Barbados's Magnificent Atlantic Coast (Don't Wake Up the Giant)
By Bus Goldberg

Most people who travel to Barbados stay in one of the lavish resorts or small inns on the island’s famous Gold Coast (Caribbean Coast), a real Tourist Mecca with outstanding beaches, golf courses, boutiques,"hoity toity" restaurants, glitzy nightclubs and all sorts of tourist traps. If you travel to the island’s rugged and sparsely populated Atlantic seaboard, you’ll discover another world altogether – nature reigns supreme here. Dotting the rugged Atlantic coastline are small fishing villages, antiquated churches, unusual geological formations and other natural history attractions, and most importantly a peaceful calm. If you look due east, there is nothing but the vast blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean between where you’re standing and the continent of Africa.

Traveling along the East Coast, you’ll pass thru Bathsheba, a picturesque fishing village, a popular recreational area for Bajans and a world famous surfing beach. Looming in the distance just north of Bathsheba is Chalky Mount, a very unusual geological formation that resembles from a distance, the head of a Sleeping Giant. With his mouth slightly ajar, he looks like he is snoring. Locally this formation is know as Napoleon. Just beyond the Sleeping Giant, is the hilltop village of the Potteries, where local artisans carry on the tradition of fashioning clay pottery similar in design to their African ancestors and the Arawak Indians, the original inhabitants of Barbados and the Caribbean.

Touring “the other side of Barbados” is a delightful change of pace from the throbbing tourism development on the Gold Coast.

Bus Goldberg is a seasoned world traveler and the director of Calypso Island Tours, a travel company that specializes in botanical adventures and nature tours to such diverse destinations as Costa Rica, Thailand and the Caribbean. He also maintains his own travel blog, Calypso Island Chronicles.