Port of Spain: Slippery When Wet
A menacing cloud appeared overhead and let rip. I picked up my coconut and sought shelter under the roof of a public convenience, next to a couple of stone benches and tables where a group of dodgy looking men hung out whom I’d taken care to avoid. They smiled and moved over to make room.
The rain had not yet built up to full monsoon strength, so I nipped over to the coconut seller across from us and he opened the nut for me. As I scooped out the jelly-like flesh, the rain picked up. We were joined by two women, also munching on coconuts and chicken. When we had finished our respective meals, the seller came to collect the empty shells before joining us under the increasingly crowded roof.
“Are you enjoying Trinidad?” one of the dodgy looking men asked.
“Yes.”
He smiled again. “Just be careful, you know…”
I waited—entirely unmolested—until the rain slowed to a dusty drizzle and then slithered down Charlotte Street. It’s impossible to keep your feet dry during the rainy season and my flip-flops turned to soap-shoes on the glistening pavement. The damn things are the most comfortable flip-flops I’ve ever owned, but I got them in Australia where it rains less.
There was no sign of any maxis at the corner of Charlotte Street and Duke Street, but there was a line of people waiting. One of the women smiled at me.
“You’re waiting for a maxi?” I said, grabbing the opportunity.
“Maxi? No. Where do you want to go?”
“Blanchisseuse.”
“Oh, not here! You have to go to the City Gate, way back there,” she pointed south.
“I know, I’ve just come from there. They sent me here.” That wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to pull out my faded LP printout again to show her the map where the alleged maxi stand was indicated.
“Don’t get into no maxi over here,” the woman said. “You can go from City Gate to anywhere in Trinidad, but don’t just get into any maxi. It’s not save.”
“OK.”
“It’s not safe,” she implored.
“OK, I’ll go to City Gate.”
“God bless. Be careful.”
“You too.”
*
“Be careful,” that is what people keep saying to me. The guy who sold me a pack of cigarettes this morning had said it. The woman I spoke to in the maxi from San Fernando to La Brea had said it. The bloke who sold me a second hand Ann MacCaffrey novel from a street stall had said it too.
Be careful.
And it’s true, you have to be careful here. Across from me in the internet café sat a Dutchman who had been mugged a few days ago. He’d lost his camera, money, driver’s license, passport—everything. It made the papers, which are full of stories about stabbings and shootings. His was the only feature about a tourist being robbed. By my reckoning there are at least fifty tourists in Trinidad right now, so I figure I stand a chance of escaping unscathed.
Today I’ve made it to Manzanilla and back without being robbed, but I was nearly slain by a coconut which dropped from a great height onto the wet sand next to me.
Tags: Americas, Neither here nor there, Tag Index
Denni
January 23rd, 2009 at 17:06
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