Leaving tobago
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2006
1
21
173
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Crown point, Trinidad and Tobago
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
spain to see the build up to christmas and check out the southern half
of the island. anyway, so i'm logging in to quickly tell you what i've
been up to in this tropical island of tobago whilst upload a few pics
to help you overcome the bordem that is my blog...
so
thinking way back to my first morning, i know i was feeling great for
once as i was to pussy to go out in the dark last night
and search for a beer..
so when i get out of the surfside hotel i
was staying at, when i turn left i can see the sea with alll the
different bles imaginable to my
right, it is like a magnet so i had to go down thewre and take a look,
along the shoreline is a couple of stalls selling the everyday
nick naks that the caribbean people like to sell.. beaded neclaces,
calabash engravings, coconut scupltures etc. anyway one hustling guy
calls
me over saying.."you know them camoflage shorts aren't allowed here" ..
i'm thinking i've heard this a hundred times before in
barbados but i carry on talking to the guy, who has stupidly put his
stall underneath a macchinal tree (see previous photo album).. anyway
the gist of it was, he liked my shorts and wanted me to give it to him..
i said noway, they're my favourite ones.. so he asks if i can send him
a pair when i get back to england.. i'd had enuf by then so walked on
along
a road that looked like it was going nowhere and i'd have to look like
an idiotic tourist and turn back from some shady dead-end..
luckily after a few minutes walking you get to some security barrier
with a friendly security guard who charges you 17tt for a plastic
wristband so that you can carry on to the pigeon point reserve area..
after another long walk just to get to the beach whilst looking up at
the
overhanging coconut trees, ready to dive out the way of an overhead
projectile, you get to the sandy beach and sea encircled by the bucoo
reef.. on one end theres a pier which is apparently the most
photographed
in trinidad and tobago, the other end the reef comes close to shore and
beyond that the sand turns craop, with debris all over it.. so i had a
few beers waiting for sunset then off i went in search of entertainment
for the night.. i found a beach bar called 'bagos'.. it has a mixed
crowd of tourists and locals and is run by an international and
interracial couple, the white guy looks a bit timid and the tobagian
girl reminds me of serena williams, i think theres no need to guess who
wears the trousers in that relationship... at the bar i
get talking to a few german people and speil the usual
talk about how long i've been here, why i'm here, where i'm from.. and
the question i find personal but everyone asks is how did you get the
money.. i'm definatly sick of that last one.. anyway after the german
lightweights went home due to too much beer i latched onto
a party of 3 french guys who just come from barbados after sailing for
3 months from france to cape verde then across the atlantic, i got on
well with them.. i played some terrible games of pool and
let my country down, drank a whole
lot of beers and
found myself in an empty club called 'the deep' which is
ment to be quite popular, but just not on tuesday nights..
on the way home we tried to get a shortcut across some hotels that we
thought were in the way of our route home, i scaled about 4 walls,
jumped a couple bushes and climbed a fence in front of a security gaurd
who took no notice of us probably coz we were just drunk, white
tourists..
next day i hit the store bay beach, and recounted last
nights route and walls and realised instead of walking along a straight
road, we jumped over walls of hotels and then back onto the same
straight road that we'd left.. at store bay you can get a pretty decent
trini much, i ried some green turdy looking stuff i believe was casava
(spelling?) along with the usual chicken, rice and some cornbread
stuff.. the next day i took a 2dollar bus to the capital
called scarborough.. you have to buy a ticket before you get on board,
i ask a trini girl what the deal was, so she was obviously some church
going good samaritan who took pity on me as she gave me an unused bus
ticket from the bottom of her pocket, the bus driver took it, ripped it
in half and gave me the bit which had a bit of bumfluff on it and i
hope an afro hair not a pubic hair stuck in the crease.. so scarborough
is tiny, mill hill broadway is about 4 times the size of it, i walked
uphill to the fort and relaxed abit, taking in the
interesting museum and read bout the sale of slaves, the slave names
they
were given and what health they were in.. in another
file about the slave laws imposed where
nearly every outcome
was death to a slave apart from if a slave knew that someone had
runaway he'd get some insane amount of lashings.. and then the last
manual
was about how the slaves revoted and killed the slavemasters and how
many ran away and escaped to trinidad to get freedom. so
after that because tobago is so small i was walking back to the bus
stop and i hear my name being called out.. it was the french guys in a
hired jeep, i jumped in over the back as the roof was down and we sped
off to some inland waterfalls.. the french guys were
going crazy at the wheel, maybe after 3 months of going 5mph at sea
they needed to get some adrenalin going.. inland tobago is like some
big hilly tropical forest with cut out bendy and winding roads that are
dotted with tiny hamlets.. a few times i thought we were gonna go over
the edge and luckily they was nothing coming round the blind corners
they were hurtling round.. what got me was jaques stood up through the
roof, shouting down rally comands in french to avoid the potholes and
stray dogs..
i got home safely, showered and was walking down to the
meet up point at bago's beach bar when halfway there the bars lights
turned off to close for the night, after checking the empty bar for
them i walked to the pub next to my hotel for a beer
where i met a hustler
called Irwin.. he's an old bearded trampy
looking tobagian with a dodgy eye, i got chatting to him but he was
soon asking me for money, cigarettes and beer so i left him to it on
the bench alone and retired
to bed..
next day i thought i'd try
something different than sleeping and swimming at the beach.. so i
rented a sea kayak off a beach bum called Clint, he
was cool and was trying to educating me on socialist politics then he
wanted me to help him in his capitalist venture of importing some
clarks shoes that he said he'd be able to sell no worries and we can
split the profits.. i managed to convince him that i couldn't be
bothered to go through with his idea and then paid him his 40tt and set
out to sandy point on my kayak.. i got to this desolate beach that is
right under the flight path to the airport no worries, relaxed, sat
back and video'd the tobago express coming in to land.. i turned round
to paddle back and the muscles in my legs siezed up.. it took ten
minutes to get there but a hard slog of pain for half an hour to get
back ashore where i rewarded myself with a water and a carib beer..
that night i met up with alex from germany and the 3 french guys to do
some pub crawling around crown point.. whilst liming at a small rum
bar, the french guy, peter, ran into the hustler Irwin that i'd met
yesterday.. Irwin called me over for a 'fisted respect touch' and i
went back to peters mates and told them that he's a hustler and they
didn't care.. as Irwin i went to talk to peter, and i told him he's a
hustler.. but peters already lent him 40tt because he thought i knew
irwin.. obviously suckered in when he saw irwin 'respect' me.. laughing
it off down the street we hitchhiked to a nice bar called 'bamboo
cafe'.. i think they had a problem with mozzies as there are those blue
elctric bug killers permanently smoking with fly carcases, green rings
of repellent lit and the waitress brings us a bottle of mozzie spray
along with our cocktails.
On the sunday, tobago has the 'Sunday school' which has nothing to do
with
church but is a big street party in a small village at Bucoo.. Now the
french had left i was left to venture there alone..i went to my local
'bago's bar' and limed around scouting for a lift to the party..
here i managed to get a drunk guy from chaguanas in trinidad called
"fiji" to give me a lift.. it was quite a bargain he bought me a stag
beer at the bar, a stag beer on the way and gave me cigarettes.. the
guy was crazy.. when he would talk to me he would go into some
pyschotic laugh and kept on saying. "we trinis are crazy, i'm a
trinidangerman".. throughout the ten minute journey i was thinking
either we are gonna die in a head on collision due to his drunken state
or i've just got into a car of a gang leader and he has got a willing
passenger ready for a kidnapping or just a jacking.. so in some miracle
i arrive alive, and quickly leave his sight and again coz tobago's so
small i run into Alex the german, we get some caribbean munch, sat
drinking at hendrixs' bar chatting about his experiences on LSD and then left to get a
taxi home.. apparently we were told by many people along the strip at
Bucoo that you will never get a taxi cheaper than 90tt back to crown
point.. so we walk up the road, away from the crowds, hail a taxi and
Alex gives goes to chat to him with all our 1tt notes that add up to
35tt in total and manage to persuade him to get us back, i think he
done it coz the the bundle of 35tt in 1tt denominations looked quite
hefty.. throughout the journey Alex was chatting shit to the driver all
the way in his german accent and was making me laugh all the way home,
i think the driver may have been drinking to but instead off the 80mph
that Fiji had reached on the way there, our driver now was poodling
along at about 20mph, it's strange to think it's quite acceptable to
drink and drive here just because it's not illegal, i know in London
the police are all geared up at christmas to stop it, but here i think
they might lack the resources..
The next morning i went to hire a jeep for my last 2 days, on the way
there
i stopped off at 'Pizza boys' to get a panini sandwich, i was the only
person in the shop, i counted 4 employees pretending to look busy, i
had eye contact with everyone of them but they didn't want to know,
after 10 minutes of waiting patiantly, my belly was now caving in so i
just turned my back to go and search for something quick, i got to the
pizza boys down the road but all their panini food was frozen so i had
to settle for some fried chicken for breakfast..
when signing
out my jeep from a girl called Crystal who works for the rental firm
[insert rental firm name], she seemed quite strict reminding me off the
reports of how the american imigration offices are nowadays, she asked
me if any tobagoan was going to drive the vehicle, i replied 'no', she
said 'are you sure?' 'yes' i said.. then still not believing me she
went on asking me if i know anyone on the island that might want to
drive the jeep.. she wanted to know everything and warn me on
everything.. when i got outside i innocently asked how to take the roof
down on the convertible jeep, i instantly got back a "why d'ya wanna
get all dat sun!" i tried to find a witty reply but was a bit
scared on what sort of comeback she'd have..
Anyway to cut this long entry short the next two days i sped around the
island seeing all the beaches, bays, towns and watefalls on
offer, i picked up hitchhikers including some dreadlocked guy with a
rusty saw in his hand i also passed by 3 little kids who had a heavy
sack of rice their mum had sent them out to get and felt a little
guilty speeding passed them as a lot of the roads are quite remote and
the next car might not stop either.. so i'd say argyle falls,
englishmans bay and pigeon point were my favourits stops around the
island..
Getting the tobago express back got me a little bit pissed off, when i
bought the ticket the guy made out that if he makes the ticket 'open'
meaning i can get on it anytime it would be better, whilst in the queue
i realised that people behind me were getting shuffled to the front of
the queue as they'd had the time printed on there receipt, so basically
my ticket ment bloody "stand-by", so next time i'll make the guy get me
on the next flight available with the time written on my ticket..
anyway i arrived safely in Port of Spain and felt at home driving back
down the rosevelt-churchil highway back to Downtown..
