One of the top tourist destinations in the Caribbean, Barbados features the spectacular turquoise waters of the Caribbean sea rushing up on its pinkish white sand shores. With a major international airport in the island that acts as point of entry to the Eastern Caribbean, Barbados is almost always the first stop to any tour in the Caribbean.
First known as the Isla de los Barbados in Spanish documents dating back to the 1500s, the name of the island can either be attributed to the bearded fig-tree that is indigenous to the island, or the bearded Amerindians that inhabited the island, or to the sprays of foam that forms on the outlying reefs that looks like a beard.
It was the British, however, who settled on the island. Upon landing in the present-day Holetown in 1625, British sailors found the island uninhabited; the Spaniards have captured the Caribs who used to live there to work as slaves for sugar plantations, while others have fled the island to escape slavery.
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