Scarborough
There is a system of route taxis here after all, as I discovered—much to my relief—when I was faced with the near-vertical slope of Main Street. These sort of slopes are what the Portugal LP writers refer to as ‘outrageous inclines’. Add tropical heat to that notion and you soon dissolve in your own sweat, even if you’re crawling up it at the speed of an ant. It’s about half an hour to go up and around half that amount of time to come back down.
And all for a bottle of rum (a small one), because the damn cornershop—fittingly called ‘Hill Top Supermarket’—isn’t licenced.
This island may be a tiny speck in the Caribbean, but I still feel in touch with the world at large, and not just because of the internet. The place names here can be disconcerting: there is a Runnymede and a Culloden, and of course the famous Argyle Waterfalls. Charmingly, there are science news on the radio as well. On the bus I heard that a team at Manchester Uni has discovered that HSV1 (the virus that gives you cold sores) is linked to Alzheimer’s. Cheers. They even said which journal the paper is published in (J. of Pathology, so I take it that Cell has turned it down).
Scarborough is generally a charming place, once you get used to the traffic. Earlier today I was sitting at a bar at the busy Main Street, together with the other tourists (the locals stayed in the aircon inside) and bugger me if a chicken didn’t hop up onto one of the tables. London has pigeons, Scarborough has chickens—probably the only street-smart chickens in the world.
I was making plans, thinking about the diving. It may be better to go on some tours to look around the island instead. Tobago isn’t the sort of place where you can just set off on solo hikes into the rainforest. Besides it’s not the same on my own. But I miss the good times we’ve had with the other divers.
Well, it can wait. There is still time—plenty of it. Even on holiday, people have busy itineraries. It’s always rush, rush, rush, ticking off boxes on a list. Which is ironic, given that this is how people learn to cope with bipolar disorder. That sort of thing doesn’t belong on Tobago.
So I didn’t hop on a bus. There wasn’t much to write about today. But just as I thought that, a story presented itself.
Tags: Americas, Hope Cottage, Scarborough, Tobago, Tag Index
Denni