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Top 5 Bleisure Must-Dos At The New O2 Beach Club & Spa
Eight months after opening and a few steps toward post-pandemic ease-of-travel, planning ‘7 Days at O2 Beach Club & Spa’ as a Bleisure trip to Barbados was a great opportunity.
The Art Of Bleisure: Packing For 7 Days & A Purpose
If you haven’t heard the term before – neither had I – Bleisure is a travel industry term for trips that combine business with leisure, and Forbes recently highlighted why Bleisure travellers are important to the global recovery now that people are travelling again.
Digital Nomad: Buen Día, Catalina!
Every day, in myriad ways, I’m grateful to have discovered the joys of “working remotely” long before the pandemic forced virtually everyone into the same experience. It started as an island freelancer’s reality that one could be productive and overhead-free by working at home/cafe/other people’s offices, and ended up an aspiration to be mobile
Irie Bar Tabanca: Of Friendship and Reggae
One day in September 2019, I sat down and wrote about Irie Bar in a piece which started as a travel article and ended up so personal that I felt unable to share it at the time. Over a few difficult years, Irie Andy became my friend and Irie Bar my happy place, where I
Digital Nomad: Who’s afraid of pandemic travel?
What happens to a freelance digital nomad during Covid-19 on a paradise island?
Covid-19 Crunch Time: One Wrong Move And We Lose 2020
Playing the role of Caribbean Coronavirus Cassandra in the past couple of weeks has been less about a backslide into more negative-thinking periods of my past, and more about a sustained effort to join up my thinking as it relates to a world that changes faster than the dappled light in the avocado tree outside
Lockdown Redux: Are You Ready, Saint Lucia?
So what now? Just four days after the first AA flight from Miami bore around 150 intrepid travellers to the super-sanitised set-up at Hewanorra International Airport, multiple reports describe tourists wandering around Gros Islet looking for jet skis and bar opening hours. I’m not sure what we were promised, but the stunned ripples across the
Opening Up: Is Saint Lucia A Coronavirus Canary?
Predictably, Allen Chastanet’s May 17th announcement that Saint Lucia’s borders would begin opening on June 4th raised more questions than it answered, while streaming online to a viewership ranging from the genuinely interested to the authentically dunderheaded. More than a month later, the reality continues to frustrate tourism stakeholders at every turn, while thousands prepare
The Connection Between Covid-19 and Secret Eating
Let me tell you a secret. I’m a secret ‘Secret Eaters‘ fan. I must have watched a week’s worth of this British ‘reality TV’ gem, that packs more of a health education punch than you probably think from the name. If you haven’t seen it, there are umpteen episodes on YouTube from half a dozen
Stupider and Stupider: Does Keeping Up with Covid-19 Lower Your IQ?
I swear there are days when I slap my own head to make sure I’m not imagining the covidiocy streaming in from the outside world through my tiny cocoon’s ten inch tech portal. There’s no other way to describe it, I’m afraid, despite the fact that particular trite pandemicism was coined less than two months
Counting Days And Blessings
I don’t know about you, but some days I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. You’ll know what I clumsily mean, despite realising that I’m neither. It’s that time vacuum feeling that used to be a feature of holiday planning-going-coming-home, when the months before departure were rich with hare-brained schemes and endless listing of
Welcome To The Age Of Dunning-Kruger
Less than four months into 2020, it’s become dramatically clear that world has gone insane, and lunatics have taken over to lead us into what history will no doubt speak of as ‘The Age of Dunning-Kruger.’ In the technologically developed world over the past decade, sufferers of this challenging psychological condition have presented in ever
Quarantine Zen Queen 9: Been There, Done That
Staying at home twenty-four seven is a breeze, isn’t it though? Not at all like Quarantine-with-a-Capital-Q ! After two weeks semi-self-isolating in Belfast, followed by two of all-inclusive non-Covid-Certified hospital[ity] courtesy of Saint Lucia government, I’m just effervescent with enthusiasm for staying home, back in my little pad-with-a-panorama where, as it also turns out, there’s
Quarantine Zen Queen 8: Day Of The Dread
There were two dark days among the fourteen. It would be a lie to pretend it was a breeze from end to end, and I stopped lying about my mental health a couple of years ago. On day nine, things started off with my favourite ritual of sitting on the balcony watching the pink, fluffy,
Quarantine Zen Queen 7: Reality Dawns
One of my favourite feels is arriving at a new destination in the dark and discovering what it looks like in the morning. I realised asking the receptionist for a room with a view had been a wasted joke. The carpark crowd that had been so tired, anxious and hungry were now waking up to
Quarantine Zen Queen 6: The Return of PTSDee
The seat beside me was the last free one on the ramshackle bus. As we sat there baking in the full force of the afternoon sun, I secretly prayed that nobody would be forced to sit next to me – for both our sakes. The Universe provided, and I hugged my bags for comfort. Half
Quarantine Zen Queen 5: Don’t Stand So Close To Me
If you’ve never sat for an hour in the hot sun wearing a medical face mask, oversized shades and a black cap, you may think I’m exaggerating, but it feels like sticking your head inside the door of a sauna while your body stays outside in the 30 degree heat. There’s a point at which
Quarantine Zen Queen 4: Uncharted Territory
If you were among the nine passengers aboard VS89 from LGW to UVF on Monday, March 23, I have a message: Swear to Jah I don’t always get on like Father Jack in an off licence. In fact it’s years since I consumed more than two adult beverages on a long haul flight, partly because
Quarantine Zen Queen 3: In A Holding Pattern
Stepping into one of the smallest hotel rooms known to man, I once again thanked the Universe for the power of technology. It was spotless, comfortable and all sorts of space efficient, like ‘tiny living’ for travellers. The young receptionist was apologetic about the lack of normal service, but breakfast and dinner were available if
Quarantine Zen Queen 2: Getting Back Home
St. Paddy’s Day was to be my first in Ireland since leaving for Saint Lucia in 1993. The parade and fetes were cancelled, to nobody’s surprise. After the boiled ham, cabbage and mashed spuds were devoured, we had the traditional family evening at home with a few adult beverages, great craic and a lot of