Here we are in Trinidad! So far this trip has been somewhat of an eye-opening experience. We spent the first two days in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s main city. It’s a grungy, stinky place — I was expecting something a lot more tropically beautiful, like Puerto Vallarta or Rio. Instead, it’s just a big, dirty, crowded city, with polluted air. You can’t get the stench and taste of car exhaust out of your sinuses and throat.

Yesterday we went to their zoo, which was another weird experience. I’ve never been to a zoo like it, and it’s probably more like what the old-fashioned zoos used to be like in the United States. The animals are kept in cages (nice big ones) rather than “habitats” and there aren’t any railings or moats keeping people from walking right up to the bars of the cages. It’s cool that you can get really close to the animals, and the animals seem to like interacting with people. Monkeys would stick their hands out to touch people and you can get a fantastic, up-close look at them. (I was surprised at the fact their fingernails are almost identical to human fingernails.)

Josie found a parrot feather on the ground, and when she held it too close to another bird’s cage, he stuck his beak through the bars and stole the feather from her. She cried a lot until Holden found a new feather in the grey hawk cage. That feather caused some problems in the toucan area — they took one look at it and panicked. I was impressed that they could identify their enemy from a single feather. Once we figured out that’s what was causing them to be so agitated, we put it away and then they were really friendly. They were attracted to the shiny silver metal parts of my purse and kept sticking their bills through the bars to pick at it. The kids all got to touch a toucan beak, which was really neat.

They had a lion who was slowly eating what looked like a goat, and then a few minutes later we passed a big pen full of goats and rabbits — clearly they were “feeder animals” for the predators in the zoo. We didn’t see it happen, but I’m pretty sure that they just stick a live goat in his cage and let nature take it’s course. Ditto for the poor rabbits and the pythons and eagles. In other cages for smaller birds of prey and snakes, we saw dead chicks in the food bowls, that looked like fetuses. I think they were cracking eggs about 2 days before they were set to hatch and using almost-done chicks as feed. The only reason I can think of for doing it that way is maybe if they used hatched chicks (which can walk and run) they’d get away through the bars or something. Anyway, it was pretty gross. In US zoos, they make sure you never have to see evidence that predators actually eat cute little rabbits, goats, and chicks. US zoos are more like the Central Park zoo in the movie Madagascar, where they throw a nice, clean steak to the lion after all the visitors have gone for the day.

Right now we’re on a boat headed to the other island, Tobago. I HATE boats and am writing this on the computer to try to keep my mind off the fact that we’re pitching around in the ocean. I get seasick. Ugh. We all took seasick pills before we got on the boat, but I’m worried they won’t help me because I’m such a psycho about nausea and that’s all in my mind, rather than a real phenomenon. I hate being like this. Mind over matter!! Adam took all the kids out on the deck so they could see the water, and I’m sitting in the cabin. I can’t decide if I’d be better off going outside, or sitting here trying to trick myself into believing I’m on a turbulent airplane. Airplanes don’t bother me.

Well, I’m out of stuff to say now. To be continued …

Brenda

Well, a couple of days later now. The ferry ride turned out to be really, horribly awful. None of my family got sick –presumably because we took the medicine — but it seems nobody else on the boat took medicine. There was puking from every direction, and Adam described the bathrooms as “war zones” although I didn’t go anywhere near them. I sat curled up in my seat with Adam’s noise-canceling ear phones on refusing to move or even look up. Then the captain announced that one of the engines was broken and the trip was going to take longer than scheduled, turning a 2 1/2 hour excursion into more like 3 hours 20 minutes.

Once we docked, everyone was desperate to get off the boat. So many people were still green around the gills. But the gangplank wouldn’t come down, so we were all trapped on the boat, everyone huddled in a big, shoving mass at the front of the ship. Turns out the dock workers were on strike and picketing, and refusing to lower the gangplank. Essentially, we were being held hostage. I was scared that it may turn violent because people were starting to get really angry and there was a whole lot of yelling, but after about an hour, they finally let us off.

The taxi driver who was waiting for us said the dock workers were angry because Trinidad & Tobago contracted out the ferries to Canadians … the ships are all owned by Canada and run by Canadian crews. The reason for this is that when the locals were in charge, they would “sell” (for bribes and kickbacks) so many fake tickets to their own friends and family that people who paid for legitimate tickets were unable to board because the boat capacities were at their limit. Turning it over to the Canadians solved the corruption problem, but now the locals (who still run the docks) are mad. Our taxi driver, and all of the locals held hostage on the boat, were pissed off at the dock workers. There were a bunch of people on the boat coming over that morning for a graduation ceremony that started at 10:00 and they missed it because they couldn’t get off the boat. The taxi driver called the protestors “foolish and heartless” and kept saying that’s not how mature people behave. They did their protest in the stupidest way possible — the boat wasn’t set to return to Trinidad until 5:00 p.m., so the ferry line wasn’t losing any revenue by sitting idle in the docks at 10:00 in the morning. The passengers were the ones being punished, and many of the passengers were people related to the dock workers. (It’s a really, really small population in Tobago.) The taxi drivers who do the ferry route were likely to lose business, too, since you can buy a plane ticket for just a tiny bit more money than a ferry ticket, and it’s only a 20 minute flight. People who have a bad experience on the ferry will likely just fly on the plane next time. That will eventually hurt the ferry company, but it will hurt the local taxi drivers a lot more. Anyway, that whole experience left a very sour impression in our minds.

We finally got our rental car and checked into our villa, which is very nice. It’s a 3 bedroom house that sleeps 8 people (so we all get our own bed and some privacy! yay!) and has a fantastic private swimming pool. We went to the local grocery store and bought a bunch of food so we could eat here at the house. We had one incredible dinner in Trinidad at a Thai restaurant (US$150, and we shared meals!), but the rest of our restaurant meals have been almost as expensive and very disappointing. So, we’re content to buy cheap groceries and eat peanut butter sandwiches instead.

The local grocery store was kind of cool — every egg in the place, for example, came from local chickens and were packaged in little old-fashioned containers, and they were incredibly cheap. You can’t buy farm-fresh, organic eggs like that in the US without paying between $5 and $8 for a dozen. We bought a pack of 6 eggs and it was something like $US 0.15. So, food is actually pretty cheap here if you buy at the store, and astronomically expensive if you buy it in a restaurant. Renting a villa with a kitchen is more expensive per night than a regular hotel room, but you will quickly make up the difference by not eating out, and get the benefit of a whole house and private pool. It’s definitely the way to go. (In Trinidad at our hotel, they were charging US$25 per person for a crappy breakfast buffet, and the kids and I had to spend US$75 on an equally crappy lunch buffet because Adam was gone to his meetings and we were kind of trapped at the hotel. I didn’t feel safe walking around Port of Spain without a man. It’s really a rough-looking place.)

Yesterday here in Tobago, we were visiting one of their forts and man approached us, very friendly, and pointed out another man loitering around a little ways down the road. He said, “Don’t stop for that man in the yellow shirt. If he tries to get you to stop, call the police. He’s a very bad man.” I know that T&T has a pretty good reputation for safety and a very low crime rate, but things like that, coupled with the striking dock workers taking the passengers hostage for an hour, have left me feeling distinctly not safe. The last two nights I’ve had nightmares about lost children, which is probably my subconscious fears about being here manifesting in my sleep.

So, that brings us to today, Saturday. Adam bought airplane tickets back to Trinidad for tomorrow morning, so thank goodness we don’t have to face that ferry again. We’ve had a very nice past two days, mostly hanging out at the villa and going to the beaches. The kids are having a blast, and it is a really beautiful setting. It’s also sparsely populated, so there aren’t any crowds. We’ve had every beach totally to ourselves, which is fantastic. We went to an awesome one this morning and had the best time, until Josie stepped on a sharp seashell fragment and impaled her heel. That was pretty much the end of the fun at the beach. We’re back at the villa right now hanging around the pool. She feels fine now and is swimming, but I’m a little worried about her heel getting infected. Isabella got a puncture wound on her heel in almost the exact same place a few years ago at my parent’s house (on a rock) and it got horribly infected. The doctor said puncture wounds on feet very often get infected because there is so much bacteria on the ground, in shoes, etc. A seashell in the ocean is probably teeming with germs. But oh well — nothing to do but wait and see what happens. Hopefully if it does get infected, it will wait a couple days until we’re home. Tomorrow (Sunday July 3) we fly back to Trinidad and spend the rest of the day, and very early Monday (July 4) we fly back to Georgia.

Overall, my impressions of Trinidad & Tobago are that they are definitely beautiful islands with great natural habitats and phenomenal weather, but the people have, in my opinion, ruined it. If you are wanting sun, sand, and swimming in a laid-back, jungly environment, there are plenty of other places that are a lot better. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico comes to mind, and so do Costa Rica, Rio de Janeiro, and Hawaii.
To be continued again ….
The flight from Tobago to Trinidad was great, and definitely the way to travel between the two islands. It’s about US$25 per person one way, so not even that expensive. The flight itself is only 20 minutes long. So much better than the ferry experience!

When we got to our hotel in Trinidad yesterday morning (same one we stayed in before Tobago) we pulled up in our taxi to find a bleeding homeless man passed out right in front of the hotel doors. Several folks were milling around, and eventually someone came out with a pitcher of cold water and dumped it on the guy, but he wouldn’t wake up. He moved a little, so we at least knew he wasn’t dead. Around 20 minutes later, an ambulance showed up and took him away.

We took a taxi and spent a good portion of the afternoon at the best mall in Port of Spain, called Movie Town, because we had the rest of the day to kill and didn’t know what else to do. We had a nice lunch, and were delighted to discover that kids ate free on Sundays. That brought the price of the meal down to something resembling reasonable. Then we went to the movies and saw The Green Lantern, which turned out to be terrific. After that, we went back to the hotel and rested for a couple of hours before heading out for dinner. Adam asked the hotel concierge where we could find a good, clean restaurant within walking distance, and they recommended we go back to Movie Town, but eventually named a local place we wouldn’t need a taxi to get to. We headed out on foot, and I quickly wished we hadn’t. Garbage everywhere, heavy traffic, polluted air, homeless men, and a crew of workers pumping sewage in front of the restaurant. Both Trinidad and Tobago have a pervasive, faint scent of sewage no matter where you go, but this was really bad. The meal was OK — but it took FOREVER. We sat there for more than an hour and half before the food finally arrived, which we scarfed down in about 15 minutes and got out of there. We were nervous about walking back to our hotel in the dark.

Right now we’re on the plane back home. We will be landing in Miami in less than 20 minutes. I’m glad we went on this trip; it fits nicely into the Eye-Opening Educational Experience category — and there were quite a few really neat moments interspersed with the overall scumminess of everything, but I will be very happy never to set foot there again. (I didn’t mention earlier that there was no hot water in our hotel — just another one of the multitude of things that weren’t quite up to par. We had to take cold showers, which the kids refused to do, so they haven’t had a bath in days … just swimming pool water. I can hardly wait to get home tonight and give them a good scrubbing down. Isabella developed swimmer’s ear and now has a pretty severe and painful ear infection. We’ll likely need to take her to the doctor tomorrow first thing. The good news, however, is that Josie’s heel puncture wound from the sea shell is healing perfectly and looks like it won’t get infected. At least we’re in the clear on that one. I was right to worry about infection, but got the kid and the body part wrong.)

July 5:

We’re back home! Isabella’ poor ear has gotten worse and she’s in a tremendous amount of pain. We’re headed out to see the doctor in 10 minutes, as soon as the clinic opens. Hopefully they can get her sorted out and offer some pain relief during the healing process. Everyone else is healthy and happy; no more trouble with Josie’s foot, and Holden’s mild sunburn resolved within one day.

Yesterday on the plane ride home, the weather in Atlanta was so bad we had to circle the area waiting for it to get better, and finally the pilot announced we had to head back to Jacksonville, FL to land because we were running out of fuel. After a 45 minute flight to Jacksonville, we had to refuel and then wait on the ground for another flight plan, and for the Atlanta airport to reopen. The pilot finally announced we had a flight plan and we taxi’d to the runway, but had to sit there for awhile waiting our turn to take off — there was a lot of extra activity in Jacksonville because so many of the Atlanta flights were redirected there. Anyway, after awhile Holden asked me, “How much longer until we land?” I said, “We haven’t even taken off yet. We’re still on the ground.” He looked out the window and said, “Oh, fuck.” I couldn’t believe what I’d heard, so I said, “What did you say?”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Spell that.”
“F U C K.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“On a video game on bored.com”

Holy cow. I didn’t even know they were playing video games online. Adam even put parental controls on their computer, so somehow stuff is slipping through anyway. Ugh. Anyway, I explained to Holden how that was the mother of all bad words and he should never say it, and that’s the word the kid says in A Christmas Story when he is helping his dad change a tire and drops all the lug nuts in the snow. (“Oh fudge … only I didn’t say fudge.” — and then the mom calls the other kid’s mom and you hear the other kid getting a beating over the phone, and later poor Ralphie gets his mouth washed out with soap. The kids always want to know what the word really was, and I wouldn’t tell them. You should have seen Holden’s face yesterday when I finally revealed that he’d stumbled on the word.)

Then a few minutes later I noticed he was crying silently, and I asked him what he was crying about. He wailed “But I didn’t even know! And now when we get home you’ll tell Daddy and I’ll get in such big trouble and I didn’t even know!” Poor guy! He didn’t get in trouble … I just told him not to say it anymore.

I am SO GLAD to be back home! I’ll post some of the Trinidad photos on facebook later … it looks in photos like a paradise. We didn’t take pictures of the gross things, and beaches always photograph well. It will be somewhat misleading to the facebook crowd since it will look like a fantastic vacation, but I’m not going to say anything in public about how much it sucked. I don’t want to offend anyone, or look like a big complainer. I felt bad at first about not liking Trinidad, until I started thinking about all the places I’ve been that I truly loved and want to see again, and decided it wasn’t an attitude problem of mine. Some places just suck. But as I mentioned in my previous email, it really is a beautiful tropical paradise — too bad the people who live there grossified it. I can’t even figure out why they have. Trinidad is the wealthiest of the Caribbean islands, and has a whole lot of oil. They supply almost all their own energy, and gas for a car is only around $US 1.50 per gallon. So, poverty isn’t even much of an excuse, and they charge more (hotels, restaurants, etc.) than most other beach locations. They should have plenty of money for infrastructure, and I wasn’t even under the impression the individual people were poverty-stricken. (Aside from all the homeless alcoholics, that is.) Two of our taxi drivers, for instance, have spent a lot of time in the US. One guy had family in Orlando and comes to Florida frequently, and the other guy was a musician who toured the world with Tito Fuente for several years. That’s not something a poor person gets to do, and I’ve never run across even ONE taxi driver before who had been able to travel very much, much less two in one trip. So, I don’t understand why everything there is so dirty and disorganized. But oh well. I guess they are happy being the way they are, and I don’t have to go there if I don’t like it.

Now for the photos:

Shot of Port of Spain, capital of Trinidad, from our hotel room.

Kids taking a break during a walk through Port of Spain. It was hot!

Sign in our hotel in Port of Spain. What they didn’t exclude is music from late night parties.. but the joke’s on them, we snuck the kids in and can only hope that the guests below us suffered a little.

On the awful ferry ride.

Girls lost in thought on the back of the ferry from Trinidad to Tobago.

Menu – we like help filtering out what we can and can’t afford there. (Amounts are in $TT)

The rest of these shots are from the beach at Pigeon Point, on the western side of Tobago.

Ruin of an old British fort. The Islands are thick with them. Control of both Islands changed hands numerous times through the years, but more often than not, was a British possession. What fighting that took place was always against the French.

Holden waiting out the rain under a veranda. It being the Rainy Season there, it rained every day of our visit – not a bad thing – the skies would open up 3-5x per day for about 5 minutes each. Then the skies would immediately clear up and leave little evidence behind that it had ever rained at all. It was actually a blessing to help keep the heat down, but you did have to plan your day around the bursts and always keep one eye on the sky.

Old Land Rover that I’m eager for Jim to take home and get started on.

Ubiquitous goats tethered up all over the island with no apparent owners.

The house we rented on Tobago.

Around the island.

More private swimming pool fun.

Here is the painting I bought in Trinidad from a street artist, and also included in the photo is our worthless cat Millie. She’s so lazy that she literally only wakes up to eat and use the litter box. This is a very rare sighting of her with her eyes open.

Anyway, the painting depicts the annual goat and sheep races they hold on Tobago every year. For some reason most of the houses are on stilts like the one in the painting, and I’m not sure why. The houses were on the sides of mountains and not on flood plains, so we did a lot of speculating as to why they would build them that way, but there must be a practical reason that wasn’t obvious to an outsider. We need to buy stretchers for the canvas, and then get a frame.