Life's good on 'de Rock'

"Bashy bim," local slang for "cool Barbados," was out there somewhere. All would be well come the dawn.

And, of course, it all was.

I pulled back the curtains in the morning and the brilliant Caribbean light streamed in. There was old St. Anne's Fort across the street, its iron cannons waiting for the enemy frigates that never came. I padded my way down to the beach, past a bright yellow lifeguard shack that boggled my jetlagged optical nerves, and heaved myself into the warm, wet bliss of the sea.

After more than two decades of overseas traveling, I finally came to the Caribbean pretty much for the same reason as Jackie Hunter, a tourist from Westminster, Colo., whom I met my first morning on Barbados.

"I've done Hawaii, I've done Mexico, so I thought I would try the Caribbean," she said.

Barbados won out over the dozens of other destinations through a process of subtraction. I wanted something foreign (scratch Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) but not too foreign (cross out current and former French and Dutch colonies). Lush (sorry, Aruba) but far enough south to be unrelentingly warm in winter (bye-bye Bahamas).

Barbados sounded intriguing. Ninety miles east of the main chain of Caribbean islands, its location made it the natural center of British trading — the first port after the long voyage across the Atlantic.

It was a British colony for more than 300 years until independence in 1966. Its parliament, founded in 1639, is the third-oldest in the Commonwealth. Future U.S. President George Washington accompanied his brother, Lawrence, to the island in 1751 in an unsuccessful attempt to cure Lawrence's tuberculosis.

A playground for the wealthy (Tiger Woods was married on Barbados), it also boasts a thriving middle class, 99 percent adult literacy and 10 percent unemployment. Life on the island locals call "de Rock" is pretty good.

Then there's the rum, the sweet spirit of the sugar plantations. It's sold in more than 1,200 tiny rum shops around the island.

I stop in historic though gritty Bridgetown just long enough to linger in the space once called Trafalgar Square. It was recently renamed National Heroes Square by republican-minded politicians trying to distance the island from its reputation as "Little England."

I head northwest on Highway 1, the first leg of my round-island drive. It used to be you could navigate using the map of Barbados on a bottle of Mount Gay Eclipse rum (hopefully not while driving). Today the label is less a map and more a Barbados-shaped logo.

Just north of Bridgetown, I swing into the Mount Gay bottling plant and museum. Guide Janelle Jones tells me the story of the company, once owned by the ironically named Sober family.

Mount Gay has been producing the sweet booze since at least 1703. The sugar cane plantation is still locally owned, though the rum company is now part of the Paris-based Rémy Cointreau conglomerate.

Jones portrays Barbados as a nation happily soaked in rum — rum in the afternoon, rum in the evening, rum in the morning coffee, rum in the afternoon cakes.

"They say if you drink rum straight, it preserves you," she says.

Jones suggests that visitors who want to act like a local go to a rum shop and order a "Black and Coke," a mix of high-end black-label Extra Old Mount Gay rum and Coca-Cola.

Many of the rum barons had mansions along "the Platinum Coast" just to the north around Holetown, where British settlers first came ashore in 1627. Today the area, also nicknamed Billionaire Beach, has a string of high-end resorts clinging to the narrow ledge of sand.

The most famous is Sandy Lane, where rooms sometimes start at $1,000 a night in winter. The names Jagger and Sinatra have appeared in the guest book. More recently, Woods sailed his megayacht, Privacy, to the dock at Sandy Lane for his 2004 wedding at the hotel's Green Monkey clubhouse.

I keep driving until I get out of the west coast money belt. Mansions slowly give way to houses, then shacks north of Speightstown. I speed past the fishermen at Six Men's Bay to arrive at Little Good Harbour. At the small seaside inn, $500 gets me a modern two-bedroom unit with a kitchen across a busy street from the beach.

The hotel's locally famous restaurant, the Fish Pot, is housed in an 18th-century stone fort once used by his majesty's troops, sweltering in their red woolen tunics. It's now a perfect perch for a sunset dinner of a local specialty, crisp-skinned flying fish baked in herb aioli.

While totaling my bill, owner Andrew Warden admits that he's jealous of my next stop — the rugged eastern coast.

"It's where residents go when they want to get away and you don't have a lot of money," he says. "It's absolutely gorgeous, but the weather on that side of the island can be unforgiving."

My sedan climbs the road over the spine of the island, stopping at Farley Hill National Park, whose centerpiece is an 1857 sugar baron's Great House that burned in 1965. Forty years later, it's overgrown with bright flowers and beautiful weeds. Green monkeys swing from the trees.

The hills are buffeted by gusts off the Atlantic. It's the first time in two days that I have felt cool and quiet. Visitors usually come by tour bus, so today I have the place to myself.

I cross the island and am now heading south on Highway 3, past Bathsheba. I stop to see the rolling waves of "Soup Bowl," the surf spot favored by world champion Kelly Slater when he visits Barbados from Florida. The coast here is all cliffs and pounding waves, a kind of tropical Cornwall.

Soon I turn southeast on Highway 5 and find the Crane, the Caribbean's first resort hotel when it opened in 1887. It sits on a bluff above the most beautiful beach on the island.

Despite the statues of cranes — the birds — in the lobby, the beach is actually named after a crane — the machine. A big one used to sit on the bluff, hauling supplies up from anchored ships.

All around the lovely old hotel, condos are sprouting. Part of the reason: cricket. Next year Barbados will host the World Cup of the most confusing major sport in the world. All over the island, hoteliers are rushing to cash in on the expected crush of visitors.

After a bit of body surfing, I kick back on the veranda of my room, a little sunburned and salty. I've got a glow going inside and out.The dead of night is coming. But Barbados is still looking just bashy.

● Barbados Tourism Authority, 1-800-221-9831.

● The cost of a trip to Barbados varies wildly depending on the season. Prices are highest from December through mid-March, when the island fills with North Americans and Europeans fleeing ice and snow back home. Prices are moderate in the spring and plunge during the humid, stormy hurricane season from June through October.

● Nearly 40 large and small cruise lines call on Barbados, according to the local tourism office. For a full list, go to www.cruisebarbados.com online.

● Barbados does not have major American rental-car companies. It's best to ask advice from your hotel as to where to book. Often, rental companies will come to your hotel to deliver the car. As in many tropical locales, prices aren't cheap. I rented from Drive-a-Matic at the Hilton for $90 a day and returned the car to the airport for no additional charge.

● Prices are cheapest in the hotel strip between the airport and Bridgetown and in the far northwest and southeast coasts. A plus for families: Many hotels have two- and even three-bedroom units.

● Hilton Barbados. Rates from $140 to $500 depending on the season. 1-877-GO-HILTON.