1) Chaguaramas, Trinidad

February 5, 2005

…And it begins. The 7 a.m. flight out of SFO was uneventful.  The interesting stuff only occurred when slight turbulence reared its ugly head.  In my eyes the bumps were small and an accepted part of flying.  But, in the eyes of the woman next to me there were not enough prayers to say or enough arm rests to dig into with her hands.  Yes, I flew for 5 hours with a terrified passenger next to me. In broken English she apologized while on short final into Miami.

During this flight I looked out the window as all pilots do.  I was lucky to look out just as traffic was passing perpendicular behind us.  The plane was clearly a business jet maybe 1000’ below us producing a beautiful contrail as a result of flying at approximately 35,000 feet.  How do I know these details?  This business jet was so close to us I thought I was in a general aviation airplane in the traffic pattern.  I still love flying.

I had an hour between landing and my connecting flight to Port of Spain, Trinidad and participated in the walking tour of the Miami airport.  All of us that have ever traveled by air know well that airports are designed with plenty of ‘under construction’ billboards to help you along.  It’s a pleasure to see all the endless corridors with no windows that lead you to escalators that turn you the opposite direction of where you need to go.  Once you get to the top of the escalator there is always another corridor that sends you to your gate area.  This time my gate was almost the last gate at the end of this wing.  I navigated around many obstacles.  Is it a law to stand in the way of people carrying luggage? 

The sun began to set around 3 p.m. California time according to my watch.  We were about halfway across the Caribbean on my way to the island of Trinidad when I realized that things were changing.  Once close to Trinidad we entered a fifteen-minute holding pattern.  It was 9 0’clock at night local time and there were so many people coming in, it was stacked-up. Did I mention that ‘Carnival’ was almost here?  Holding pattern means lots and lots of people going through customs and almost one hour of waiting in line.  Port of Spain baggage claim supplies free carts and that almost made up for the wait.

A taxi had been arranged outside for me.  The driver was to have a sign with the boat name Laetitia and my name.  But, I had to get out of baggage first.  It was going so well after I got out of customs.  I found the free carts and my only checked bag and the correct line to get out of baggage claim.  I was about 4^th in line when in front of me the yelling began.  And I mean the yelling.  It was all coming from a nicely dressed fairly large black man with a heavy accent accusing the security guard of assault for touching him.  The room stopped.  The yelling continued about ‘I want to see the supervisor’ or something like this.  He seemed to calm down when a plain-clothes police officer approached him and flashed a badge.  Hmmm, where am I?

Okay, walking out the door of the airport, hundreds and hundreds of people, car exhaust, cigarette smoke, noise, horns, the hot blast of humid nighttime heat and tucked in the corner of a roped area was my name on a sign.  Lucky?  Yes.

The driver’s name is Sterling.  He drives fast and slow.  He talks fast and slow and really loud.  He had to make sure that the guy in back and I were able to hear him over the noise coming in the open windows.  The wheel is on the right and they drive on the left.  Leaving the airport he pointed out five 50’ tall steel and wire and rebar statues that represent the characters of ‘Carnival’ for the tourists.  This is when the audio portion of the tour began.  He was very animated and entertaining.  He showed us everything he could.  He was polite enough to ask if he was talking too fast.

He asked if we liked beer.  Can you believe my luck?  He offered us a beer on him. Earlier at the airport I saw a passenger drinking a beer in the car and thought… Anyway, I was pretty uncomfortable going into a bar in a foreign country with my luggage in the car and he said “no-no-no don’t worry I go in and get it and we drive”.  Apparently it’s ok for everybody in the car to drink except the driver.  But, the driver can drink as long as he doesn’t weave and draw attention to himself.  Sterling doesn’t like empties in the car so he just pulls over and tells me to drop the bottles on the side of the road.  I said hold on here I don’t want to litter.  He said it’s ok. Everybody does it and some one comes along everyday and picks the empties up and turns them in for money.  Someone actually did this with so much success that he built two houses, has a family and now has locals that do the work for him.

The traffic was really heavy and we stopped for another beer. Did I mention that I liked Trinidad so far?

We finally made it to the place where I was going to stay.  A marina in Chaguaramas named Power Boats is where the boat is and has four rooms for rent.  The room is small with 2 beds, air-conditioning, refrigerator and a two-channel TV.  My watch said 7:30 p.m. California time and it was really 11:30 p.m. local time.  Jeff, the owner of the boat, and I went walking to find some food.  We have no car because all of them are rented on account of ‘Carnival’.  The restaurants were closed because it was late.  I ate a granola bar.