We woke up late, drove to Crown Point, dropped our dirty clothes in a laundry service and walked over to the beach. We walked up to a booth that offered glass bottom boat tours to the Nylon Pool. The booth was unmanned, but as soon as we approached, a young man with blond-dyed curly hair came towards us yelling something boat tours. We followed rule #1 of Trinidad very carefully - never go with the dude who comes to you. Look for the guy with right T-shirt. This young man was not even wearing a shirt.
- “We are looking for the person in this booth”, I said
- “You want the boat tour?”
- “Yes, but from this booth.”
- “I will take you to the boat!’
- “This boat?”
- “Yes, I am the captain!”
- “You don’t strike me as a captain…”
A dude came, wearing the right kind of T-shirt, and entered the booth, but Captain Curly was persistent. “Does this guy work with you?” I asked the guy in the booth, who avoided the question and blatantly ignored Captain Curly. The dude said we had hurry to get the tour that was leaving soon, since they were canceling the afternoon tours due to the bad weather. We hadn’t eaten yet and the weather did seem to get worse, so we decided to skip the tour. Instead, we got food - I got goat stew and dumplings, which are totally not dumplings, and Julia got a crab, which was impossible to manage.
By the time we were done eating, it had already started to rain pretty bad, and it didn’t look like it was going to stop. We had to make a run for it to the car which was far enough for us to get completely soaked. Again. With no further plans for the day, we decided to just drive around the island.
We drove to Scarborough, where it didn’t rain anymore. We drove up a hill and reached Fort King George.
We drove along the windy coastline on the east side of the island. We were late for lunch again, and some hope was sparked when we passed an open restaurant in Speyside. The moment we got out of the car, we saw a large group of people leaving the restaurant. “They just ran out of food”, they said. “So where do you guys want to have lunch?” I asked them.
So we drove on. Right before Charlotteville, the road was blocked by a couple of peacocks.
In Charlotteville, we raided a small grocery store. We bought candy and chips, and then bought some fruit at a stand across the road. We ate our loot sitting on the docks and watching the pelicans dive into the ocean and come out with fish.
We drove back hoping to get to our hotel before dark. We stopped to take some pictures at the Speyside waterwheel, which is the ruins of an old sugar factory.
We got back to the hotel and were very annoyed, as the Wi-Fi was still down, and so we went to the lobby to check up on life. Julia got an email from a guy named Stanley, who said he found her stuff. He said we should text him before we call. We were overwhelmed. On one hand, this was very good news. On the other hand, we were suspicious: why do we need to text first? We know somebody had tried to use Julia’s credit card at least once. Maybe he wants to blackmail us? After some attempts to text, email, and call him, we finally got hold of him. All that we could understand through the bad connection and his thick accent was that we should call him again when we get back to Trinidad. “You don’t want to blog about this? Are you sure?” Julia asked.
We drove to Crown Point and had dinner at the only place we could find that was still open, the Cafe Coco. It’s a fancy restaurant, and the food is pretty good. We finally got callaloo soup, which we saw in some places. We drove back to Buccoo. Sunday nights in Buccoo are famous for “Sunday School”, a street party that includes local steel drum bands, cheap beer and an arts market. The steel drum band that we saw was great.
From there we walked across the street and entered a dance club where we were pretty much the only tourists. We hung out there for a couple of beers and watched people dance. I don’t understand people who dance so well. The coordination that it takes for two people who have just met to move in the same direction at the same time just doesn’t look realistic to me, yet these people can make it work. I just don’t get it.
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