Submitted by Ashlee Autore on the 2018 winter session program in Barbados sponsored by the Department of Geography…
This past week, we spent a lot of time outside going on field trips. One was to Harrison’s Cave, where we hiked and crawled through water, pipes and between stalagmites and stalactites 110 feet below the surface. Of course, some of us were a little nervous about the tight spaces, but it all went really well. We got to experience what the miners went through when we had all the lights turned off as we crawled through a pipe. After about two hours, we came out of the cave covered in mud and sweat.
On another field trip, we went to visit a quarry where the focus is sand regeneration. Walker’s Sand Quarry is the number one source of sand in Barbados, and the country is currently running out. So far, the project is three years underway, and they’re hoping to keep producing sand through planting different types of grasses and trees, but it’s estimated they’ll last only about five more years. After that, the country will likely be importing sand from Guyana. Once the tour of the quarry was over, we got to take part in the sand regeneration ourselves and plant our own trees.