For the second time in our Caribbean sojourn we enter Barbados landing at the Grantley Adams International Airport.
Barbados maybe the most easterly of the Lesser Antilles, but technically, because it is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and is not touched anywhere by the Caribbean Sea, is not correctly a Caribbean island at all!
It lies some 62 miles east of the Windward Islands and about 250 miles north east of Trinidad and Tobago. The nearest neighboring island is St Vincent some miles to the west while St Lucia is 100 miles to the North West.
From an insurance point of view Barbados lies outside the principal Atlantic hurricane threat area.
The island is 21 miles long and 14 miles wide, or, as is said locally; 21 miles long and a smile wide. It has an area of 166 square miles, a population of 280,000 and is divided into 11 parishes.
Although it is one of the ten most visited Caribbean destinations, fewer than 520,000 visitors per year actually stay overnight, meaning it is hardly over-crowded.
The ratio of tourists to residents is low: there are 1.8 tourists per resident compared with 13 in the British Virgin Islands.