Barbados, Sunday: TODAY'S postcard comes from a tropical paradise courtesy of the electronic wonder that is the Internet.

I scribbled it first under a palm tree, perspiration dripping on to my jotter, the Caribbean lapping at my feet.

But my hands are shaking and I have broken off from my holiday to tell you about this terrifying nightmare I've just lived through.

It's called Barbados public transport - the bus service.

I've said some awful things about Arriva in the past, but never again.

On the face of it, these island buses are a model system: one along every couple of minutes, 1.50 Barbados dollars (about 90p) for anywhere on the 21 mile by 14-mile rock.

There are different services, but the 14-seat minibuses are the problem - they all appear to be driven by would-be Schumachers with at least 20 people on board.

Bus stops are irrelevant. If the driver sees you walking along the pavement, he screeches to a halt and invites you aboard.

So we did, and had the ride of our lives. Flamingo Land and Lightwater Valley may have spent millions, but they cannot match this for a white-knuckle ride.

Every start is as if from a chequered flag; every stop is an emergency stop.

In between, the journey is at breakneck speed on rutted roads through shanty villages or hotel-lined luxury.

If you dare look outside while you are clinging on for grim death, you see the bus is a few inches from the dawdling car in front, the airhorn urging the driver to move it, or move over.

Then you notice the bus driver is doing all this with one hand. The other is outside, banging on the door panel to the deafening beat of the reggae music from a sound system that vibrates passengers' vertebrae and rattles the teeth.

Actually, inside these 'boom' buses it's very cosy, even intimate. Just when you think this sardine tin can take no more, they invite another three people on board.

I'm sitting on the knee of a giant Rastafarian to whom I've not been introduced, my wife is on the back seat enjoying similar intimacy with another. Then it's all change. At every stop, someone near the back wants to be out, so everybody has to pile out, then jump back in again in a totally different seating arrangement. This can happen eight times in two miles.

Once, I actually got to sit next to my wife for a minute or so, which was when we noticed we were the only pink 'lobsters' on the bus.

Now, though, I'm the host. On my lap I have a gnarled, grey-bearded Barbadan who looks into my eyes and gives me a gap-toothed grin.

"Very friendly, isn't it?" I quip, grabbing onto anything to prevent somersaulting on a tight bend.

Then I notice the smell. There isn't one. In this tin can, packed with a seething mass of humanity, elbows up each other's noses and cheeks stuck to the windows, 100 degrees outside, nobody smells of stale sweat.

So how come there is always the unpleasant reek of armpits on a London Underground commuter train at 8am any winter morning?

Anyway, back to my rollercoaster bus ride. We spot our destination and need to alert the conductor, who suffers from industrial deafness after years of being confined in this reggae transporter. You can't wave because it's too packed to raise your arm.

We had noticed people jabbing the person in front to relay the message up front, but the chap in front of me looks a bit hard. And at that second, the conductor looks at us as if by telepathy and stops the bus.

My legs were quivering so much I banged my sunburned pate on the door frame. Ouch!

Got to go. The bus is coming for the return trip and I wouldn't miss it for the world. Here ends this special report from Bill Hearld, Foreign Correspondent (I've always wanted to say that).

Updated: 08:50 Tuesday, March 22, 2005