Careful Dar Now Boy!

We went to Trinidad and Tobago (specifically the island of Trinidad) for the Easter holiday (Semana Santa en Espanol). We had a very hard time finding flights to anywhere for Easter, which is, apparently, a very big travel holiday for Venezuelans. We have found that air travel in general in Venezuela is difficult due to various governmental policies, not the least of which is the limitations on the number of flights foreign carriers can make to or from Venezuela. The up shot is that, ironically, Miami, or even Houston, is a much better base of operation for travel to South America and the Caribbean than Caracas.

In any event, we did manage to find a flight to Trinidad which was no too ridiculously expensive and off we went to the birthplace of Calypso music. The trip there was pretty uneventful, except for the realization that it costs about $50 USD to leave Venezuela and the hassle of finding where in the airport one has to pay the “exit tax”. Upon arriving in Trinidad our first introduction to island culture was at the rental car counter where there was no sign of the person working at the counter for the company through which we had reserved a car. The young lady at a neighboring counter helpfully guessed that the guy had gone to lunch, but really she had no idea where he was. Frustrated, we asked if we could rent a car from her company and she asked us if we had a reservation. Um…no, we reserved a car with the missing-counter-agent-company. Then, no, she did not have any cars. About this time, the counter agent for yet a third rental company shows up at his counter, a company called something like “Singh’s Car Rental” and it turns out he does have a car for rent. At this point I should say a few words about the people of Trinidad and Tobago. The population is made up of descendents of African slaves brought by the English to work the sugarcane plantations, the descendents of East Indians (like as in India) brought as indentured servants after slavery was abolished, the interbred mixture of the two, and the white, English landowners. English is the official language, and it is spoken with either a British accent, or a “Rastafarian” accent. Hard work does not, however, appear to be something fostered by the island culture. Back to the story. So we go outside to see our rental car, which is a small compact car in what I would describe as “marginal” condition. Virtually every fender and bumper is slightly dented or scratched. And then it hits me. The steering wheel is on the wrong damn side of the car. Trinis drive on the wrong side of the road just like Brits. Here is a picture of the car:

Unless you have actually driven a wrong-side-of-the-road car, you have no idea how weird it feels. As soon as you sit down in the driver’s seat you reach to the middle of the car for the seat belt and grab nothing but air. Then you try to find the ignition, and come up with nothing. Go to shift the car into drive (thank goodness it was an automatic) and you grab the door handle. Go to make a turn and you flick on your windshield wipers instead of your turn signal. When backing up you keep trying to look down the outside of the car instead of through the center. The rear view mirror is not where it is supposed to be. Left turns feel wrong and right turns almost land you in oncoming traffic. Driving on the wrong side of the road is challenging to say the least. But we did overcome that obstacle.

We stayed in Port of Spain, the largest city in the country, which is about half the size of Waco, Texas. We stayed at the Gingerbread House a bed and breakfast that is a Victorian house in front with an ultra-modern attachment on the back. It had a small courtyard for a yard with a pool the size of a big hot tub with very cool, shiny tiles that looked like Abalone shells. We were staying in an older part of town, a residential district which is near the town center and the old government palaces on the Queens Park Savannah. The palaces are known as the “Magnificent Seven” (due to the fact there are seven of them). The government is now housed in two twin towers, which resemble 30 story versions of the former World Trade Center, located near the port facility. Several of the Magnificent Seven are quite run down and boarded up, others are under renovation. We visited the zoo which was a little sad:

We met a friend of Mary’s from her Con-Gen Class in Washington D.C. who is posted to Trinidad and Tobago for dinner and we saw her apartment which is very similar to our apartment in Caracas. In fact she had the exact same couch, love seat and dining room set. We went to a nice, but somewhat expensive, dinner at a restaurant called “Paisley” and met several of the other officers at the T&T embassy. We also got to experience getting lost in yet another country and found ourselves in the Rastafarian part of town. (I should re-name this blog “Lost” since so many of my stories revolve around being lost in a new city.)

The next day we went on a driving tour of the northern coast of Trinidad, then trough the coastal mountain range and cloud forests/jungle, into the central lowlands and back to Port of Spain. This a link to a map (you can move it around, zoom in and out, etc) insewrting it here makes the page too slow:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&q=trinidad%20%26%20tobago&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

We started by heading north from Port of Spain toward Maraval then to Maracas Bay about 30 minutes from Port of Spain on the north coast. The coast is beautiful. It resembles Venezuela in that it is very rugged and the beaches are limited to small isolated coves bookended by imposing mountains that rise dramatically up from the sea. Here are some photos:

I should also say that the Trinis are really friendly. This guy sang a song for me, admittedly he was hustling tips, but the song was really funny. I though he was making it up on the spot

because he was incorporating elements into it like the fact that I am American and the road we were driving on was built by the Army Corps of Engineers and that I look like I might be an American engineer. But then I heard him sing the same song to another American Tourist.

We hung out at the beach at Maracas Bay which was beautiful in the way that only a Caribbean beach can be, lounging under towering palm trees and watching a large group of what I am guessing were American high school students on their first day of a spring break trip rough housing in the sea and then, as a group, flocking to a beach vendor selling cheap seashell jewelry. We ate lunch at a little shack on the beach called "Tantie Rita's" and had a local specialty called “Bake & Shark” which is a piece of deep fried battered shark on a deep fried bread that resembles a large New Orleans beignet dressed with sliced cabbage, garlic sauce and tomatoes. Mmmmmm…really good. It was worth the trip to the beach just to eat a Bake & Shark.

After continuing along the coast on increasingly narrower roads we made our way to the town of Blanchisseuse (which did not have a public beach) and turned south toward Mome la Croix heading into the jungle and we began our climb into the mountains. The road got worse and worse until it became little more than a one lane path with two way traffic. The jungle was breathtaking. Because it is high in the mountains it is quite cool and of course foggy and wet.

Venezuela and Trinidad have really changed my view on jungles. I always thought jungles were hot, steamy, mosquito infested swamps. But along the Caribbean coast they are cool, and lush with an amazing array of beautiful creatures and flowers.

I should also mention that the roads we were on clung to the sides of huge mountains. On one side was a steep drop off, the exact location of which was obscured by thick grass and plant growth that gave the appearance of adding several feet to the width of the road. On the other side the mountain. At one particular point, as several cars passed from the opposite direction (and remember, we are on the wrong side of the road) I nearly got the left front tire over the edge, which was apparent to the dreadlocked driver of the car passing me who said to me through his open window “careful dare now boy” in a heavy rasta accent. That became the theme of our trip from that moment on. Later, I got too close to the rock wall of the mountain and added some of my own minor damage to the car (which went unnoticed when we returned the car). Along the way we passed the Asa Wright Nature Center in the heart of the jungle and finally made it to Arima where we intended to get on the road to Port of Spain. Unfortunately, we got lost in the town and ended up on a “Priority Bus Road” that runs east and west trough central Trinidad. At one point while stopped at a traffic light we asked the driver of a bus if we were on the road to Port of Spain. He looked like Bob Marley, with a graying beard. In his heavy Caribbean accent he said “dis road go to da city, mahn, but it be only for da buses. Dee police see ya mahn dey gonna stop ya. Jus tell em dat ya lost, dey let ya go mahn.” Sure enough, about 15-20 km down the road there was a police check point and we get pulled over. The police officer, a large, bald, black man with a deep baritone voice with a very British accent, informed us we were on the bus-road and asked to see our driving permit. We handed him our passports instead. He asked if we had a driving permit and I handed him my Texas driver’s license. He looked at it and said, in a British accent, “Texas” and handed it back to me. He then asked for our insurance and I told him it was a rented car and that while I am sure that it is insured, I have no paperwork to that effect. He asked how long we had been in Trinidad and we told him we just got there yesterday and that we were lost and trying to find Port of Spain and that we thought this was the right road. He told us it was not the right road, but that trying to find the right road would probably just get us more lost, and told us to continue on down the bus road to Port of Spain. Then he shook my hand, welcomed me to Trinidad and sent us on our way. Now I represented police officers in Houston, Texas for several years and I can assure you that someone visiting from Trinidad, with no driver’s license or insurance, driving in what is basically the HOV lane would not have been given a hand shake, warm welcome and told to continue on in the HOV lane so as to not get lost. More likely the unfortunate soul would at least get a lecture and a ticket, and might get hauled off to jail. About two or three more km down the road, at another stop light, the bus driver pulls along side us and hangs out the window laughing and said “I told ya da police dey gon get ya, but dey gon let ya go.” The light changed, and we dove off. The bus driver was still laughing. Trinis are really friendly.

The next day was spent back in the jungle at the Asa Wright Nature Center. We saw lots of cool birds and plants and flowers. A photo can describe it better than my words.

This guy was hanging out on the side of the road. The rope goes right through his nose.

Trinis love KFC. There is one on every corner, including this one which is probably the largest KFC I have ever seen. The proprietor of our B&B said she thought they should put Colonel Sanders on the official Trinidad & Tobago Coat-of-Arms.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that Trinidad, and in particular Port of Spain is considered the birth place of Calypso. Unfortunately, although we searched high and low for some Calypso, including in some pretty seedy parts of town, we never found any live Calypso. There was plenty of Reggae and Euro Disco pumped through sound systems, but no live music. I guess you have to come during Carnival for the Calypso. We finally found a Calypso band the day we left. All 80 of them were standing in line in front of us at the airport checking in for our same flight to Caracas.