I had went to sleep fairly early so my internal clock had me up before my cell phone went off. I am actually thinking the cell phone was not such a bad idea. Cingular has sites in all of these different islands and I meet people who can use theirs, but I am guessing because I chose their most basic plan it does not work internationally. Anyways, I gave myself 45 minutes to get ready and downstairs to meet Rasta guy. I had given myself a 40/60 percent success rate with this guy. I was not expecting for much since he was a deeply endowed islander even to the point of being an actual Rastafarian, he didn’t seem that enthralled when he said he would do it, and this was Sunday in the islands, a day that hardly anyone worked, and especially not at 6:00 am. I was giving him the 40 percent because he did run his own business, a the only fruit market stand in the whole Anse Miton area. Long story short, he did not show. I factored in that I would wait until 6:10 at the hotel and then walk to his stand. Well, I did the wait and did the walk to the stand he was no where to be found. Now, you have to understand, I had a 8:30 flight so it was getting close. I figured since these are little twenty minute island hoppers, I could squeeze in to the airport an hour before takeoff without having big problems like it would be with going international. It was about 6:25 at this point and then I had three options. From Anse Miton I figured it would take probably about 25-30 minutes driving. From Fort-de-France the main city it would take about 20. To get to FTF, I would have to take the Ferry across and that did not have one until 7 am. To get from Anse Miton I would have to either take a taxi, which I was doubting since it was Sunday and the taxi stands were closed and people didn’t start moving around until 9am. The other option would be to hitch hike. Hitch hiking is prevalent but the time, the language factor, and the fact I did not know exactly how to get to the airport would reduce my chances quite considerable figuring that to catch the one car that early in the morning, who was going directly to the airport, would be rather small. I decided that I only had one chance of making it on time and that was to hitch hike. If I waited to take the Ferry, it would not get to FTF until 7:30 and then I would still run the same risk of trying to find a taxi, and then a twenty minute ride, would get me to the airport at 8-8:15. By that time, these guys would be packed up and on the runway before I even made it through security. Well, I went with the hitch hiking giving myself 20 minutes to find a ride and then I would have enough time to run to the Ferry dock 10 minutes away to take the Ferry and I would be at the airport where I could have a small chance of making it or finding an alternative flight out. I honestly had enough of the Euro and the resort living and wanted off the island. Well, I stood on the main road out of town for my twenty minutes and exactly four cars came by without even a glance over. I gave up and started hauling ass to the ferry dock. I got there about five minutes before. Luckily there were people there waiting because I could tell the schedule on the board but it also had some astericks in regards to only during tourist season. Well we waited and waited. At 7:15 the little boat finally showed up. I didn’t have to complain since a little old lady did it for me, and in French. Well we booked ass across the bay and pulled in at 7:30. I figured I was screwed but still hauled ass off the dock towards the main road. As I got closer I saw a bunch of barricades where the taxis and buses usually lined up. As I got closer I saw the streets were blocked off and there were tables set up along the road with cups of drinks lined up. I noticed one of the signs hanging off the table and it said something about a Marathon. Dammmmn itttt! What the hell. I hauled ass to the next possible place where a taxi might hang out and that was at the park. It was a good 10 minute walk/run. By that time my packs were starting to cause me to sweat like a race horse. I noticed a taxi van sitting on the side of the road with a guy looking like he just woke up. I scrambled to where he was at and just said “airport.” He said okay and we took off. As we got to the edge of the street, a guy waved us down. He talked to the driver and pointed to some runners that were coming down the street. No problem I thought, until they guy kept pointing at other runner behind them. Now between these batches of runners were some pretty big gaps and all we needed to do was cross the street. The guy kept his hand up for us to wait as he peered down the street. I was starting to freak out because I didn’t want to have to wait for the out of shape fat guy to pass us before we could go. Just before I jammed the accelerator with my foot the guy waved us through. That sucked another 5 minutes off my time. We hauled ass and hit pretty much every red light on the way. The airport was closer than I thought, but we still pulled in at a little after eight. I grabbed my stuff and hauled ass into the terminal. There was no one there except some rent a car people. I saw the sign for departures so I climbed to the second floor. When I got to the top, there was a maze of zig zagged gates to corral people through. I was the only one there so I zipped through like a mouse on speed. There was only one officer there and he was about to walk away. I yelled at him to let me through. He said they were closed and held his hands up with five fingers. I told him you can’t be closed. He shook his head saying “Parlez-vous France.” I said “Parlez-vouz English.” He shook his head no. He again held up his hands showing five fingers. Shit.... I took off downstairs to see if I could find someone else. There I saw a lady at the information booth. I asked her where the Liat check-in was. She pointed to an area on the same floor but hidden by the escalator. I took off running with my pack dragging the floor. I came up to the counter and nobody was there. There was nobody there at any of the counters. With these small airlines, about three people run the whole show from check-in to ticket taking to pilot/stewardess, so I figured they were on stage 4 by now and I was screwed. As I looked up to their monitor it gave St. Lucia and Barbados as a flight at 9:30am. I knew that I had a layover somewhere so I dug into my pack for my ticket. Bam, my flight was at 9:30 am to St. Lucia. I had just glanced at it before my flight to Martinique and had read the boarding time. I was there before anyone else, I was actually freaking early. I was both pissed and elated. I sat down with a sigh of relief and just laughed.

A couple of minutes later a girl walked up and asked me something in French, so I said the only thing I could guess, was “nobody is at the LIAT counter as of yet.” “Ah shit,” she said and walked off saying something about a cigarette. After a few minutes she came back in and had a seat next to me. I asked her where she was going, and she said Dominica. I told her that I had just left there and how great it was. She told me it was her fifth time there and she was only burning some time before she went back to South America to meet back up with her traveling mate who wanted some alone time with her visiting boyfriend. She had been doing some traveling for a few months and was going for a total of four months. I told her my plans of going around the world. We compared notes for a while as we waited for the LIAT check-in. We ended up hanging around throughout the flight and even then in St. Lucia. She talked me into checking out of immigration to get a cool passport stamp and to check out the town since I had two hours and she had three hours layover. Luckily, the beach is right out the exit door of the airport and they have a lot of vendor shacks right along the beach. We kicked it for a while and walked down the beach a ways. At the end of the airport runway was some more shacks at the end of a resort so we had some more drinks. By that time the hour was up so we headed back to the terminal. When we got there, the check out lady told me that my flight had been delayed indefinitely. I was casual about it since I had two years to get anywhere, but Anne (the girls name by the way,) was more of the aggressive type and pushed the lady about how long the delay for me was. She said that the plane hadn’t even taken off yet from the other island so that it would be at least another hour. That put us both on at about the same time another hour away. We decided to go into the airport restaurant for more drinks and food. We talked away about our different adventures and I grilled her on all the things that she did in South America. Well, the time went by and she had to take off so I at first was going to hang with her inside the terminal with her, but figured that I didn’t want to get trapped inside so I bid her a goodby, exchanged e-mails, and looked into hooking up again in Venezuela to do the Angel Falls.

Well, they delayed the flight again for another hour and a half. I finally got out of there about 4 pm. That flight took me to Barbados where I would catch my other flight to Tobago at 5pm. Well, with my luck, that flight got delayed as well. Although Barbados had a nice airport, not as nice as Martinique, but at least air conditioned, I ended up staying their until 8:30 pm. The flight to Tobago was quick and easy and I finally got there. To sum it up, the flight times were 15 minutes from Martinique to St. Lucia, about 30 minutes from St. Lucia to Barbados, and 30 minutes from Barbados to Tobago. In total, for 1:15 minutes of flight time, I was out and about for 15 hours. I was drained but content. Immigration was quick and a bit of fun because of a couple of hot Trini sisters who were all over the place making jokes and messing around with me. As soon as I hit the door a taki guy grabbed me and took me to his car. I did not have a place lined up so I told him I wanted someplace cheap. He said sure no problem, $12. US. I was already wary, but was happy it was not another $50 hit. We jumped into his 1960 Dodge and hit the road. He ended up taking me on about a twenty minute drive to a place called Buccoo Beach where he said a lot of back packers stay. He pulled up to a two story house and yelled out to the people. He asked if they had room for me. The old lady said sure and took me to the lower level where they had 5 guest rooms set up. At first they wanted $15 a night but we bargained down to $10. The place was just a spartan room with a shared bath. I was tired and took the deal.

With my pack finally on the ground I took a quick cool off shower. On the drive in we had passed what looked like a huge block party. Even a block away, I could hear the music blaring. The driver had said they called it Sunday School, and it was a big party every Sunday (which had nothing to do with Religion based Sunday School.) Basically, they bring out the big stereos, set-up tents and have barbecues. There are carnival based betting games, tourist souvenirs, handcrafted art work, and a big steel pan concert. They often go on until 3-4 in the morning. I headed down and checked out the event. There were more tourists there than any of the places I had been. Tourists from all over the island make it to this party. A nice lady who called my “honey”, which gets me every time, sat me down and brought over a sampler plate of bbq meats and side dishes. I chowed down and then had another walk around. I listened to the steel pan band for a while and then decided to call it a night. I went to sleep with the music blasting, but once my head hit the pillow I was out. It had been a long day.