Port of Spain: Inconvenienced
[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.
Tags: Americas, Trinidad and Tobago, Tag Index
Denni