Denniblog

I’m nearly finished with the writeup, but I need to do some editing on my last day’s entry. The rain was soaking the pages, and all I have are some photos and hastily scribbled notes. I’m struggling to convey what it was really like.

I’ve been back for eleven days and I’m depressed, have the flu, my toes are permanently numb from the cold and in the few moments when I’m even acknowledge the reality of life in Tadley in the wintertime, I’m banging my head against the wall.

I haven’t met a single one of our friends and acquaintances—who might as well live in another universe, since Tadley forms a pocket universe of its own.

I swear I’d be on the next plane to Thailand, if I didn’t need a yellow fever vaccination now.

Grrrr.

My Nariva Swamp-writeup will resume tomorrow. Hopefully.

[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.

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).

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?

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!]

• Don’t forget your moo cards to give to people when taking their picture. You can always order more.

• Paypal is your friend.

• A USB stick is essential. But watch for your personal files, passwords etc!

• Track down and link your local sound! (I can’t play it in the internet café and there may be better stations. The music currently on the streets here is incredible, but I don’t know any of the artists/song titles.)

• E-cigs come with USB chargers. If they’d lasted longer they would be the solution to the anti-smoking fascism. And yes, I have vaped on the plane.

On my first night at Crown Point I caught a routetaxi back to town. We rounded a corner and there—in a field—stood a huge plane, the diffuse light from the terminal highlighting the British flag on its tailfin.

Tobago’s tiny airport is only minutes from the town and is probably the world’s most relaxed. It is almost unfathomable that you can board a plane in dark, rain-sodden Gatwick and be in a tropical island paradise just a few hours later. And here that old cliché holds true. Only fifty-four thousand people live here between rainforest and coral reefs—as if in a dream—and while few are rich, most are happy.

The contrast to London couldn’t be greater, but thanks to London’s extensive Caribbean community there is also much that is familiar. It is as if the paradise they’re always on about is actually real. Although to a visitor perhaps it will never feel real.

—Hang on, I just shot a picture of a bee-eater from my barstool. The Bago Bar is practically on the beach, on the corner of Pigeon Point Road, but the trees grow right to the water’s edge and some of the branches are overhanging the roof. The bird was sitting on one of them, so intent on eating its fruit that I had plenty of time to get out the camera. (Sadly the picture turned out to be blurred, but there will be others. I saw my first hummingbird yesterday).

This is the place to come to watch the sunset, so people keep telling me.

Apparently half the men of Crown Point want to watch it with me. Perhaps I should leave my dress at home tomorrow and wear my stained T-shirt and swimming shorts instead.

However I’m learning to be patient. There is nothing wrong with a friendly chat. The problem is that about half the men of Crown Point—and a smaller percentage of the women—know me by name now, but I won’t be able to recognise them.

That night, as I sat outside for a smoke, I saw a plane go past, flying low above the palm trees as it ascended into the satin-black sky. It had the British flag on its tailfin. Those poor people were rushing back to London, their heads full of colour and sunshine and the soca rhythm still playing in their ears.

So near and yet so far.

With the NaNoWriMo insanity around the corner and general faffing about (critiquing people’s writing and collecting rejections), I don’t have time to keep up this blog until I’m going to Trinidad at the End of November.

Meanwhile here’s a link to my LJ for your amusement.

It will be quite surreal to return to the traveller community after attempting a far-future SF/fantasy epic featuring cats with glowing eyes, opinionated parrots (probably) and a nuclear waste facility disguised as a temple to the Earth Goddess (the latter wasn’t my idea—it’s based on a serious proposal. So are the cats, come to think of it.)

For the last week or so I’ve been so down that I’ve contemplated starting with the St. John’s Wort early (15th August instead of end of October!)

It was either that or book my flight to Port of Spain.

My worries about the dollar exchange rate evaporated when I discovered that the Caribbean Airlines booking site did not include taxes (they do now, for some strange reason). For the money they wanted, I could probably book a flight to Australia. And when I saw that BA acted as carrier on the first leg, I decided to look elsewhere. I like to hang on to my luggage, thank you very much.

Imagine my delight at spotting a reasonable Virgin Atlantic/CA flight via Barbados on—of all places—Lastminute.com. I may be using that site again. In fact I may use it soon, since I hope to book my hubby’s flights in September, if he has managed to get his passport application out of the way by then.

But what pisses me off is the fact that it is quicker to book a ticket half-way around the world than to download one lousy chapter for £1.75 from the Lonely Planet shop as they want to know your name, address, phone number, email, credit card details and whatnot. Ever heard of Paypal?