Denniblog

[Needs more editing]

I didn’t know that the bus tickets here are like stamps, although I’d suspected it for a while. The sign in the bus station proclaiming ‘No Refunds, No Changes, Know Where You Are Going’ may have caused my doubts.

In any event, I had come to Buccoo with a single ticket, figuring they’d be on sale in any bar or minimarket. They weren’t. The town’s only ticket outlet was closed.

Now what?

Calm down. There were several solutions. I could convince the driver to let me get the ticket at the station (fat chance, but worth an effort). I could walk to the next town and buy one there, catch a maxi, or hitchhike. After all, at least two thirds of private cars here moonlight as route taxis. It wouldn’t be free, but it would be considerably less than a tourist taxi.

I crossed the road and looked around. There was a bus shelter just behind me. In front of it stood a woman in a worn dress. She had an expression on her face that I recognised, but she was holding some papers.

“Are you going to Scarborough?”

She nodded.

“Got a ticket?”

She shook her head. Only later did I realise that she probably didn’t need one; they have bus passes for the elderly and disabled here. For now, I thought we were in this together.

“OK, I’ll try to us catch a lift—” a hire car zoomed by “—If only I could see the drivers earlier.” I thought that tourists were my best bet. The lift would be free for starters. And boy, would they be surprised if I asked them to wait while I fetched my companion. The woman—who hadn’t said a word—had retreated into the deepest shade of the bus shelter.

Another car zoomed by, but the tinted windows made it impossible to see who was inside until it was too late.

After a while, a car pulled over on the other side of the road. A hand appeared out of the side window and the driver yelled something. I ran across.

“You’re going to Scarborough?”

He said something I didn’t catch and made a gesture I interpreted as having to turn around. He had a passenger next to him whom he might have to drop off first. A route taxi after all.

“OK, I’ll wait.” I made to go back to my spot.

“No, no, come in.”

“There is a woman by the bus stop. She doesn’t have a ticket. Could she—”

“No, no. She be OK. Come in.”

I crawled onto the back seat, and that is when I spotted the beer bottle clamped between the man’s thighs. The patois wasn’t all that had lent a drawl to his voice. He was pissed.

He introduced himself as Glen.

We set off in the direction away from Scarborough, and kept driving, the car swerving every now and then onto the other side of the road as Glen turned his head to talk to me.

“That lady there,” he said, “she’s not right.” He tapped his head with one hand, while making a course correction with the other. “Krank“.

By now I wasn’t surprised that everybody here seems to speak a few words of German. Glen had been married to one. What pissed me off was that most people took me for a German on sight. If I can’t be British, why not Scandinavian? Or at least Dutch? Not that I had the leisure to contemplate this then.

“Watch that lorry!” I cried.

Glen grinned, turned around, and swerved back onto his side of the road. There should have been enough space, but a panicky reaction by either driver might have caused a head-on collision.

“You’re going to Plymouth?” He turned around again.

“No Scarb—” But whyever not? Plymouth had shops that sold tickets. “Yeah, Plymouth is fine. I can catch the bus from there.”

“You want to go with us?” He indicated his friend who had remained silent the whole time.

“No! I— I mean I’ll have to go back to Scarborough. I have work to do.” That wasn’t a complete lie. The internet café was open until six and I thought I’d better get back before then.

“Oh, OK,” Glen said. “Relax.”

I hic-upped a laugh. “I am relaxed. This is very kind of you. It’s just—You hear stories. I’m not looking for, you know—” Even the LP suggested that lone women hitching in Tobago were interested in more than just a lift.

“Oh, you’re not interested in boys? Bist du schwühl?”

“Schwul, the word is schwul.” I could have bitten off my tongue. This conversation wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to go. But strangely, I didn’t feel threatened. I thought that Glen was drunk enough to handle, and as for his friend, he seemed harmless enough.

Once again Glen told me to relax. He spotted some people, stopped and reversed. Drivers here always hoot at friends, stopping to talk to them or give them a ride. It’s that kind of place.

A man holding a beautiful girl toddler got in and placed the child between us on the back seat.

“My half-brother,” Glen said. This didn’t feel threatening at all any more.

We dropped the man and child at a house up a hill and a few moments later, we stopped at a junction in another village.

“You’ll get your ticket there,” Glen said, pointing at a shop across the street. “Wait on the corner.”

With that, he drove off. I looked around. On a fence almost in front of the was a sign advertising the third Reggae Road Block later tonight on the hard court, Festival Yard. It took me a while to realise that this sleepy village was Plymouth. I kept imagining an industrialised harbour town.

I got the hell out of there.

The bus was on time. The internet café had closed early.

[The following entries may need more editing, but I have to write fast just to keep up…]

Friday morning, 10:30 a.m. I checked my account for one last time before setting off to the bank with my measly 120US$ emergency traveller’s cheques and my passport.

The money had arrived.

I logged off, grabbed my stuff and hurried out of the internet café. There was a huge queue at the Scotiabank’s ATM—with only one machine working—but Scotiabank has consistently given the best rates.

The queue progressed at a creeping pace which often ground to a halt. We were all wiping sweat from our foreheads as the door kept opening and clothing, exhaling the feeble chill from the aircon. Ahead of me, several people were experiencing problems with their transactions.

I was on tenterhooks. But the machine (‘saving’s account’) spat out the cash without hesitation (phew), a great big wad of it. I grabbed it and pressed through the second set of opening-and-closing doors into the main bank where I hastily fumbled with my money belt.

“Hey!” somebody called from the ATM queue outside.

“What?” My heart was pounding.

“Go further inside where people can’t see you!”

“Uh—thanks!”

Stupid me. Tinted windows or not, both sets of doors were practically rendered dysfunctional with people coming and going, and security was hidden somewhere behind the Christmas decorations. There was a mountain of cake platters which banking officials handed out to people, obviously part of their Christmas celebration. The building was heaving. So was the street.

I was save enough in here, but if passers-by should see me they might earmark me for a mugging.

It was 25 minutes past eleven. I ran for the 11:30 Bucco bus, and got there just in time, but there were no buses. The men in the blue shirts were hiding.

After a while one of them emerged. They were having a training course (or a Christmas do, or a berating re. the schedules—which made everybody even more late) and they were short of drivers. I should get a bus eventually.

By now, even Bucco seemed like the promised land. But so did a shower. I was hot in my trousers and T-shirt (this is not a country where you’d want to wear a suit outside). My money belt pressed against my back, sweaty and bulging like a duck’s arse, and probably visible to everybody. And I was hungry (and glad about that).

Was it really worth it?

I decided not. Home, shower, change, eat, then back to the internet café. Tomorrow, I would make the bus station my first stop and head out on my planned reccie to Charlotteville or Englishman’s Bay, whichever came first. Sunday School would just have to wait.

Just as I was about to set foot on the stairs, one of the men in blue grabbed hold of me and pointed at one of the buses, five or six of which had now piled onto the court.

“Black Rock,” he said. “Take the bus to Black Rock.”

I descended the stairs and tentatively joined the first queue. He shook his head and waved me onwards. I couldn’t push against the heaving mass of people headed for the front of the bus, so I ran behind it and around, up to the second in line. He shook his head again, and so did several of the bystanders. I was waved on by a crowd of people until I got to the last bus in line, where an old geezer personally took charge of me.

“Sit behind the driver,” he said. “He’ll tell you where to get off.”

The seat behind the driver was indeed free, and the old man sat down next to me. I marveled at how I ever got by in places where I couldn’t even read the script, let alone speak the language. Honestly, you could send a primary school child to travel solo in Tobago.

That wasn’t all. The geezer couldn’t get over the fact that I had not taken the direct bus to Buccoo.

“There is no direct bus,” I said petulantly. “I was told to go on this one.”

This sparked off a lively discussion with the other passengers and the driver while the bus was semi-stationary in traffic. We were creeping around town in a loop and—twenty minutes later—pulled back into the bus station. The driver removed a yellow ‘Town Service’ sign from the dashboard.

“We have to change bus,” the geezer said. “This one is not roadworthy.”

So we did, and we were off. The time was now 12:30, incidentally the scheduled time for the Buccoo bus.

Round we went again. This time, thankfully, we were flung away from the loop as we entered the Claude Noël Highway, and suddenly we were moving. It was almost easier to breathe. I felt a sense of freedom: I was on the road again, even if it was only for one afternoon.

While we were looping around the town, I’d noticed a sign which I must have walked past on several occasions. It announced the third Reggae Road Block. The radio had been going on about it at length—Beanie Man was going to be there—but I’d thought that it would be held somewhere in Trinidad.

Nope, Plymouth. Tonight.

Pity, I thought.

Little did I know that I would get to Plymouth that day.

*

There was a fruitstall at the corner of the road to Buccoo, offering some welcome refreshment. I was glad that I didn’t have the backpack with me as I walked down the winding road. The place was deserted. When it’s not partying, Buccoo is sleeping.

There were a few places open in the village itself. Lunch was rice & peas at Latalia’s Cuisine. It came with chicken instead of peas but it was only 20TT, and it was delicious. Afterwards I worked around the village which lay dreaming in the afternoon sun, gazing out over a turquouise bay. But I could find neither Battery Street nor anything that looked like a hostel.

“Can I help you?” A man stepped from out under the shade of a tree. “Need a tour guide?”

“No, not a tour guide. But would you know about a cheap place to stay? There was somewhere that was supposed to have dorms…”

“No, no dorms. But wait, come with me.”

We walked back to that tree, which was some way back from the road, and now I could see several guys working on two cars with their boots up. There were a few kids and puppies too. I waved at them all.

The guy called to someone and a tall man with charcoal skin and matted Rasta hair walked up to us. Part of his hair was chestnut brown. All of it had been baked slowly in the sun, for about forty years or so.

“My name is Smokey,” he said in a voice that told me why.

We shook hands.

“I’m looking for a place to stay,” I said.

He pointed through a gap in the trees, across a corral where two horses were swishing their tails, their heads held low. “See that house?”

“The near one?”

“No, the tall one, behind it. It belongs to a lady. She take guests. You can go across the field.”

I looked at it doubtfully. The fence was no problem, it was made from big wooden beams, set far apart. But there was greenery around it.

“Are there snakes here?”

“There are no snakes,” Smokey said, and when I looked doubtful, “Come on.”

We walked up to the house and a little dog on a chain started barking and snarling at us.

“Miss Flo!” Smokey yelled over the din. “Hello, Miss Flo! I have a lady here…”

There was no answer.

“Go on up, she’s there.” Smokey said. “Around to the gate. Come back if you don’t get on.”

On the other side of the corral I found myself on a small street which ran up to Buccoo Bay. Banana plants were flapping in the breeze, framing the view of the deserted beach and still, blue water. I had already made up my mind to stay. I liked what I saw.

Upstairs there was a kitchen and lounge with the open feel that said ‘guesthouse’ even if it wasn’t for the ironworks of the gate proclaiming ‘Welcome to Auntie Flo’s’. But there was nobody around. I called several times, without luck. Hesitating for a moment, I eventually stepped into the corridor. The rooms were separated only by curtains which were picked up by the breeze, revealing two king-sized beds in each. Amenities were shared. This was the kind of place I was looking for, although security might be a little doubtful. I wondered who else would come to stay over the weekend.

In the last room, an old woman lay asleep.

I tip-toed back outside. I did not want to wake Aunty Flo. But Smokey had said to come back to him, so—struggling briefly with myself—I did.

“There was nobody there,” I said.

“She is there. She’ll be sleeping.”

I blushed inwardly, not wanting to admit that I had seen so for myself. Once again, Smokey took me by the proverbial hand. This time we walked up to the fence behind her garden, and he called out once more. “Miss Flo! Miss Flo! I have a lady here.”

This time there was a response; some calling back-and-forth ensued. “I’ll send her up!” Smokey yelled eventually, repeating himself a few times. Then he pointed back across the corral. “OK go, she’ll be waiting.

Auntie Flo was twice my age, if she was a day. She was waiting on the upstairs veranda, behind the closed gate, and I approached timidly.

“Come on up,” she said, but she did not step away from the gate, let alone open it.

I hesitated a little when she told me it would be 150TT for a night. But what the hell—this was not to be missed, and I’d had my fill of Scarborough. I needed to get away for a few days.

Aunty Flo looked a little doubtful when I told her that I’d be back the next day, by lunchtime. But I would.

Buses permitting.

Waking up in the tropics still has that dream-like quality for me. I’d been half-dozing since a quarter to five this morning—with my earplugs not quite filtering out the occasional crowing of an over-enthusiastic cockerel—so I felt half-jetlagged when I finally decided to get up.

I wondered (still) who’d left the heating on high overnight and what that strange golden light was, up there on the wall where the sun filtered through the airholes (just imagine: open walls and window grids in December!) The gauze of the mosquito net gave the view a dreamlike quality. A single determined mosquito kept circling just above my head, bumping into the mesh as if trying to ram its way through, and sticking its proboscis through the holes, raising its hindlegs in a determined effort to pump blood out of thin air.

Ha. Take that!

I hopped out of bed, put on the fan and blew it away.

It was seven thirty. It seems the mozzies are working overtime here.

*

Getting out of bed was less difficult because I’m settling in, and am actually happier outside my room (confined spaces are bad news). I was less certain about going out of town, and not just because money is tight and my first call would have to be the bank to cash my emergency traveller’s cheques. Getting to Bucco shouldn’t take long and I already have the ticket. I bought it two days ago—thinking I’d check the place out for Sunday, maybe even relocate there—and had taken a seat in the waiting room when a man who worked there walked past muttering. “I wish the bus was here already to take everybody where they are going.”

You and me both, mate.

He muttered something more under his breath, went to talk to some of the people further along and then walked back to the door proclaiming: “first there are no buses and then there are four or five at once. I am not happy!”

Since my own bus was due in about ten minutes, I stepped outside and saw that the fuss was about. About four or five buses should have been departing but there was no sign of them. Then they trickled in, one-after-another, late.

“Where are you going?” somebody asked me.

“Bucco.”

“Into Bucco itself?”

“I guess so, I don’t know the area.”

“There has been an accident, buses are not running there. Go and talk to one of the men.”

Oh, cheers. I walked over to the men (and they were all men) who had gathered in their blue shirts on top of the stairs. The one who turned around at my approach was the one who had done the muttering.

“Yes. Can I help you?” He gave me a radiant smile which I thought must be to cover his irritation, yet at the same time couldn’t help thinking was genuine.

“I’m going to Bucco. I hear there’s been an accident?”

“Yes. No. That’s just what I told the people.” He was a bit uncomfortable—almost squirming—as if I had found him out.

“So there are buses to Bucco?”

“Where do you want to go? Into Bucco itself?” What was it about that question?

“Guess so.”

He looked uncomfortable again. “No bus right now.”

“That’s OK, I can wait,” I said, thinking about coming back later. On the other hand, perhaps the bus was just late. I decided to wait a little longer. I had narrowly missed the 11:30, due to overrunning in the internet café, and now the day was half-over. I didn’t want to lose an entire hour and, sure enough, two more buses turned up.

I walked back to the guy. “Is one of those going to Bucco?”

“No they—” he paused. “I can send one of them to Bucco for you.”

You can’t fault the service here.

“Heavens no,” I said. “I think I’m the only one who wants to go there, and it can wait until tomorrow. Is the ticket still good tomorrow?”

“Of course it is,” he said.

So here we are, two days later, and I’ve still not left town. Yesterday evening I checked my bank account and found that I’m near destitute. Today is Friday, my traveller’s cheques will only last me until Monday and I’ll probably have to ask to pay for my accommodation in retrospective, which is not how I usually do things.

The people here are easy about it, but I’m not happy.

I have made a deal with myself that I must eat or go back on the Amitriptyline. I don’t want to. That stuff makes me tired and I don’t want to lose any of my golden days, plus there would have to be a serious cutting-back on the rum & coke ;). But I didn’t relish the thought of dinner: a can of mackerel in tomato sauce and a bag of Nut King’s Original Corn Curls.

The corn curls weren’t too bad, but I swear the mackerel had shit floating in it. Mackerel shit to be sure, but shit all the same.

I’d worked out my daily budget before buying those dinner items, right up until the last week when I might travel around Trinidad and spend a little more. It comes to 36$ US a day. It used to be 48, but then the pound went down and it is still going down. The bank exchange rate for the US dollar is more-or-less fixed at 1 to 6, so that is no help at all.

Up until now I have more-or-less spent 50$ US a day, but when I came to Scarborough, I started to match the budget (32 dollars today, with two meals. Lunch was a tuna salad). I have to be careful.

Peanut butter, coconut water, tuna, mayo. The bill came to 68 dollars. Ouch. But I must eat.

On my way to the shops I saw a kite soaring into the electric blue sky. On my way back a car hooted and made me jump. The drivers all hoot here, either in greeting or because they’re looking for fares. Most seem to be moonlighting as route taxis, and the fare is always three dollars. If only we had such a system in London.

More tomorrow. I’m taking things easy for a few days. But I’m thinking of going to Sunday School in Bucco after all. Carlos is nice enough, I was just being too guarded (but that has always served me well).

There is a system of route taxis here after all, as I discovered—much to my relief—when I was faced with the near-vertical slope of Main Street. These sort of slopes are what the Portugal LP writers refer to as ‘outrageous inclines’. Add tropical heat to that notion and you soon dissolve in your own sweat, even if you’re crawling up it at the speed of an ant. It’s about half an hour to go up and around half that amount of time to come back down.

And all for a bottle of rum (a small one), because the damn cornershop—fittingly called ‘Hill Top Supermarket’—isn’t licenced.

This island may be a tiny speck in the Caribbean, but I still feel in touch with the world at large, and not just because of the internet. The place names here can be disconcerting: there is a Runnymede and a Culloden, and of course the famous Argyle Waterfalls. Charmingly, there are science news on the radio as well. On the bus I heard that a team at Manchester Uni has discovered that HSV1 (the virus that gives you cold sores) is linked to Alzheimer’s. Cheers. They even said which journal the paper is published in (J. of Pathology, so I take it that Cell has turned it down).

Scarborough is generally a charming place, once you get used to the traffic. Earlier today I was sitting at a bar at the busy Main Street, together with the other tourists (the locals stayed in the aircon inside) and bugger me if a chicken didn’t hop up onto one of the tables. London has pigeons, Scarborough has chickens—probably the only street-smart chickens in the world.

I was making plans, thinking about the diving. It may be better to go on some tours to look around the island instead. Tobago isn’t the sort of place where you can just set off on solo hikes into the rainforest. Besides it’s not the same on my own. But I miss the good times we’ve had with the other divers.

Well, it can wait. There is still time—plenty of it. Even on holiday, people have busy itineraries. It’s always rush, rush, rush, ticking off boxes on a list. Which is ironic, given that this is how people learn to cope with bipolar disorder. That sort of thing doesn’t belong on Tobago.

So I didn’t hop on a bus. There wasn’t much to write about today. But just as I thought that, a story presented itself.

1) Baygone mosquito coils. I’ve still got some at home that survived the trip from Bali (in John’s luggage), but you can get them in the shops here.

2) The Brontok worm which weaseled itself onto my pendrive (which, sadly, can’t be locked). I have no idea what else might be on there and how to get rid of it since I can’t connect my EeePC anywhere.

Today hasn’t been my day (not that yesterday was either):

• missing files
• residual shakes (now gone)
• empty bank account
• no bus (more about that later)
• and the Brontok Worm.

What next? Well, there’s always Carlos. But he has left me alone so far.

[EDIT: I forgot to add that my stories have been rejected. Both of them. And in record time.]

Since I’m still stuck in Scarborough (and monitoring my bank account), here is a reminder of what the place actually looks like.

It’s almost achingly idyllic, isn’t it?

The computers are playing up today. All of them! I don’t seem to have saved over today’s blog entry (there is a bug in Kate which confuses the file manager as soon as you stick in your USB stick) and the internet machine keeps popping up windows saying that it wants to restart. Either that or it wants to install simplified Chinese characters. It seems to be cross-talking with the Eeepc via some sort of IT-ESP. My guess is that there is a virus on the lose.

This place seems to be the only one in Scarborough that is still in business, and it’s only open Mo-Fri from ten to six—this isn’t Thailand with its 24-hour internet cafés—so getting online can be a bit of a song and dance. Don’t expect daily blog entries, particularly if I’m on the move. The buses only run every two to three hours. If I’m at the opposite end of the island, I may only make it back to Scarborough during business hours every three days or so, although there are some local places (follow the dive-shops 😉 ).

I’m feeling better. Tobago is good to me. But for today I may stay put and take things slowly.

Carlos appears to be half deaf, which is not surprising, because the TV and the radio are always on at full blast. He is also a selective listener. He will hear you talk about food and liming, but not about hospitals and panic attacks.

“Did you have a good day?” For some reason, the man doesn’t have to raise his voice to make himself understood.

“I had a panic attack,” I yelled over the radio as he beckoned me across to his side of the kitchen. I’d decided to cut out the niceties and just get right to the point.

“Oh. So did you go to the beach?”

“No. I went to the ER. The hospital.”

“Oh, did you see somebody?”

For a giddy moment I thought he had understood, then I reasoned he meant as in had I seen a friend. The notion of panic attacks wouldn’t make any sense to him because I’m probably the first person on this island to have had one. I’ve made Tobago history. Not that anybody noticed. By the time I’d made it to the ER, the bad stuff was over. I sat there and shook slightly for a while, then it was OK and I was good to go home.

I hadn’t seen anybody.

“No—” I said, then levelled off. This wasn’t going to work. “Carlos, I need to be alone for a while.”

“Oh, OK. You come see me when you want to talk. OK?” He smiled, perhaps a little sadly.

It was that easy. Except that I’m sure this wasn’t the end of it.

We encountered each other again in the kitchen when, after a quick shower, I tried my best to cook some ramen noodles while keeping the mosquito coil close. Tobagoan mozzies are something else and I’d bought some Baygone coils, imported from Indonesia. They were better than the local Flamingo, but not by much. Nowhere on my travels have I seen mosquitoes weaving through the smoke of a lit coil to get to their victim. And they work fast; you can’t see them coming.

There were no preambles this time. “Do you like the wine?” Carlos was holding up a frosted bottle of local ‘Hard Wine’, no part of which is made from grapes.

I poured a very tiny sip. “Hm, not sure. It’s as with the Mauby drink—perhaps I’ll get used to it, then I won’t be able to get it anywhere in London.” I was trying to humour him, but I was still talking a little fast, even by my standards. My hands were shaking, and suddenly I wished I could talk to him, explain everything.

He didn’t appear to notice. “What drink?”

“Mauby,Maub—as in the bark.” Dammit, why can’t I get the pronounciation right? Mauby bark is used as a local spice but it tastes slightly medicinal. I’m not sure what it is supposed to be good for, or indeed whether or not it is good.

“Yeah, yeah.” He raised his hand, waving in the vague direction of the lounge-cum-entrance hall where the TV was on at full blast. “I’m going to watch the news now. I will chat with you later.” He seemed cheerful enough.

“I—erm—yeah, sure, OK…”

And with that he was gone, leaving me speechless. Carlos had brushed me off.

Maybe I’m getting him wrong. Maybe he isn’t the male version of a spider spinning a web, entangling its victim further with every move it makes to escape.

Maybe.

There is a huge garden behind the house—more of a field—and it belongs to Carlos who lives in the house next door.

Carlos tried to chat me up the minute I stepped into the lounge which, at Hope Cottage, is also the entrance hall.

“Later,” I said and prepared myself for the inevitable. By the time he made good on his word I was several rum-and-cokes ahead and, to my surprise, found that I enjoyed it.

At first.

We talked about spices. It turns out that Carlos comes from a catering family and is passionate about food. I had smelled his curry chicken earlier in the kitchen and it was good. Now he took me back there and showed me the some of the vegetables he grew, not all of which I know by name. Okra seeds (I’d never seen okra seeds before), beetroot, bok choi. There are no slug holes in his bok choi.

“My god,” I said, impressed. “You should really run some cookery classes here. The kitchen is ideal for that.” And it was. It’s big enough to comfortably accommodate half a dozen people. Cooking classes could really take off on Tobago.

Matters took a less comfortable turn when Carlos took me by the hand and showed me the garden—the one that is really a field, with most of the soil turned over.

“It’s too dark to see,” I said and he agreed and led the way back. I was relieved, thinking that was that, until he insisted to show me his room.

I started with trepidations, then voiced a thinly veiled threat, but he told me to relax. He was insistent. It would be rude to refuse.

“I’m not that kind of man,” he said as we stood in the dank room, gardening tools leaning against one of the walls. “Do you think I could stay here if I was? Or that people would come to stay?”

No, Carlos is not that kind of man. But he had ignored me when I said that I was married. Repeatedly. Now he wanted to cook for me, to take me to Bucco and do some liming at the famous Sunday School.

“It’s no good if you go on your own,” he said. “If you’re with me, people will respect you. Leave you alone. I’ve taken many women liming, shown white ladies a good time in Bucco.”

I bet he had.

But in the end Carlos is nice—like all the people I’ve talked to here. He left me alone without me having to brush him off to hard. He likes me because I’m friendly. A friendly lady. It won’t do to be rude to people here.

It was ten at night. The mosquitoes had retired, and so had Carlos. I hid in my room for a while, then sneaked out to the kitchen for some coke. There was only a German solo traveller left sitting in the lounge. He nodded at me but took no further notice, even though I tried to open the front door repeatedly to get out for a smoke. It was shut, bolted and locked.

He and I hadn’t exchanged a single word. This is not unusual for travellers, particular if he’d picked up my stressed-out vibe. But I wish I had someone to confess to.

I’m not feeling so good.

In my room, sucking on my e-cig (I’m in a cage again!) I kept thinking about Carlos. How he kept touching my hand, in that over-familiar way…

Oh my.

[EDIT: I’m feeling better about the situation now. I’ll have a word with Carlos tonight. Jeez–I may be a nervous wreck, but I’m no longer nineteen!]