Moving to Paradise — 2 Months In
It has been a little while since my last post, but I wanted to wait till I had some interesting stuff to say!
We have been here almost 2 months now and have really started to settle in. We met a lot of our neighbours at an Independence Day BBQ and got to try some proper Bajan food, including breadfruit chips (crisps) which I am now obsessed with! Carl has started going to 5-aside football with mostly locals, and we have met quite a few of our fellow Welcome Stampers (several of which live within walking distance of our house back home and we have friends in common with!).
We have done a bit more of the touristy stuff, visited Oistins on a Friday and a Saturday (Friday is when all the tourists go but they actually serve food all week), which is a famous fish market during the day and a collection of food vendors grilling the fresh fish at night. The fish is delicious and is usually served with all the Bajan sides like mac pie, potatoes, coleslaw (which is so much better in this country!), salad etc. Generally it will set you back around $30 — $45 BBD depending on the kind of fish you have and what is available that day. As I said before, Friday is the classic ‘Friday Fish Fry’ but the Saturday we went was still reasonably lively and more locals. For my birthday we ate at Champers, one of the higher end restaurants in the area. They make a real fuss of special occasions with a menu printed with your name on and everything. The view is spectacular, set up on the rocks over the ocean, and we were really impressed with the food and service.
We did another catamaran cruise which is quickly becoming my favourite activity. You just cannot beat spending the day on the water. This time we did Elegance, another of the smaller 12 person luxury trips. This was a more sedate affair than the first trip we did, drinks start after your first snorkel which I think is quite sensible. They all do a similar route from Bridgetown but that does not matter at all, swimming with turtles never gets old and this time we stopped for lunch near a reef so could snorkel around that as well.
We have now also been up to the West Coast to have a look around. The coast itself is beautiful (although I am yet to find an ugly beach!) and I can see why people like to stay there, but it is certainly more expensive than where we live. They call it the ‘Platinum Coast’ because this is where the super high end hotels and villas are located (Simon Cowell, Rhianna, Lewis Hamilton etc all stay there) and the shopping mall is full of shops like Cartier and Michael Kors. I tell you what though, they have a new Massey supermarket and boy is it flash, I wish we had one of those nearer us!! We had lunch at Tides, one of the more famous restaurants in Barbados (it was delicious and they are doing a set menu so not crazy expensive either) and went to John Moore bar which is a rum shop further up the coast that has the most amazing view of the sunset. Rum shops are local bars that serve — you guessed it — rum! They will often do their own rum punch as well as sell bottles of rum (small ones) which are often cheaper than the supermarkets. You can get other drinks there too if you are not a rum fan, but then if you are not a rum fan what are you even doing in Barbados?!
Christmas was an interesting one. As it was just the two of us we wanted to eat out as we have never done this before. There were a few options around us, mainly hotels doing buffets, so we went with the Hilton as a few people had recommended it. Personally I liked the food, and there was certainly plenty of it, however the service was not great (we had to just take a jug of water off the stand in the end having asked for some 4 times) and the drinks were watery and overpriced. Our friends arrived for their booking at 2.30 only to be told that the buffet finished at 3 and there was very little left (they had been told to book for 2.30 by the way), not what you expect at £50 a head. Needless to say they complained and their bill was amended. We went to the beach to watch the sunset which was spectacular and it was lovely to spend the day with people, we are very aware that most people in the UK were not able to do so. On boxing day we spent a couple of hours at the races at The Garrison but did not win anything, pity!
We have been very lucky to be offered rides to places now that we have got to know people, our neighbours will often take pity on us walking up and down the hill and we even got taken out to a fabulous beachside restaurant La Cabane with some friends of friends — but that is kind of how it works here. Someone you met somewhere invites you to hang out with people he has just met and you all have a lovely time! It is all about just saying yes to all invites.
Having said all that, I have given in and bought a car. I looked at leasing which is what a lot of people recommend for shorter stays, however at around £400 minimum a month for a small car, that is a lot of money down the drain. Buying a car means that you can sell it again when you leave so although initial outlay is higher, you will get a good chunk back at the end (as long as you look after it). There are several options depending on your budget, there are lots of dealerships selling off ex-rentals that will be around 3–4 years old that will set you back in the region of $38k BBD (£14,250) for a Suzuki Swift. Did I mention cars here are EXPENSIVE?! We did not particularly want to spend that kind of money, even though you would most likely get a fair amount of it back at the end of the year, so I went the Facebook marketplace route and found a 2001 Toyota Vitz for $7.5k BBD (£2.8k).
Now a word of warning here, make sure you know who you are buying the car from. There are a lot of people here selling a car ‘on behalf’ of someone else (I guess they are dealers although not actual companies). I would say avoid this if you can and only deal with the person who actually owns the car. I knew I should be doing this but was so desperate to get it sorted that I brushed over some red flags that I really should not have, and in the end added a considerable amount of stress to the situation and made me feel pretty stupid. Make sure you have someone with you that knows about cars (we were with an ex-Toyota dealer so that was handy), ideally a mechanic, and do not be rushed into it. All basic stuff but like I said, I did not follow my own advice on all of this and regretted it big time. The guy we dealt with seemed legit to start with and was very communicative, although as we went along it went from being his sister’s car, to his ex, to a friend of the family (was actually none of these). Now I am not saying he was trying to scam us, although it felt like it at times, but the evasiveness certainly added to the stress. Several things went wrong in the process, the biggest of which was being told there was still finance on the car. This was sorted eventually (some paperwork had not been filed from years ago….shocker) but it all made me wish I had waited and dealt with someone who was actually selling their own car, I have now seen several that would have been better but who knows, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
For those that want to know the exact process, this is what I did. It does depend on who you are buying from, what kind of insurance you are getting etc but this is the process I personally went through for a used car from a private seller:
- Apply for driving permit. You have to have one to drive here but it is a fairly quick process, if you are renting you will get one included for 2 months but if you are staying longer you need a year one. It costs $100 BBD each and you email a form and then pay the fee at Surepay (desks located all over the island — online take 3 times longer for some reason). The permit should come through quickly after you pay. Actually all very efficient.
- Sort out insurance, contacting a broker is probably the easiest way, we used Ryan at Shawn Hope. You have to have this in place before you buy the car. For an older car you will only get 3rd party insurance which was fine for us, you also do not need to get a valuation which is something you need if you are getting a newer car with comprehensive insurance. You need to give them your No Claims Bonus if you have one, drivers licences, passports, driving permit, proof of address and the proof of ownership letter (a pic or copy is fine). The broker we used had a ‘concierge’ service where he came to our house for our signatures and brought the certificate over when it was done. This is very helpful when you do not have a car yet! Barbados LOVES physical paperwork — do not expect to be able to do anything online.
- The seller needs to give you a proof of ownership or sales letter with the seller’s name, engine number etc on it — this is a legal document so make sure you know what needs to be on it. There isn’t an ‘official’ form but I think you can get a template from some of the licensing offices to make it easier.
- The seller brought the car to us, gave us the letter and we transferred the funds (we used Revolute). At this point make sure everything is still ok, perhaps give it another test drive etc.
- Go to one of the Licensing Authority offices to pay $25, get a receipt so you can go get your car weighed (yes that’s right, they don’t care if it works, just how heavy it is!). There are 3 of these offices, one in Holetown, one in Oistins and one at the Pine (where you get the car weighed). I was advised to go to the Oistins one first as the line at the Pine can be crazy — although keep in mind you do still have to go there next so who knows, maybe I would have been better all in one place. I believe they open at 8am, get there early, maybe 7.30am as they will often only have 1 cashier to start with and the line moves very slowly.
- Go to the Pine to get weighed. Now this is an experience. By the time I arrived at about 9.30am there were already A LOT of cars there, some in a line but most just parked all over the place because there is not enough space for a full line. You need to figure out who is in front of you and who is behind otherwise you run the risk of unintentionally pushing in and people will get mad (this could easily be solved by some kind of ticket system as you enter but no, none of that). Bring a packed lunch — I waited 4 hours, it is BRUTAL. By the time this was done the office had closed again (sometimes they just close early because they feel like it) so back again the next day.
- Go back to one of the BLA offices (if you are lucky and get through in time you can do this at the Pine). Take your weight certificate along with the insurance cover note, sales letter, and registration form (I suggest picking one of these up at the Pine while you are waiting as there is quite a lot to fill out and you do not want to get to the front of the queue having not done it, they will send you back). At this point you pay $400 for the new registration, get given a new licence plate number if you need one (if you are buying from outside your parish) and a registration sticker for your plates.
- Get your new number plate if you need it, there is a place very near each office so you can just get it done on the spot.
- Optional — get a full service by a mechanic, they do not have MOTs here so you do not know the last time it was serviced.
Now the above is your best-case scenario. There is quite a lot that can go wrong and slow things down in between as we experienced, the last of which is that they have run out of stickers so I will have to go back AGAIN next week at some point to get one. I would say I have probably spent around 9 hours of my life queuing to sort this car out so please, if you are doing this all yourself and not through a dealership, expect it to be long, stressful and exhausting.
One final note about the Covid situation here. Over the last few weeks the number of people coming to the island has increased, so too have the number of positive cases being picked up on the 2nd test. This is to be expected but there was a backlog for a while and people were waiting 4–5 days for their test results rather than the 24hrs most of us had when we arrived. If you are arriving in the next few weeks please do take this into account when booking a quarantine hotel, 24–48 hour turnaround is not guaranteed and you do not want to be caught short. They have also changed the process slightly so that you have to quarantine for a minimum for 48 hours before your second test and the free govt quarantine facility is now only for Barbadian citizens. Both sensible moves. Several hotels and villas are being stripped of their quarantine status because of multiple rule breaches (Sandals is the first to go). It is very frustrating to hear that people are escaping quarantine to go to parties or trying to leave the country after testing positive (WTAF!), it just ruins it for everyone that has done what they are told for the good of the whole country and tars all ‘foreigners’ with the same brush. Quarantine is not a hardship here, one could argue they could extend it and that would still be fair enough, look at the likes of Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, 14 days in a hotel room and 3 tests before you can leave. The government are also cracking down on large gatherings over the festive period, again sensible although for those who have already organised larger events I imagine they are scrambling a bit now. (Update: due to 5 new ‘community transmitted cases’ a curfew is now in place from 12am to 5am for 2 weeks so all NYE events cancelled. They have declared Monday and Tuesday bank holidays and asked people to stay home as much as possible while they do thorough contact tracing. Here’s hoping they are able to contain the cases and a lockdown is not necessary.)
We have decided on a quiet Old Year Night, as they call it here, stocked up on dim sum from Singapura in Holetown and will probably be asleep before the fireworks, will just pretend we are still on UK time!
Happy New Year everyone and hopefully 2021 brings better things than the shit show that was 2020.
Disclaimer — these are all my own views and opinions and experiences, not those of Red Quokka, others may differ. If you like gratuitous pictures of beaches and sunsets follow me on Instagram Katie_in_Barbados
