25) Old Year's Night

We spent Old Year's Night (December 31st) with the McGill swim team at an outdoor bar with tiki torches that sat at the edge of the beach. At midnight, the fireworks from the Hilton down the bay illuminated the sky. As rum is cheaper than water, the crowd was less than enthused by the fireworks, and many of the young swimmers entered the new year in the fetal position lying under the picnic tables.

Oddly, one of the highlights of New Year were the colourful cast of taxi drivers who shuttled us from St Lawrence Gap to various parties and then home. The final leg of our journey was with Andrew, who took almost three hours to get us home, stopping to show us his favourite street in Bridgetown, a sit down inside his favourite bar, a taste of local nibbles, then a 5am sight seeing tour of various landmarks by moonlight - including the pyramid monument to a Cuban plane crash in the 1970s. Fidel Castro has visited on the anniversary of the crash for the past three decades. The monument marks the spot where local fisherman set sail to help with resuce operations after the crash.