One of the impressive things about Barbados is that the island has more on offer for children than almost any other in the Caribbean. Like them it has day sails and snorkelling trips along the coast, but in addition the island also has more activities and children-friendly 'sites’ inland. There may not be as much as you would expect at home, but there is enough to provide a variation from days on the beach.

For smaller children there is a free range zoo, a marine centre and a good cave to visit. And of course it is fun anyway to drive around the island, through the countryside and the canefields. If you have older children you can try the museum in Bridgetown and there are a couple of good plantation houses. They might also enjoy the tropical flowers and trees at the excellent Barbadian gardens. Please see our Barbados Guide for some details of these.

Generally you will also find the Bajans friendly and easy going when it comes to handling children. The island can be formal (well, relatively) at times, and the Bajans can even be a little martial when there is group activity - which is surprisingly, really, for the Caribbean, but then that’s one of the things about them that makes the other West Indians chuckle. Generally speaking the activities in Barbados are not cheap, but all in all, the island is a good place to travel with a family.

In early 2006, James Henderson, the editor of Definitive Caribbean, was lucky enough to be joined for Half Term in Barbados by his two children - Thing 1 (6, a boy) and Thing 2 (4, a girl), oh, and their mother too (She who Knows). They visited sites suitable for young children. It was great to spend time in the islands with them, passing on the pleasure of the Caribbean to another generation.

For more information about the Sites and Activities they visited, see

Harrison’s Cave, Grenade Hall Forest and Signal Station, Barbados Wildlife Reserve, Glass Bottom Boat Trip, Welchman Hall Gully, Ocean Park

Also, please see stories and reviews about the Barbados Beaches and the Restaurants in Barbados that they visited.

For general information, please see in our Barbados guide about Children in Barbados.

Barbados Activities and Sites

Harrison’s Cave
Harrison’s Cave is hidden somewhere high up in the middle of Barbados. As you head inland from the West Coast, climbing into the island interior, you pass through a number of cliffs, ridges of exposed grey rock covered in lianas and other greenery. They rise like curtains ahead of you, so you have to wind through a gully, even a switchback, to get over them. Mahogany trees enclose you briefly with a spooky green light, before you find yourself on higher ground. After these ledges, when you get to the centre of the island the land becomes even rougher, with hillocks, gullies, wells and pits, all smothered in greenery.

In one of these wells, right at the centre of the island, is Harrison’s Cave. You descend into what seems the belly of the earth and come to a car park surrounded by cliffs. Tucked into the corner is the main building, the entrance to the cave.

The trip starts with a short video of Barbados and its geology. For an adult, particularly one that enjoys the story of stone, this was fun. All sorts of talk of clastic sediment, biogenic rocks, radiolava and tectonic plates (Barbados lies at the meeting point of the Atlantic and Caribbean plates). For two children under 10, even one who applies himself to the screen with more attention than almost anything else in life (when he is allowed), sitting still through it was a tough call.

Thing Two was much more interested in the buggies that were drawing up outside. In between retrieving her from mischief, I gathered that coral started to grow 800,000 years ago and that the island underwent geological upheaval several times - which explains the ridges of exposed rock, or terraces, that you drive through. They are actually sections of reef that were exposed.

Once it was out of the water, the coral rock began to be dissolved by the rain, very slowly of course. Rivulets, holes and underground streams were formed, cracks in the porous rock were enlarged and eventually caverns were formed. Some of these collapsed, creating gullies and the pits on the surface, but underground the water continues to drip through the earth, carving out caves.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 raced to get onto the front seat of the buggy that transports you down into the cave system. A track has been cut through from the surface down to the first cavern, and then, descending in a spiral, it passes from one cavern to the next.

If the video was a tough call for a child, being in an underground world of spectacle is something that anyone can appreciate, even if they cannot understand it, even if they are recalcitrant children. Thing 1 and Thing 2 quietened down and began to marvel at the shapes that the water has carved and fashioned over the millennia.

The water is still making its way through the rock of course, rainwater that drops on the centre of the island. And just as it picks up chemicals from the rock it dissolves, so it deposits them in stalagtites and stalagmites further down. The water is truly spectacular here. In quantity, in the shallow pools that are backlit, it begins to look blue and mystical. Around us, small rivers chuckled over a series of small terraces, dropping from crystalline pool to pool in fifteen inch waterfalls.

Several of the sections have been given a name. We passed ‘the Village’, a collection of small towers that looked like a family of small figures. Eventually we entered the Great Hall, a cathedral-like cavern with vertical sides and a roof dim and distant above us. Spouts of water played straight out of the wall into the pool on the ground and there was a curtain of water droplets. The walls seemed to drip with a goo that looked like Neolithic cake mix. We passed protrusions that looked like cauliflowers and the ‘hanging basket‘, where dripping fingers of stone hung over the side of a bowl like cascading flowers.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 decided to name a few of the formations as well.

‘Look, a hobbit!’

There is a moment in the tour when they turn off the light, to show you total blackness. In the silence you could hear the drip of water all around. It comes out of the ceilings, out of the walls and trickles along the floors. It drips all over you as you drive and walk around.

After 20 minutes it seemed as though we had descended into the bottom of the earth. There are over three miles of caves in this system. I wondered whether we would get close to sea level. In fact we were 160 foot down, and still many hundreds of feet above the sea. The water that passes through and comes out in springs in the island.

The calcium saturated in the water builds stalagmites at a cubic inch every 120 years, in tiny amounts, drip by drip by drip. They start as tiny mounds like half footballs, and grow into brain corals a couple of feet across. Some rise, taller and taller until they are like white ghosts. One almost seemed to have arms under a shroud.

‘It’s a dementor!’ said Thing 1. He is a fan of Harry Potter and it’s true, it was one of the guardians of Azkaban. It did have a glistening, marbly white coat, but it looked as though it was about to take off and glide across the Great Hall.

After their difficulty in concentrating, and a certain circumspection about going into the dark underground, Thing 1 and Thing 2 were definitely struck by the cave. And amazingly, I think, by the end of it, they could remember which was which, a stalagmite and a stalagtite.

Grenade Hall Signal Station
Grenade Hall Signal Station has a strange and interesting part in the story of Barbados. It is one of a network of communication towers that linked various forts on the island to the military headquarters in Bridgetown. They were used to let the General know of any potential trouble on the horizon - particularly approaching ships - and they could pass a signal around the island in minutes. Although Barbados is positioned a hundred miles to the east and upwind of the rest of the island chain and was fearsomely difficult to attack for sailing ships, the island was vital to British interests in the Caribbean and would be have been defended at all costs.

As you can see by the name, Grenade Hall Forest and Signal Station, the two are located together (see below for the forest). In fact the zoo, the Barbados Wildlife Reserve, is also right there (also see below). They are inland above Speightstown, on the ridge at the top of the island - as a signalling station Grenade Hall had to have a view over the whole of the northern end of the island.

We arrived and found monkeys with extremely long and slender tails poking around in the bushes, staring at us with intense, almost bad-tempered faces. They tracked us as we headed up to the tower. We climbed to the top floor, where the signalling used to take place. On the wall was a copy of the chart they used. There were codes for ‘flag ship’, ‘ship of the line’, ‘brigantine’, ‘sloop of war’, and others ‘sailed in the night’, ‘has troops on board’ and ‘has sailed to’.

Looking in one direction you could see down towards Speightstown on the coast, and through a spyglass you could see south to the next tower in the chain, Cotton Tower, which stood on a ridgeline several miles away. Messages would be forwarded by mirror flash or flag during the day and then by coloured lanterns at night. Although it was mainly military traffic, the towers would also pass messages about merchant ships. There were even rumours of the system being used to warn of possible slave uprisings.

I pointed out a couple of prints of soldiers on the wall to see if Thing 1 would be interested in them. No. Instead he decided that it was fun throwing his hat out of the window and running down the two floors to pick it up again. Time to visit the Forest.

Grenade Hall Forest
You’d never imagine that a small stretch of simple forest could have so much to it. Sure, it is attractive, with sunlight protruding in angled beams through the canopy and piercing the seemingly subterranean green light. But actually the interest in tropical forests is the stuff that you cannot see. As in all tropical gardens, it is the stories behind the plants are extraordinary.

Grenade Hall Forest is laid out over a rocky hillside. Paths form a network on the rough ground of exposed limestone rock. Every now and then there are signboards that explain a feature of a plant or the forest. They are done in a clever way, with a visible question and an answer that you uncover by sliding a board up. Unfortunately several of the boards were no longer in good repair, but there were enough to be of interest.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 were happiest heading off on one path and seeing where it would come out, whether it would join up with another path that led back to us. As they whizzed by I managed to grab them for a moment and tell them about the things I had discovered.

Mahogany is a distinctive feature of Barbados. You see it growing in immensely beautiful and slightly spooky-looking stands - you pass briefly through their shade as you drive around the interior. Although the tree is not indigenous to Barbados (it comes from other Caribbean islands), it has been grown here since 1762 and of course it is used in making furniture.

Zoom, grab, hey have you seen this? Pause, ‘Yes Daddy’ Zoom.

As you might expect from the name, rodwood, which has slender but strong branches, is used for making rods of wood. Dogwood, on the other hand, which flowers at night, has leaves that can be chewed to combat toothache. Amazingly, rosy periwinkle has been used in treatments for Hodgkinson’s disease and leukaemia.

Buzz - that was Thing 2 passing by - grab.

‘Did you know that you can use this plant when you get ill.’

‘It’s very pretty, Daddy.’

True enough, it is a pretty flower.

And it was the medicinal plants that were by far the biggest and most impressive group. In this small forest there is cinchona, from which comes quinine, which is used against malaria, and Mexican yam, which provides cortico-steroids for skin diseases. Wild basil can be used to keep away mosquitos and has always been used in the Caribbean to combat chest colds. Some ferns can be used to lower blood pressure.

Zoom, lunge, oh, rats, Thing 1 got away.

To be honest it would be quite difficult to explain how a fern can be used in lowering his blood pressure. One day, though, he will no doubt appreciate aloe. As every good beach-tourist knows, the juice of aloe is used to soothe sunburned skin. It is a strange looking plant, an explosion of fleshy green cactus-like leaves lined with spikes. I waved it at Thing 2.

‘Yucky,’ she said.

Barbados Wildlife Reserve
The Barbados Wildlife Reserve is also at the same location as Grenade Hall. It has two sections. One is open, and you can walk through it on path, among all the animals which roam free. The other has animals in cages. While some of them are in cages for their own peace of mind, you’ll be glad that others are locked away, particularly the boa constrictor for instance, which is huge.

You enter the open section first, along a stone wall inlaid with cartwheels as windows. There is a small café near the entrance and from there brick laid paths lead off and meander through a stand of forest.

Zoom. Thing 1 was off in one direction. Zip. Thing 2 headed off in the other. Into an open park of wild animals - unlikely to be dangerous, admittedly, but we had no idea what was out there. As parents of two we can employ man-to-man marking when we need to, so we each chased off after one of them. I followed Thing 1. I was just catching up with him when he stopped. I could almost hear a screech of brakes.

‘But Daddy, that’s a crocodile…?’

‘Well, no, it’s a cayman, but he’s a relative of a crocodile.’

Thing 1 stood in awe. The cayman lay immobile, eyes and back just above the surface of the small pond, its serrated tail laid on a rock. I suggested to Thing 1 that he would get the best out of the zoo if he went slowly and looked carefully. Too fast and he would miss everything. We walked and he pointed out the different animals. Not far from the water was a pile of otters, snoozing happily. And lying neatly on the dry ground a few yards from them was a deer. Then another, and another, and another, eight or nine of them, all sitting quietly and eyeing us intently.

‘Look’, said Thing 2, ‘it’s Bambi’.

Hutias, animals something like a large rabbit, were tucked into corners. They seemed very shy, and ventured out only occasionally to pick over the food left for them. There were tortoises scattered all over the place, though. They obviously liked to shelter in corners and against the small walls. A couple looked as through they had walked into one of the walls by mistake and just given up for a while.

There is an aviary in the Reserve. We negotiated the double door and came into a huge area of parrots and macaws, beautifully coloured birds that squawked and occasionally flashed by. Both Thing 1 and Thing 2 were still and quiet, soaking in the strangeness of the animals.

Next we entered the second section of the zoo, which is enclosed. Here we saw the reptiles, lazing in the crooks of branches or coiled in a corner. The boa looked as though he had just eaten.

‘Can I speak parseltounge to it, Daddy?’ asked Thing 1. We had just read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

‘Well, you can try, but I don’t think this snake looks as though he wants to go anywhere, let alone all the way back to Brazil.’

In the open air there was a troupe of Cuban iguanas in a lair, warming themselves in the afternoon sun. Three of them were sitting in a line - formation sunbathing if you like. Next we passed pelicans and flamingos.

Finally we arrived at the orchid house. I tried to interest Thing 1 in the tiny flowers and their weird shapes, like shoes and lanterns, but I could hear his engine cranking up. The spell was broken and he was beginning to run again.

As zoos go, the Barbados Wildlife Reserve does not have a huge number of animals, but the layout is original and it is interesting because you do get to walk among free roaming animals. It certainly put a spell on Thing 1 and Thing 2 for a while.

Glass Bottom Boat Trip
This was the trip that they left Dad behind. I needed to see some hoteliers along the West Coast, so I dropped Thing 1, Thing 2 and She who Knows at Folkstone Marine Park just north of Holetown for a glass bottom boat trip. A day sail is often the highlight of a trip in the Caribbean. And true to form it was very popular with Thing 1 and Thing 2. Just for rather unexpected reasons.

I was there as they boarded the boat.

‘Hi, my name is Kendrick, but you can call me Captain’, said, well, the captain of the boat. ‘Aks me any question you like and I’ll tell you the answer.’

But all was not well. A family that was booked on the trip had just rung to say they would be late. Start, stop, start again. Eventually they picked them up at Sandy Lane and headed off to see the turtles, passing a reef and wreck that they would return to later on.

The turtle spot was in water about forty feet deep and deep blue. Around fifteen turtles were congregated at the spot, swimming lazily in the mid water, rising and falling as the whim took them. For moments they would hang in the water, then they would roll slightly and with flick a fin they would power away. Captain crushed some crackers and threw them in. They fluttered down through the water in a cascade. The turtles came back lazily and pecked at them before gliding off again.

Thing 2 stayed on board, but Thing 1 took to the water. One brush with a turtle was enough, though, and he was straight back on board. Still, they were visible through the glass and that seemed to be enough.

Next they returned to the shipwreck and the reef, which lay next door to one another, again in about forty feet of water. Coral heads rose to within twenty feet of the surface. Again Captain threw some crackers to attract the fish nearer the glass bottom of the boat. There were sergeant majors, with three stripes and an extremely aggressive nature, angel fish, blue tang and weird looking trumpet fish - a long thin species with a nobbly snout.

She who Knows asked a few questions about the fish. She was greeted by blank looks. Luckily the other family on board that had a plastic card with pictures and names.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 stayed on board again, playing around the boat. Captain was happy to entertain them and allowed them to roam all over it, clambering on the running board and on the roof.

‘So, Thing 1 and Thing 2, what was the best bit of the trip?’ I asked when they returned.

‘We were allowed to sit on the roof of the boat’, said Thing 2.

‘And I drove it’, said Thing 1.

Welchman Hall Gully
Welchman hall Gully is hidden away in the centre of the island, not far from Harrison’s Cave. There are similarities between the two. In both you feel you are descending into the guts of the earth. Everywhere there is rock, the same limestone, former coral reefs, that have been pushed up from under the sea. The difference is that at Welchman Hall the roof collapsed and the cavern has been turned into a gully - there are even a few old stalagtites on view there. It meanders for several hundred yards, with walls a hundred and fifty feet high either side.

If stalagtites grow so slowly underground, above ground it is the opposite. The growth there is best described as rampant. There is an undergrowth of ferns and creepers that smothers the ground, out of which shoot the trunks of the vast trees, which in turn drop a tangled curtain of lianas back down to earth. Some trees grow right to the edge of the ridge. Others grow out of the cliff itself.

As you walk there is a series of numbered signs with descriptions of plants. Some have gone missing, but there are enough to retain your interest. Coconut palms, royal palms, trumpet trees, ferns and creepers. There are some 200 species in the gully.

Thing 2 pointed out a traveller’s tree, its fronds played in a single arc

‘That tree looks like a fan, Daddy.’

True enough, it does. But more importantly than cooling you, it can also provide water, which collects in the section between the fronds. A tree that grows well here, sheltered slightly from the direct heat of the sun, is the nutmeg. The ground was covered in the fruit, which look a little like apricots.

In one corner, hidden away purposefully, is a discreet memorial to remarkable man who lived in Barbados for many years, Colin Hudson. He is remembered here by a sculpture in a glass case - a pair of bronze walking boots. A little off-beat it might seem, but it is a memory of which he definitely would have approved. The reason for it is that for so many years he led the hikes around the island. He was the inspiration behind the Sunday Barbados National Trust Walks, which brought so much pleasure and understanding of the island to people.

The gully is a pleasant walk but it was not really something that held Thing 1 and Thing 2 in thrall. There was a surprise to come, though. Having descended into what seemed to be the bowels of the earth, we came to the other end of the gully to be presented a fantastic view. In fact we were hundreds of feet above the Atlantic coast and the view carried all over the north-east of the island.

Ocean Park
Ocean Park is a new site. I struggled past it one day while out running (trying to work off some of the food that I had over-indulged over the first five days of our visit to Barbados) and realised that it was something that we should probably visit. As the name suggests, Ocean Park is a marine park, and so there are fish and corals, a touch tank and a shark pool, but it has a few other aspects, including a playground and mini-golf, that make for a good afternoon out for children.

We arrived in the afternoon. Thing 1 and Thing 2 took one look at the playground and ran for it. Meanwhile we sorted the tickets. As it turned out, the park was not really fully open. The water-show wasn’t working yet, but most of the tanks had fish and marine life in them and sign boards to explain what they were.

The visit is on a circuit that leads you to a number of mainly open-air tanks. There was a ray pool, with southern sting rays, a freshwater display with cardinals, tetras and piranha. Then inevitably it was the sharks that caught Thing 1’s attention.

‘Look Daddy, sharks!’

There were three of them, delightfully described as ‘puppy‘ sharks by one of the staff. Yes, like little Labradors or something, I thought. I’m a bit sharkist, to be honest. What can you say about an animal that is not much more than a set of revolving jaws on a tail and which is cannibalistic in the womb?

Next moment we were distracted by the shoreline Discovery Pod, where there were several aquariums with sea anemones and sea horses swimming in among the corals. In the eel tank was a moray, lying still in a cleft in the rock, passing water through its mouth to breathe. It was opening and closing its mouth.

‘Look, it’s shouting at us’, I said.

‘That’s probably because there’s another shark behind us,’ said Thing 1. ‘Over here, a nurse shark.’

He knows his sharks, then. And there it was, 10 foot of it, lying on the floor of the tank. They have a never-ending fascination somehow.

Besides the sharks, the most popular section was probably the touch pool, where there were starfish, sea cucumbers (they look a bit like green sausages) and conchs. These poor animals were put through their routine again and again as the different families came through. I bet they would appreciate an easy life, but they just keep getting picked up and squealed at. Just as they wanted a moment’s peace and a snooze, no doubt. A bit like being a Dad, really.

We hope you have enjoyed these reviews on the sites and tours of Barbados. If you would like to discover more useful hints about what to do with your children in Barbados this summer and autumn, or to see other reviews and stories about family visits by Thing 1 and Thing 2, please see Restaurants in Barbados (which includes visits to the Lone Star and the Oistins Fish Fry) and the Beaches of Barbados.

Please also see information about Child-friendly developments in other Caribbean islands and for general information about children in Barbados, please see the section in our Barbados island guide, Children in Barbados.