel instead.

Food was a problem too. The choices at the hotel were "chicken or fish". Needless to say, I lost weight on this trip.

One evening when the rain stopped briefly, we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood to do some bird watching . An elderly resident came up to us and told us to "go down the stairs, now, before it gets dark. Trust me. Go back. Go on. Go down the stairs quick before it gets dark". This was alarming, and we did what he suggested. All I could think of was a scene from the movie ,"I am Legend", where the main character played by Will Smith hides in an armor bunker after the sun goes down to hide from the flesh eating zombies.

Halfway through the "vacation" I got really home-sick. I wanted to leave. Again, we were stuck there because half the roads were flooded out.

On the last day, the skies partially cleared. At least we were able to leave.

Seriously, there is no place like home.