Editor’s note: The World Golf Championships-Barbados World Cup is being played this week at Sandy Lane Resort. While she is there covering the tournament, PGATOUR.com’s Helen Ross will be writing a daily blog.

By Helen Ross
PGATOUR.com Chief of Correspondents

ST. JAMES, Barbados -- The rest of the safari tour was relatively tame compared to the mud bath that Ron had promised, and delivered, in that sugar cane field. The funniest part was that no sooner had he joked that the women on board would have to push the Land Rover out if we got stuck in the mud then we did. I mean, it was nearly instantaneous. Served him right! It was mud-slinging at its best as the tires spun round and round in the quagmire, and we wore the evidence on our clothes for the rest of the day. But that’s part of the adventure, and drinking rum punch was infinitely more fun than doing laundry.

As we traversed the island, Ron gave us a quick history lesson. The Portuguese explored Barbados first. They didn’t settle, but one of them gave the island its name in the mid-1500s. He called it Os Barbados, or "the bearded ones," after seeing the banyan trees with all their long, hanging roots. About 100 years later, the British began to colonize the island. Barbados remained a British colony from 1627 until 1966. In fact, we just missed Independence Day, which was celebrated on Nov. 30 with a variety of activities, including a marathon and 10K, which actually was what had attracted our Canadian friends to the island.

The sugar cane industry has always been king in Barbados, although tourism and information technology are quickly becoming big players in the economic picture. We saw many of the old plantation houses on our tour, as well as the palm trees rising more than 100 yards in the air that had helped define the property for the workers who harvested the sugar cane. The sugar is particularly pure, and the majority exported overseas. Much of the sugar used in Barbados then is imported from Guatemala. Ron said it takes seven tons of sugar cane to make one ton of sugar. The molasses left when the sugar cane is boiled is then used to make rum, which was first produced in Barbados in the mid-1600s and exported in the early 1700s.

Barbados is also a land of many churches. Ron told us there were 365 total, so you could go to a different one every day if you were so inclined. With about 280,000 people living on the island, that’s one of the highest percentages per capita in the world. There's an average of two rum shops within walking distance of each church, Ron said, so it's easy to sin and then repent. The original one-stop shopping, I guess. The tiny rum shops, though, also sell supplies, and years ago, the shopkeepers were some of the first to get TVs, so it was quite the social network.

We stopped in Bathsheba and Cattlewash Bay -- you guessed it, the farmers took the livestock there for a bath in the ocean -- and were treated to some absolutely spectacular views of the coast. We saw a couple of the famous Green Monkeys, too. One lived in a makeshift wildlife park by the side of the road. He must have known just when the 4x4s were expected because he was waiting, posing in the trees for pictures. Ron handed him (or her) a bag of cheese puffs, which the monkey promptly opened and ate. The other monkey was wild, and we caught a glimpse of him running into the bushes by the side of the road. The monkeys originally were brought to Barbados from South Africa as pets. There are so many now, though, some 17,000 Ron said, and they are such a nuisance, eating crops and pestering livestock, that there’s a bounty on them. They looked so cute, though. It was not what we wanted to hear. We also saw black-bellied sheep grazing at the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Of course, Ron called them tropical reindeer, and the cattle nearby, tropical buffalo. And I’d rather remember them that way.

The tour took about nearly six hours, but it was time well spent. We stopped for lunch on our way back to Bridgetown – feasting on macaroni pie, rice and local peas, lamb stew and fried flying fish. And surprise, surprise -- there was more rum punch to be consumed. It was a great day.

Click here for a chance to win a trip for two to Barbados.