Denniblog

[Long entry]

Tobago feels like a different country. Not since Tanzania have I encountered people who are so helpful and friendly. I don’t think there is a single stressed-out person on the whole island, except perhaps for a few sysadmins.

The woman who sat next to me on the bus had her twelve or thirteen year old daughter leaning against her lap and her bag was pressing against her thigh. This couldn’t be comfortable but she had immediately offered me her daughter’s seat as we crowded onto the bus. The driver had changed it for a bigger one—which was what had cost us our seats in the first place—but there was still not enough room. It had looked as if we would be left standing on the baking courtyard for another hour until the next bus was due, but an ample woman had pushed back the gaggle of schoolchildren clamouring to get on and a man used his bag—which looked as if it contained gardening tools or a crow bar—to lever us past the throng like a nightclub bouncer claring the way for VIPs.

“We’ll treat you well here,” he said.
[read on]

This is a quick head up for the place where I’m currently staying, although it is well out of my usual price range. The host is seeking more publicity from travellers and has offered me a very good deal in return 🙂

This hidden gem has a swimming pool, spacious veranda and rooms with king-sized beds and gilded curtains—as befits the name of the owner: Mr. Alastair King.

It is located in Canaan, in a peaceful setting away from the bustle of Crown Point. A route taxi will take you to or from town for only 3TT.

Email: paradisehome_1@yahoo.com
Phone: 6398569

It’s nice to know that I still got it. It’s been a while…

• Allways bring a pocket knife never put your pocket knife in the hand luggage 😉
• Pear’s Transparent Soap for hair, skin and clothes. Wash your T-shirt in the shower, smalls in the sink every day (if possible).
• (Ruthless division) Talk to strangers. Once people know your name, you’re less likely to come to grief on their patch.
• Don’t forget your sunscreen. Vaseline is the best moisturiser and doesn’t leak.
• You may be late for dinner. Dried noodles are cheap and nourishing. Ditto crackers.
• Wear a moneybelt. Your hosts may be honest people, but the other travellers staying at the guesthouse arent. You may be mugged, but it will take some doing. Muggers prefer to grab stuff fast, unless they are desperate in which case surrender. See point 3 above and make sure you’re not on your own in the dark.
• Always carry a water bottle. Best are the 1 litre ones that come with a sports cap. A chlorine tablet will purify clear water in twenty minutes. Thankfully I don’t need chlorine tablets in Trini.
• Coconuts are nature’s own energy drink, although Caribbean coconuts are no patch on the king coconuts of Sri Lanka.
• You need salt when you sweat a lot. It’s OK to eat the occasional packet of crisps. But see above.
• Imodium is useful when travelling, but don’t use it otherwise. The runs are a natural defense.
• Carry vitamin pills. Even in the tropics.

There. This should assure hubby that I’ll be fine 😉

[Delayed entry]

My biggest problem at the moment is that I opted for dark rum instead of white, but only have coconut water to mix it with. It’s a hard life, eh?

But I did have a problem this morning, when my water bottle ran out.

In Port of Spain you can work for miles without coming to a supermarket, and when you do they sell no fresh fruit. It was only my second day here and already I was developing a vitamin deficiency. Convenience shops are practically unheard of, which is odd because there are no fewer that two in Barbados airport. I thought that the Caribbean was pretty much Convenience Shop Central

Anyway,I was on my way to the Magnificent Seven—seven grand eccentric buildings facing Queen’s Park Savannah—when I got side-tracked.

I seem to do this at least once on every trip: I spend hours trudging through the tropical heat searching for treasures that promise to be just around the corner—and they are, if I hadn’t turned around the wrong corner.

In this case I was mixing up the Prime Minister’s residence (miles up some hill), with the Prime Minister’s Office which is indeed one of the Magnificent Seven. I then thought that I could take a shortcut by crossing the endless sun-beaten plane that is Queen’s Park Savannah (a former plantation) before stomping into a puddle—more of a swamp—and emerging at entirely the wrong street corner.I didn’t consult my map until I got to a sign several hundred metres in the wrong direction. And that’s when I felt that I was getting into trouble with my water.

What kept me going on regardless was the promise of coconut vendors ‘lining the street’. Lonely Planet writers are full of shit (but they are not to blame: they’re underpaid and overstretched). I had yet to see a coconut vendor in the whole city, and there were no vendors of any kind anywhere along what the locals call the world’s biggest roundabout.

So when I saw the umbrellas, I didn’t quicken my step. I had to conserve water. But there were indeed coconuts piled high in cages. And people selling snow cones and cold drinks. And there, all together in a row, were the Magnificent Seven, including—of all things—a dilapidated Scottish castle.

[Delayed Entry]

It’s nice to have a guide: you can just close your eyes and saunter along. Everything is served to you on a platter.

I don’t have a guide (relax John!) but so far everybody has been keen about explaining things to me. Even the taxi guys at the airport knew about Pearl’s Guesthouse. And this was just as well, because the place isn’t advertised. On the contrary: there is no sign at the door, the iron gates are kept shut and the grounds are patrolled by a pack of guard dogs to keep out the vagrants that have set up camp in Victoria Square opposite.

But there was a man sweeping the courtyard and when the taxi pulled up he beckoned me inside. He showed me a bright, clean room and a nice balcony that runs right around the upper storey of the colonial building, with a handy kitchen/lounge in the corner. It’s twenty dollars a night.

I didn’t hesitate, booking for three nights which would give me time to look at my options. But apparently the ‘no advertising’ rule also applies to the tourist information office which I may have walked past repeatedly in the noon heat because its place on the LP map is instead occupied by the Ministry of Finance (Tax Division). A scribbled note on my downloaded pages gives a different address, so it might have moved, but that street does not seem to exist.

It seems that the way of getting around Trinidad and Tobago solo and on a budget involves listening to the grapewine. At least I knew where the ferry terminal is, along with the breakfast shed (no longer a tin shed but an airy, pale yellow building with arching roofs that will go by the fancy name of Les Femmes du Chalet when it reopens after my departure), the lighthouse, Independence Square and various other sights that the taxi driver, who introduced himself as Mr. Douglas, pointed out to me.

I’ve never been more glad that I’ve sprung for the airport taxi. Normally, I would turn a blind eye to the signs (let alone the touts, of which there aren’t any) and march out of the terminal building in the general direction of the maxi/bemo/bus stop because I know that I can get to town for 1/10th the cost, no matter what it takes. But yesterday my flight was late and I was exasperated after the circus that is Barbados transit when it involves VA (as I said: long story), and so had decided to blow the budget. Wise move. Mr. Douglas noted in passing that there are no maxis at that time of night.

This morning I checked out the ferry terminal and found that I would be well-advised to book ahead, so I decided there and then to go to Tobago on Wednesday. It’s the best place to find my bearings and get used to island life, and to how things are done here.

Not that I’m done with Trinidad! There is a spectacular bird reserve on the west coast but the associated eco lodge costs hundreds of dollars a night (I’m not talking TT dollars). A little way up a hill— according to LP—there is a guesthouse that charges just twenty or thirty dollars. But I’ll have to find out where it is (it could be any in a row of houses, none of which are numbered) and if it has any vacancies. And I’ll have to find out similar things about other such places.

Normally I would disembark in the general area of a guest house or hostel and—if its full—walk around until I find somewhere else, usually nearby. Even in Palu, guest houses have signs.

But not here. And there are no others nearby. So I’ll have to go to Tobago.

But it’s a steal at less than ten dollars each way.

[Raw notes transcript]

It wasn’t like that. I saw the man first. The man looked as if he’d slathered bright red paint all over his leg. He sat there, staring at it, and so was I. Why would he do such a thing?

The blood came later. I mentioned it first by dramatic licence and perhaps because it left such a lasting impression. There wasn’t much of it at first. Smeared footprints on the pavement which made me think that perhaps he was bleeding. That wasn’t paint on his leg. Then there was that puddle of glistening coagulated mess that looked nothing like blood. Nothing like the pools of red satin you see in the movies. It looked like somebody had spilled their guts onto the street.

What? Another?

No,it couldn’t be.

Was there a butcher’s shop nearby? Not that they’d just toss out their offal here.

All these thoughts were racing through my head as realisation dawned of what had actually happened and how serious it was.

I didn’tturn back. Not my place, not my place, I kept thinking as I hurried on

I once found a puppy in the street, with its guts spilling out. I left it, and what was worse, told its owner that I hadn’t seen it when he asked.

In hindsight, I can envisage exactly what I should have done, complete with a concise summary for the emergency services. Just like the movies. But how many untrained people act like that in real life?

There were no flaps of skin hanging from the man’s calf, no deep cuts, no bone. The wound was clean. It looked as if someone had taken a scalpel to him.

Come to think of it, that is probably what happened.

The clear margins told me an awful more than I wanted to know. Somebody did this and then put him out on the street for all to see. A warning. They skinned him alive—just his calf—and let him live to repay whatever debt or favour he owed.

You can’t blame me for not walking around alone at night in Port of Spain.

[I’m making a few short notes from internet cafés until I get my act together and don’t forget to back up onto USB stick.]

The trauma of flying, long queues, missing-and-found, luggage, missed connections and a prolonged interrogation at the last hurdle all rolled into one on my long journey to Port of Spain, but more about that later.

I’m here!

How is it that—after 20-odd hours spent in transit—it’s impossible to go to sleep? I sat on the balcony, stupidly gazing at palm trees and at what looked like a Dutch colonial building across the street where cars were zooming along long after midnight, sipping coke and duty free Barbadian rum and pondering how it was that I woke up at 6 a.m. that morning and stepped out into the cold November drizzle, seemingly on a different planet.

This morning was no less confusing. Port of Spain has a flavour all of its own (tourism forms no part of it), but it feels like an odd mix of Northeast Australia and Malaysia, definitely with Sri Lanka thrown in.

A once said that Trinidad is like Sri Lanka, but without the poverty. That is true. There is some poverty and there are enough beggars in the street, but there isn’t the sense of despair. Certainly not on that scale, although it might just not as visible. The laws are strict: micro-vendors are banned from public areas and touting is a no-no (how refreshing!)

But it is there all the same. The only time I have seen as much blood in the street unnoticed was back in Africa when I saw a man with a shredded arm. I saw another man today, with almost the entire skin on his left calf stripped off. The wound was so bright red it looked painted on, if it hadn’t been for all the blood. Some of it formed glistening puddles on the pavement and was coagulating, so that at first I thought someone had thrown offal into the street. It couldn’t have come from a human.

But it had. The man just sat there, in the same pose as the many beggars by the roadside, staring at his leg. He seemed to have come from nowhere, there was no altercation, no sound, no sign of any accident.

And the people just walked by. Me too. I was too shocked to stop. Not my place, I kept thinking.

If nobody has called an ambulance, the man will die. He’ll need extensive skin grafts. I wonder who pays for that here.

Not much later I walked through a fair on the magnificent strip of Independence Square. I walked right into the cameras pointing at the stage where, in front of his ministery, the Minister for Social Affairs was holding a speech. The people were all dressed up and smiling, many of them in wheelchairs. All the stalls represented charities and disability groups. The speech was about social change and building the community, so perhaps there was hope for the bleeding man.

My little reflector teddy-bear—the one that I had for over twenty years, taken to India and Venezuela and had transferred to the new backpack when I’d dug out and discarded the old frame-pack—had been decapitated. It had been lashed tight with the boot strap and could not have snagged without ripping the strap as well. Something with sharp edges must have been dropped on it from a great height.

That something had also bust open my bottle of duty free gin which I had transferred to the backpack after being made to go through emigration and customs in Barbados. The gin had wetted through the cover material and the entire pack was reeking of it. A nice first impression this would make on the immigration officials here.

*

As usual, I had been among the last off the plane, but it didn’t worry me as I strolled to the transit desk at Bridgetown Airport. There was plenty of time.

“You have to check your bag,” the woman at the desk said.

“Pardon? It should have been put through to Port of Spain.”

She shook her head. “You’re not flying with British Airways?”

“Virgin Atlantic.” I thought I had made a smart move by avoiding Baggage Armageddon. Apparently not.

“Caribbean Airways has no agreement with Virgin Atlantic,” the woman said, handing me back my printout and passport. “You have to go through immigration.”

As I went to join the immigration queue in the adjacent hall, I saw that it filled the entire space, curling back on itself six times. I checked my watch: one hour and forty nine minutes remaining until departure.

What if my bag had been checked through after all? It clearly said PoS on my baggage label.

I turned back to the transit desk and wasted a further five minutes trying to argue my case. The woman kept shaking her head. My bag had been dumped right here in Bridgewater. VA had no understanding with Caribbean Airlines.

Thankfully, about half an hour later, somebody came and fast-tracked us. I like to think it was because I wasn’t the only transit passenger and they were rounding us up, but that proved incorrect. Some people grumbled that the last in the queue were now being let past them. I growled at them that they didn’t have a plane to catch, they had arrived.

There was luggage piled up everywhere in the arrivals’ hall, but my backpack wasn’t among it. The VA carousel had only just started rolling. For forty-five minutes I stood there and watched bags emerge, one—after a long break—after another, until something snagged and the thing ground to a prolongued hold. Twice.

When no more bags emerged, I asked one of the plentiful but uncommunicative staff and was told to check the floor, which I did for the fourth time. I fluttered frantically from one official to another muttering “transit, transit!”, pecking my watch with my finger. Forty minutes remained.

Eventually, somebody pointed at the back of the hall where my backpack was circling on a mini conveyorbelt all on its own.

I ripped it towards me and joined the queue at customs, more or less pressing past it. I didn’t care if customs decided to restrain me; I would probably have tried to box my way out of it.

Then I was free. I ran through the tropical heat to the departure hall, sliding on the rain-slicked tiles and queued up behind one other person who took five precious minutes over arguing a point with the check-in staff.

When I was finally waved forward, the flight had closed.

“I can put you on the next one,” the guy said, “but I don’t know whether there is room.”

Dazed, I nodded. I had more-or-less resigned myself to spending the night at Bridgetown airport. It was raining, but I didn’t mind. It was warm, and the air was fecund with the smell of greenery.

When I returned two hours later, the nice man had a boarding pass ready for me, and after I located the gate I thought my troubles were over.

A scant hour later, we touched down at Piarco International Airport.

*

To my surprise I wasn’t waved over by customs. That only left immigration, the last hurdle between me and Trinidad & Tobago. I was close, so close that I could almost smell it over the gin.

The queue was short, but the immigration officer took her time. I wasn’t encouraged when she talked at length to the woman in front of me, also a solo traveller, older than me. She was asked something and pulled out some papers from her bag, pushing them over the counter. That was not encouraging.

I put on my sweetest smile and cursed the smell of gin as I was waved up. The IO raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

“Where are you staying in Trinidad?”

“Pearl Guesthouse.” (I think.)

“what is the purpose of your visit.”

“Holiday.”

“How long is your stay?”

All these questions were already on the form I filled out. Was the IO testing my memory or something? “Seven weeks—forty-nine days.”

That earned me another pair of raised eyebrows. Suddenly I felt sweat trickling down my spine. This woman could bar my entry into the country. If she wanted to, she could put me on the next plane home. It happens to enough people coming to the UK.

“And what do you intend to do in all that time?”

“Dunno, travelling around Trinidad and Tobago.” Think! “I like diving and bird watching.”

“Can I see your itinerary?”

Itinerary? Itinerary? I fumbled for my ticket-printout. The IO studied it for a while, even though all it listed were my flight details and dates of arrival and departure.

She went back to my passport and leaved through it. “You’ve got many stamps in here.”

“I like travelling.”

At that, her mood suddenly changed. I thought I saw a little nod, even the shadow of a smile. Then she picked up a stamp of her own and added the TT immigration seal to my growing collection.

“Have a good time. You be careful now!”

I smiled. “I’m always careful.”

A soft chorus of tropical frogs greeted me as I stepped out of the arrivals’ hall and walked straight up to a taxi. I had earned that ride.

Well, with that out of the way (or rather abandoned, for now) I’m free to focuss on my next trip, which VA assures me is ca. 3 days and 16 hours away.

I’ve finally relocated a (fleeting) reference to the place where I’ll most probably be staying, or close to it. Seems that even in PoS you can find somewhere under 20$. *Phew*

We got lucky with cheap accommodation near Gatwick too. Yes we—John will follow me that far 😉

I’m still watching the dollar rate, but for now it looks like I’m going with a wad of sterling and only enough dollars to pay for the first night. Risky strategy, I know. Riskier still if my debit card decides to disappear into the maw of a cashpoint. It has never happened yet, but my heart stops every time I’m withdrawing money abroad. The Dollar cashcard was meant to take care of such worries, but the ridiculous exchange rate means that I’m going with no backup except for a paltry $160-odd in traveller cheques which were kicking around in my money belt. I knew I should have taken up busking.

So, tomorrow when there is more light around here I’ll be checking my (overpacked) backpack. The jury is still out on the tent, but I’m inclined to bring it.

Meanwhile, The Rum Diary has been downloaded and printed (watch out for it: it’s going to be a major film with Johnny Depp in it!), my writing stuff has been backed up and transferred to the EeePC (note to self: delete all personal details and passwords!), I’ve started to use self-tanning lotion without visible success and I’ve had a root-around my summer wardrobe (most of which no longer fits).

I’m ready to go!

Somebondy explained it to me before, but I still fail to grasp why—if the Americans landed us in the economic shit in the first place (and everybody else is just copying them)—the dollar is going from strength to strength.

I’ve been moaning about this before. If memory serves the pound stood at $1.86 back then. It’s unstoppable rise has something to do with the sale of US assets, a process that—once completed—will have the dollar crashing down. Not that the pound will be soaring, but the situation won’t be comparable to what it is now.

Whis is why, for the first time, I’m not changing any money prior to departure. Nor will I buy a travel currency card. I’ll have to bring wads of cash instead, something I last relied on in Africa, I think.

I’m also bringing my tent. Forget travelling around Trinidad, seeing the sights—my budget has shrunk by 25%. That means I’ll be on the first ferry out to Tobago, looking for a cheap place to stay and only moving if I find a cheaper place to stay. The problem with travelling in the developped wold is that expectations are too high. Everywhere has aircon and sattelite TV. All I want is a basic beach shack, but preferably with electricity (see, I’m doing it too. Sigh).

The financial situation has already led to quarrels, but for me there isn’t even a question of going. I’d much rather be down-and-out in Trinidad than depressed in England.