Day 14: Going home!

We woke up to the cutest breakfast that was provided to us by Anna, and set off to Asa Wright Nature Center to do a bird watching tour. By now, we were experts in travelling in Trinidad. We walked over to Independence Square, got on a Maxi to Arima and got off at the “dial”, just like Anna told us. It was raining pretty bad, so we ran from one awning to another until we found the right street corner from which taxis were supposed go in the right direction. A random guy stopped for us and agreed to take us all the way to Asa Wright. He was not a taxi driver, but throughout the drive he waved at almost everybody we passed. He said he had a large family and it’s spread all over the area.

We arrived just in time for lunch. It wasn’t bad. Then we sat on the porch and watched the birds. So many birds! Most of them were hummingbirds, and some would come to eat at the feeding stations that are placed right in front of the porch. We also saw some Tegu lizards, which are big, iguana-like black and yellow lizards, and some agouti, which look like rats, but are as big as a small dog.

We got a tour from a young woman with no charisma, along with another couple who turned out to also live in San Francisco. They were young, both from Indian descent, and they were on their honeymoon trip.

 

The tour was nice. We saw very few birds, but did get to see some interesting plants. The other couple offered us to hang out with them for the new year’s eve celebrations. They told us where they were planning to get drinks, and we said we’re going to try to make it. 

Before leaving, I saw a bird on the road that seemed to be dead, and my reaction, as expected, was to start screaming. “It’s not dead,” said a staff member and picked the bird up. It was alive. The man put it my hands. “It’s so cute! Can I keep it?” 

- “No sir, I’m afraid you can’t.”

- “Oh, o.k, can eat it then?” I pushed their lack of sense of humor even further.

The front desk arranged for someone from the staff to take us back to Arima. This time we made sure we knew how much we’re going to pay. The driver was extremely nice. He was saving money to go on a trip the US for birdwatching. He also lived in that area his entire life, and obviously knew the guy who picked us up earlier. 

From Arima we took a bus back to Port of Spain. This was actually the only time we took a bus in Trinidad. It’s basically a bigger van. The bus dropped us off near Independence Square in Port of Spain, and from there we walked through the market back to our guest house. We saw some people eating some sort of a fried thing, and we tried to locate the origin of it, but failed. Instead, we bought Julia some pretty funky shoes.

After resting for a while, we set off to Ariapita street to get some food. We looked for doubles, which is another street food that we missed. We got them at a small cart, and they are amazing: they’re mostly curried chick-peas, topped with a bunch of stuff like tamarind sauce. The whole thing rests between two pieces of small flat bread called bara and served in a paper bag. It’s messy and delicious. We were still hungry, but because it was new year’s eve, most restaurants were closed.

Except for that Chinese restaurant that we ate in on our first night in Trinidad. The staff remembered us, and before we left the manager, the same lady who talked to us last time, engaged in conversation. This time Julia was more willing to participate, which was good, because I didn’t understand a thing. When the lady finally addressed me in Chinese, I responded with “wo de zhong wen bu hao” which means “my Chinese is not good”. Funny enough, it turns out she actually asked if I was learning just Mandarin or Cantonese as well, so it inadvertently seemed to her that I was answering her question. “If you can have a conversation in this level, then your Mandarin is pretty good!” she responded, as Julia translated for me later.

We went on to meet the honeymoon couple at the bar. We had a pretty good time, although I registered some awkward moments. Specifically, when we told them about our experiences in Paris, we mentioned how I got pickpocketed the day Julia left to go back to the states. “So I jumped out of the subway car, and I thought to myself that I would never find the guy. Everybody in the subway station was a black man with a beard and black leather jacket, just like the guy who robbed me!” I could see the guy slightly tightening his grip on his wife’s knee. I suppose that might have come off as somewhat racist, and them being an Indian couple, it might have rubbed them the wrong way. Also, this was Trinidad, where people are black, so maybe they were embarrassed. To my defense I will say that I am a Jew, my fiancée is Asian and everybody in that subway stop was, in fact, black. By the way, if you’ve never heard that Paris story before, I was about to give up and join Julia back at the subway car, when I spotted the robber hiding in the car behind us. I ran to him, he threw the wallet on the floor, I pick it up, and ran back to Julia, who already unloaded her luggage from the car. We quickly picked up the luggage and returned to the car where all the other passengers applauded us. Indeed, we’ll always have Paris.

We went back to the guest house relatively early, since we had to get up in the middle of the night to catch our plane. A taxi driver that Anna arranged for us came to pick us up. He was extremely nice. He told us we should come back for Carnival, but expressed some reservations, as Carnival, according to him, can be challenging for a relationship. We left the keys and the phone with him, as Anna asked us to do, and got dropped off at the airport, where we started the journey home.

In retrospect, I should have blogged this trip in real time, when the events were fresh in my mind and the trains of thought more relevant. I’m sure it would have been better if I did, and I promise to try to do it the next time I’m a 

Person 

On

The 

Roaaaaad!! 

(tun, tun, tuuuuuuun!)

Day 13: Port of Spain, Trinidad

Leaving Tobago was not heartbreaking. In fact, between the weather, people trying to screw us over, Julia losing her stuff and me not getting any cocktails on the beach, we were pretty much ready to end this whole trip, and going back to Trinidad symbolized the beginning of the journey home. As we were instructed, we left the jeep locked from the inside in a parking lot next to the ferry terminal. We were smarter when picking our seats this time - the seats in the center row of the bottom level are by far the most stable ones in the boat.

At the terminal in Port of Spain we tried forever to catch a taxi, but with no luck. Eventually someone directed us to the Independence Square, which turned out to be walking distance from the ferry terminal. From there we took a Maxi Taxi to Belmont, where our guest house was located.

Thanna’s place is run by Anna, a sweet middle aged woman, who was extremely helpful. We wanted to call Stanley, the man who had found Julia’s stuff, but we knew we weren’t going to understand anything through the phone connection and his thick accent. Anna called him for us, and we were surprised to find out that he offered to come all the way to Port of Spain from Chaguanas, a 30 minutes drive, by taxi. Then he would have to walk another half an hour to get to Belmont. Anna lent us a local phone and suggested that we walk around until Stanley arrived.

We looked for food, but it was between lunch and dinner, so everything was closed. We were distracted by the National Museum which was really cool, with exhibits about history, natural history and some interesting contemporary art.

Stanley called us. He was close by. We walked quickly back to the guest house. Stanley was already there, waiting for us. He is very tall, sweet, and warm, and he makes furniture for a living. He found the purse in the taxi after we got off it, and decided not to give it to the taxi driver, because he knew that the taxi driver would not care and just take the cash. Stanley, however, was determined to do the right thing. He went through the purse and found the piece of paper that had our entire schedule, including our hotel and flight reservations. He started calling all the hotels to try to contact us, but failed. His plan was to find us in the airport the day of our flight back. Later he decided to go through the wallet more thoroughly, and it was then that he came across Julia’s business card and was able to email her. He returned everything, including the phone, all the cards, and all of the cash, with the bills sorted by value and all facing the same way. Julia burst into tears and hugged him. We gave him some money as an act of gratitude, and in hindsight, we should have given him more.

There was still the mystery of the attempt to withdraw cash with one of the cards half an hour after our taxi ride. I didn’t want to ask and put Stanley in an awkward position. Obviously he wasn’t after the money. I think he tried to use it just to see if he can get any information that would help him find us. “You should really be blogging about this,” Julia said.

Now was a good time to find food. We went to Queens park where there’s a street food market every night. We finally had the local shark and bake, which is pieces of deep fried shark and some veggies in a pita-like bread. It’s like shark falafel, really. It’s excellent. Then we had Pholourie, which are balls of deep fried batter. Ours came tamarind sauce, and they were great.

From there walked to look for a place to hang out. We found a bar and we sat outside and had a few drinks. Anna told us not to walk back to the guest house when it’s dark. Even the locals don’t do that. We asked the hostess to call us a taxi, which caused a lot of unexpected commotion in the staff. After a few minutes a bartender came up to us and told us he can drop us off. In the car, I realized I forgot Trinidad rule #2 which says that you should always ask how much something costs, especially if it looks like it’s free. We got to the guest house, and the guys asked for 60TT.

- “Are you a taxi?” I asked him.
- “No, but you wanted a ride.”
- “I wanted a taxi. If I knew you weren’t just being nice, I would just get a taxi.”
- “Well, this is what a taxi would have cost you.”
- “No, it’s not, and you know it. If you wanted money then you should have told me in advance. I’ll give you 30. Good night.”

He was young and confused, so he just said “o.k, good night!” and that was it.

Day 9: Pitch Lake

Our goal for the day was to get to the Pitch Lake. We had instructions from a random TripAdvisor post on how to get there, which seemed to be a pretty complicated, but we went for it anyway.

Step one: get to Independence Square. We walked to the main road with the intention of hailing a taxi, but we couldn’t see any. Julia said she read somewhere that the taxis in Trinidad don’t have clear markings, but rather have something different about their license plate, but she couldn’t remember what it was. So we just stood in bus stop and indeed someone pulled over. Maybe that was a taxi. Maybe someone who just wanted to make a buck. Anyway, he took us to Independence Square. This is the main transportation hub of the city, and it’s surrounded by a very vibrant and loud market. We looked for something that resembled breakfast, but couldn’t find any. We ended up buying some pears.

Step two: get a Maxi Taxi to San Fernando. We figured out that all taxis have license plate that start with an “H”, for “hire”. We started asking around, but taxi drivers just threw random prices at us, like 70 dollars. American. We finally asked a guy specifically for the Maxi Taxi to San Fernando, and he directed us to an alley where the Maxi Taxis for San Fernando were lined up. A Maxi Taxi, now we learned, is a minivan with a specific route that leaves when it’s in full capacity. Very similar to service taxis in Israel, only harder to locate. They’re also priced reasonably, and I think this ride cost us about 15 TTD, which is about $2.5 a head.

Step three: get to La Brea. We walked to where the taxi driver told us the Maxi Taxi stop to La Brea would be. Now we learned to recognize the little white signed that mark the taxi stops. We waited for a while, but saw no activity, so we asked one of the store owners next to the stop. This stop is no longer active, he said. We should walk all the way down the street. We did, but had no idea what to do now. We sat down and ate the pears. It wasn’t enough, so we decided to look for food

Unfortunately, everything was closed due to the Christmas vacation. The only thing that was open was a Subway. This was extremely disappointing, but there was no choice. In the line, some lady asked for a replacement sandwich - a fly landed on the meat while they were piling cheese on it. I found that funny. For me, the problem would not the fly. It would be the actual food. Julia had their new Sriracha chicken, that was terrible. I blocked out what I had.

Outside, we were getting frustrated, but then two policewomen walked by, so we asked them. It’s very hard parsing english with a Caribbean accent, but after they repeated themselves five times, we understood what we had to do next: we walked to the bank, looked for a Maxi Taxi to Point Fortin and asked the driver to drop us off at the lake.

It worked! We finally got to the lake, but it was now raining pretty bad. We followed Trinidad rule #1, avoided a random dude who offered us a tour, and went straight to the guy with the right T-shirt. We waited for the rain to weaken and Garvin took us into the lake. It’s pretty crazy: you get to walk on this huge lake of tar. Rain is trapped in the small valleys that the folding of the pitch create, and small fish and plants live there. Tiny holes on the surface release sulfur and they bubble when you step near them.

Garvin explained to us about the history and the chemistry of the place, and eventually showed us a pond full of lilies. He took us back to the visitor center, and then we asked if we could go back to the lake on our own to play. He told us to be careful and not go to the center of the lake where we might get get stuck and sink. We managed not to sink, but when we finished playing we had a hard time navigating back to the visitor center. We finally made it. We washed our feet, ate some terrible Subway sandwich leftovers, and moved on.

Step 4: Walk back to La Brea. This was relatively easy. It’s 1km to walk to the end of La Brea, where the driver who brought us to the lake told us to wait for a taxi. The only hard part was that my flip flops were dying.

Step 5: Taxi back to San Fernando. No taxis were passing by. A woman joined us. She was also going in that same direction. She just hailed every car that passed by, until one of them stopped. Every car is a potential taxi, so it seems. The lady got off after 15 minutes, leaving us alone with the driver, who drove insanely fast.

Step 6: Maxi Taxi back to Port of Spain. Piece of cake.

We sat for a little while in Independence Square and then walked around in the market trying to find me some new flip flops. I felt that the merchants were trying to charge me too much money, so we gave up and took a taxi back to the hotel. After chilling in the room for about an hour, Julia couldn’t find her purse. We went through our bags. Twice. We looked all over the room. We moved to extreme measures, clearing one corner of the room and then scanning everything, bags, pillows, clothes, and moving every scanned item to the clear corner. The purse was definitely gone. Damage assessment: phone, wallet with credit cards and driver license, a paper with all our flight and hotel reservations. We started making calls. The credit card company said an attempt was made to withdraw money just half an hour before. To us, that meant that we have to escalate. We blocked all the cards, and asked T-Mobile to put a hold on the SIM and brick the phone. Considering the circumstance, we managed the situation pretty well.

The receptionist stopped giggling when we explained the situation to her, and she explained to us how to get to the police station. The police officer gave Julia a piece of paper that basically says “To whom it may concern, Julia lost her stuff. Try to be nice to her.” I asked him what would they do if they find the stuff, so he agreed to write down an email address. That did not give us any hope.

We walked over to St. James, the nightlife part of town, and got jerk chicken from a street food cart. It was awesome. When we started walking back to the hotel, it started raining again. This time it was raining hard. We had no umbrella, and we just could not find a taxi. We started walking in segments, from underneath a roof to bus station. We then heard music and saw people dancing. If it’s a club, we thought, we could get a drink and wait for the rain to stop.

It was an Indian wedding, and we were not invited. So we stood under a shed right next to the wedding and rested. The wedding was taking place under a tent, but one young woman seemed to have found the tent isolating from mother nature, and danced very purposefully under the rain. She raised her hands to the sky, part to embrace the rain and part to make sure she is noticed. She signaled other guests to join her, but they valued their dryness. We, too, valued their nature. “She’s a free spirit!” Julia said sarcastically and we both burst with laughter.

The rest of the journey home was torture. It just kept raining harder and harder, and by the time we got back to the hotel we were completely soaked. “Are you sure you don’t want to blog about this?” Julia asked.

Day 8: Port of Spain, Trinidad

Our main goal of the day was to get to Trinidad in one piece. Each. So two pieces all together. Our car was parked all the way in the front of the line of cars in the guest house parking, so we did the old car-tetris thing to get it out, and we were on our way. Of course, it rained on us again at the car rental office, and we realized that the forecast was for it to rain during our entire stay in Trinidad.

There are several ways to get from Puerto Rico to Trinidad. Most of them require you to fly back to the mainland - to Miami, for instance. Another option is to hop between the islands with a Caribbean airline, like Liat. The reviews they are getting online are terrible, but we decided it’s worth the adventure. 

Our first stop was Antigua. We had very little time to change planes. In this plane, a Caribbean woman was in my seat.

- "Excuse me, you're in my seat."

- "No I'm not."

- "Can I see your boarding pass?"

- "I don't have it."

- "What seat are you supposed to be in?"

- "I don't know."

She turned her head away, disengaging from the conversation. Julia put her bag down at her seat, while I signaled a flight attendant.

- "Do you have to sit together?" the lady asked. She started to realize she was going to lose this one.

- "Yes, we do!"

- "O.K. I'll trade seats with you." she said, and moved to the seat across the aisle, next to her boyfriend. Asshole.

We flew over many big and small islands, and landed in St. Lucia. Here, we didn't have to leave the plane. It was a short stop for people to hop on or off the plane, and then we continued to Trinidad. Overall, the airline was great. I really don't know why the reviews online are so bad.

The number one rule in Trinidad is to go with the guy with the right T-shirt, like the taxi drivers in the airport. Don't go with the random guy who offers you a ride. Go with the one that has the airport taxi service T-shirt. The guy took us all the way to our hotel in Port of Spain, and it wasn't too expensive.

The receptionist at the hotel just stared at me and giggled. Julia thinks she thought I was cute. I think they're both right.

- “We have a reservation.”

- “A what?!"

- “A reservation!”

She was very confused. It looked like it was unreasonable in her mind that we’d have a reservation. Like she forgot this was a hotel. The entire conversation was very frustrating. And very giggly. Eventually we got our room. It was pretty bad. All the rooms in the hotel were named after different Caribbean islands, and those names were engraved on wooden plaques hung on the doors. Ours didn’t. We barely had a door. It was more like a gate. And the bed… I would rather have the bed I slept in during basic training than this bed.

It was Christmas night, so everything was closed for dinner, but the receptionist told us that we might have better luck downtown. And then she giggled. Can she get us a taxi? She can, but we can also wait for the manager - she would be happy to drive us, and she should be back any minute now.

Half an hour later, the manager showed up. She said she would take us, but nothing is open, except for this one Chinese restaurant. Just like America, we thought. So she drove us there, a drive that takes about two minutes, and then demanded a fee of ten dollars. American dollars. The second rule in Trinidad is that you don’t talk about Trinidad. O.K, it’s not. The second rule in Trinidad, actually, is to always ask how much things cost beforehand, especially when you don’t think they will cost anything at all.

The staff at the Chinese restaurant had very poor English, and had a hard time talking to us as Julia would not talk in Chinese to them. Her excuse was that she heard them speak Cantonese among themselves, and she only knows Mandarin. My argument that almost every Chinese person speaks Mandarin did not convince her. The truth of the matter is that she’s just uncomfortable speaking Mandarin at all.

We tried to pay with one of my cards. The waitress took it to the back and we could see that a struggle was taking place between her and the credit card machine. Eventually, a more senior staff member came to the table and in broken English tried to explain to us that the waitress had charged my card twice, so they’re returning to me the difference in cash, if that’s o.k. The waitress, it turns out, is new. “She doesn’t know!” she said. This was my time to shine. “Ta bu zhi dao ma?” (“she doesn’t know?!”) I asked. I was so convincing that she switched immediately to Mandarin, obviously repeating the whole story to me, now completely ignoring Julia.. I just nodded and uttered an occasional “dui, dui…” (“right, right...”) which just made her go faster and Julia laugh harder. “Are you sure you don’t wanna blog about this?” Julia asked as we walked back to our room.

Puerto Rico / Trinidad and Tobago: Prologue

“Are you sure you don’t wanna blog this?” Julia asked for the millionth time. It was close to midnight and we were standing under the pavilion, already completely soaked, watching an Indian girl dancing in the rain, signaling to the rest of the wedding guests to join her. It was impossible to get a taxi, and the rain was just getting stronger. That’s not what I had imagined when I said we should go to Trinidad for our vacation. I just wanted to sit on a beach chair, facing the ocean, drinking a cocktail. I don’t even like cocktails, but I just wanted to do this at least once in my lifetime. 

I hate planning, but Julia loves it. And so by the time we left for our vacation Julia had the entire trip planned out. The outline: a week in Puerto Rico, including a short escapade to Vieques, and a week in Trinidad and Tobago. It wasn’t supposed to be eventful enough to blog about. 

Oh boy, was I wrong.