Every little Caribbean island should have a blog like this one on Barbados. I’d take up the task of exploring and blogging about each myself, if I had the time and money, but for now we can rely on the good old tourism bureaus to point us to over packed tourists spots and people like Linda, who point us in the opposite. Well okay, Linda isn’t exactly pointing us to dark, unwelcoming, roads off the beaten track, but she sure does have a good bird’s eye view of everything happening on in Barbados. Most recent posts include celebrity gossip bits on Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, new cell phone regulations, the upcoming jazz festival in addition to several guest house and hotel recommendations. This blog appears to be updated on a regular basis, so it’s worth book marking if you plan on spending your next holiday in Barbados.
The Atlanta Aquarium
Posted over at Divester today about the new Atlanta aquarium, the massive, 8 million gallon
behemoth of water that was funded by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus to the tune of $290 million. The Washington Post ran a review of the aquarium this weekend, and as might be expected,
they’re pretty much gaga over the beast.
But there are some reservations. First of all, it ain’t
cheap. Tickets run some $23, which isn’t exactly cheap, and more than that, the Post finds that some of the
explanatory material falls short. There are, after all, more than 100,000 animals inside the massive tanks, and if you
go there and bring your kids, you certainly want to be able to explain to them what they’re seeing. Sure, they
might be interested just in the whale shark, or the regular sharks, which are easy enough to identify. But you also
want them to know a bit about all the wee colorful fish, too. Anyway, it’s a nice little review, and the gallery
is pretty worth a few clicks.
Great White Sharks on 60 Minutes
Just posted over at Divester a bit
about the excellent piece that was
on 60 Minutes tonight about Great White Shark diving. The nut of the story is that more and more people are spending
millions of dollars every year to dive with Great Whites and as a result sharks are becoming more dangerous and more
attacks are taking place. You do read a lot these days about these kinds of trips, and let me just say I would LOVE to
dive in the water with Great Whites.
Whether I’d actually have the cojones to jump in the cage once I saw a shark leap out of the water with a seal in
its mouth, well, that’s a different question. Anyway, the 60 Minutes piece has some amazing footage of sharks leaping
and ripping seals apart, worth the price of admission, even if you buy or don’t buy the whole cautionary shark diving
thing.
Scuba Santa
Santa dives? I confess I did not know that, but then again, no one pays much attention to what the fat man does in the summer months. I suppose I always thought he’d be hanging in the Bahamas, slurping down oysters and sucking beers with Jimmy Buffet. But yes, Virginia, Santa dives, too. It started three years ago at Newport Aquarium, where Santa gets in the water with colorful fish and sharks and dives some five times a day. Not to ruin it for the kids, but I wonder who plays Santa in this case…and whether he considers this a viable career. I suppose there are worse jobs to be had, like cleaning up after the reindeer.
Divester on Key West and the Caribbean
Our Divester friends are always writing about destinations around the world that are ideal for diving, and usually great places to visit whether you are into scuba or not. Willy Volk posted two items of interest in the past week that I thought might be particularly useful to Gadling readers. First, Willy provides an in-depth description of what to do when diving is not an option in Key West. From fruity drinks to fine dining, neighborhood walks, museum visits and ghost tours too, Willy gives great details about the pubs, restaurants, accommodations and attractions that he and his wife enjoyed on their southern Florida weekend getaway. In another post, Willy points us to a list that may interest those looking to plan vacations in the Caribbean this winter. Child Magazine’s Ten Best Caribbean Resorts for Families is a helpful guide to kid-friendly hotels in Jamaica, Barbados, the Dominican Republic and Bahamas, to name a few.