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Well hello! I hope you are all well and here is the first update on my latest adventures. Will try to keep them less than dissertation length for this trip although not making any promises.
The airport sagas I usually suffer from seem to be a thing of the past and they have become quite lucky for me of late. This all started with not being charged for having luggage 8kg over the allowed amount by a particularly kind check-in desk lady. The flight itself was pretty boring, saved from being coma-inducingly boring only by the three lovely Caribbean ladies sitting next to me chatting away in their beautiful lilting Caribbean accents. However, every so often they would give away the fact they probably lived in the UK by coming over all Eastenders, particularly when talking about the "fammmleeeee" and how the food was "a bit minging".
Eventually we arrived in Tobago and I had time for a couple of beers before catching my flight down to the Port of Spain on the Trinidad mainland. I got chatting to two English guys who were moaning about the fact that their luggage was 8kg overweight and they had to pay
almost 100 pounds for it. Maybe it was the beer, but I felt the overwhelming urge to tell them of my good fortune when faced with exactly the same situation - they weren´t as happy about my good fortune as I. My flight was called and I left for the safety of my plane. Once on board, the flight attendant did her safety talk and asked everyone to turn their phones off and explained as it was only a 25 minute flight the cabin lights would be kept off throughout for some safety reason or another. So we took off and when level in the air the baggy-trousered homeboy next to me decided to call his girlfriend and talk dirty (I was only listening because I was sitting next to him by the way) and the guy across the aisle decided to check his texts. They weren´t the only ones to ignore the risk of sudden death by mechanical failure of flying instruments and soon the plane was lit up like a Christmas tree.
We arrived, safely, in the Port of Spain and my Uncle came to meet me at the airport, then we drove the hour and a
half trip further south to San Fernando where he lives. The following day we decided to take a trip out to see two Hindu temples in nearby towns. One was a big old pink affair with apparently the largest statue of the God Hunaman and a sign asking for everyone to donate not what you could to help maintain it, but to "give liberally" - there were clearly costs to be met. The other was a lot less ostentatious with a beautiful calm setting on a piece of land jutting out into the sea. On the way home we stopped for a Carib beer at a beautiful hillside hotel with stunning views out to sea facing Venezuela. It gave me the opportunity to read a local newspaper, pretty much full of stories relating to the horrific murder rate in the country - which that weekend stood at 224 from the beginning of the year. Last year on the same date it was at 150. The main story was the shooting of a guy and his five month old baby, both shot dead in the back of a car they were travelling in when the driver stopped to take a leak
at the side of the road in a particularly dodgy part of town. Three days later the driver of the car was himself murdered in retaliation. It´s all drug and turf wars but the way it´s reported is like watching a soap opera played out over the news. The population of Trinidad and Tobago is only 1.25m over the two islands but drug running is rife due to its proximity to Venezuela and Guyana, both countries with well established drug trafficking gangs and routes. It appears that the current President, Patrick Manning, seems to be ignoring the rapidly increasing crime and murder rates and is happier concentrating on the construction of his new residence, being built at a cost of $148m. Although, rather bizarrely, one area the President hasn´t neglected is teaching his people how to keep safe when faced with natural disasters. I saw numerous wonderul adverts on how to behave during an earthquake/hurricane from the delightfully named "Department of Disaster Preparedness and Management". Nothing beats a little preparedness.
My Uncle lives high on a hill like a lonely goatherd, well not really like a lonely goatherd but high on a hill at least, in an area called
Vistabella. As the name suggests, the area has wonderful views of both the waterside and the city as a whole. Visible in the distance and fairly imposing is the Pointe-a-Pierre Oil Refinery whose chimneys burn day and night and around which (luckily some distance away from Vistabella) the smell of sulphuric acid is fairly pungent. We took a drive out in the opposite direction trying to find Pitch Lake, a bizarre 135ft-deep black tar lake. Unfortunately we weren't really paying attention and road signs are fairly non-existent so we ended up getting lost. We consoled ourselves by going to the town of Debe for some food instead. Debe is completely Indian (Trinidad has equal populations of Black and Indian origin and a growing Chinese contigent) and to be honest it was like Southall in the sun. On the way home we stopped off to see a friend of my Uncle´s and I picked fresh mangoes off the trees in his back garden to have for breakfast the next morning. Sounds somewhat mundane I know, but it did remind me that I was at the beginning of a very long holiday again! The next day I went with my Uncle to
his clinic in downtown San Fernando and the same friend turned up to invite us to lunch at the best Chinese restaurant in town. This was fine by me so off we went to eat at a quite luxurious place on the outskirts of San Fernando.
The last time we were in Trinidad was over a decade ago and it has really changed. There are some beautiful buildings with lots of Victorian architecture, but a good few have been allowed to fall into disrepair and many have been demolished to make way for more modern structures. There is now a National Trust here, which opened properly about 5 years ago and is identifying and renovating buildings of historic importance across the country but mainly in the capital Port of Spain. The island definitely seemed a bit more rundown now but it was nice to visit again.
My final day in Trinidad on the brief trip saw me relax in the morning by watching some local TV. Luckily for me "Time for Deliverence" with Dr Martin Lewis had just started. As is the way in the Americas and the Caribbean, religious fervour is a daily requisite on local television
and Dr Lewis had clearly built up some following. First he pointed directly at me from the television, declaring that as a lost soul I could find my path if only I followed him to the Lord. Then all of a sudden his finger starting pointing downwards in a suggestive manner and he started to look at me with somewhat more urgency... then his bank details flashed up on the screen below his finger as he invited me to make a contribution to the Lord by ringing now on the Deliverence hotline. I was just about to turn over when he introduced his gospel choir to the stage - ´The Supernatural Singers of Deliverence´. Again, there was a lot of pointing directly at you from the television and they sang of being delivered from evil very soon. Frankly they were right, as the next morning I was indeed delivered from a very evil and long check-in queue at the airport by one of my Uncle´s friends. He was checking in through First Class for the same airline but a different flight and insisted the lady at the desk check me in there too.
Suitably blessed, the next stop was
Jamaica.
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