Ed. Note - Ok, so I went to Trinidad almost a month ago, and I'm just now getting around to Day Two. You do realize that I have 3 month old twins right? Yeah - I'm a little busy. Now back to the blog entry.
Though I'm sure you've already perused Day One let's recap: I'm in Trinidad for the week on business. Day One, the travel day, was uneventful if olfactorily interesting.
Day Two begins at the unnatural hour of 7am. The sun seems to rise exceptionally early here. My room at the Courtyard By Marriott faces the road and there's a damn bird outside that didn't stop chirping all night. That didn't keep me up, but I was awake until around 2am and I did notice that the feathered jukebox was active up until bedtime. By the way - the Courtyard is relatively new. The rooms are nicely appointed and the place is very clean, if somewhat spartan. I was wholly unimpressed with the sleeping apparatus - it doesn't matter how sumptious the bedding is (it wasn't), if the mattress sucks (it did) then you are not going to sleep well. Wait, I should probably revise that statement. If you like sleeping on plywood covered with a thin layer of polyester and maybe a couple of centimeters of cotton - man, you have got to stay at this place! One last thing about the Courtyard - it has a really nice little garden behind it with a small pool. But it looks really nice. The flagstone courtyard at the Courtyard is really nice. Did I mention how really nice it is? Drat - one more "last thing". I found out that one really mustn't walk around Port of Spain at night. Multiple people told me this, and after a few cab rides around, I completely agree. Not that Port of Spain is unsafe... but, it's just really unsafe. Apparently the recent rise in the price of oil and natural gas products has created somewhat of a boom in the economy here, which invariably creates more disparity between the haves and have-nots. So you can assume the natural order of things has changed. Crime seems to be on the increase - so much so in fact that we were advised to not read the local paper. I did peruse one, and it seems all the "articles" are about kidnappings, rapes, torturing etc. Basically, the local papers seem to be more like tabloids. In fact, there was not a local paper to be had at the hotel - only photocopies of New York Times condensed articles. Oh well.
So, we trundled off to work, which was an interesting ride down from Port Of Spain to Chaugaunas, which is sort of middle-of-the-island on the west side. The countryside seems to be relatively sparse, and I have it on good authority that the main drag between these two areas hasn't changed in 30 years. And considering the recently-augmented economy, there are now more vehicles than ever on the woefully undercapable road system. All this makes for a rather unenjoyable foray into traffic which, considering the tropical locale, I find altogether out of place.
The place where we planned to conduct our business for the next few days was rather interesting. It seemed to be in the middle of a warehouse district, and by that I mean 3 warehouses next to the road and nothing else. There were a few mangy dogs wandering around the parking lot. There's a hot doubles stand just on the corner. You did see my post on that, right? I heard a tale from one of our clients here that they once said, "Give me TT$100 worth of hot doubles and aloo pies!" and walked away with 5 bags of spicey fried goodness. It apparently fed almost 12 people a breakfast and lunch. So, the building appears to be under renovation. It's a nondescript business building, perhaps 4 floors, and had various holes in the plaster where wiring was being run, or an elevator was being worked on (none of them worked). But the whole place had this air of... "meatball carpentry", to quote my father.
Dad spent some time volunteering with the local theater building sets. The framing skills needed to build the various facades and set pieces were best not referred to as skills. Perhaps "ability" is better suited to describe it - no, really it's not. Basically, when you're under a tight budget of say, nothing, and you have to reuse the wood from the last set, you tend to just "make it work". Corners are not cut - they are obliterated with all manner of tools and force. So perhaps it takes a few extra nails, since you bent a few going in. Big deal. Two inch gap in the "roof" of that fake cottage facade? Eh, who cares, right? Just paint it dark. So that's what I mean by meatball carpentry. And that's what this building seemed to exude. Consider: the central staircase featured absuredly low rises with very shallow treads, and no nosing. The bathrooms featured random exposed plumbing. The internal walls seems to be placed randomly. Who ever heard of a 12-sided room? Granted, the place was still under construction, but it felt like they cut as many corners as possible. The stairs, dare I mention again, were downright lethal. I saw at least two people trip on them. As I'm writing this, I feel compelled to illustrate more completely the picture of the stairs. So take me, with a size 11 shoe. A dress shoe usually has a little extra length for the hard sole, so we'll estimate that my shoe length is 12 inches. Who knows, maybe it's more, maybe it's less...I haven't been in the habit of measuring my shoe length lately. The depth of the step (called the tread) was about half the length of my shoe. The height of each step (called the rise) varied from 1 to 5 inches, and I'm serious about the 1". There was literally a 1" step. Really. So you either had to step using the balls of your feet or turn your feet sideways. Either way, you walked s-l-o-w-l-y - doubly-so if you're wearing heels (I wasn't). The one nice thing about the building was that the roof was a terrace with a windowed patio lunch room. So we ate Arabic, Indian and other imported cuisine while gazing over the ... well, really not much besides the 3 warehouses.
We were still close enough to the northern end of Trinidad such that we could always see the mountain range. And it's pretty. At the end of the day, riding north back to Port of Spain we could always see some interesting weather activity coming over and through the mountain peaks. I wish I'd had the camera on a few occasions, which reminds me. I usually make it a point to be in command of the rental vehicle whenever I travel for business. It lends a certain amount of freedom, and that, I like. I also don't trust other people behind the wheel, and riding with our business host was certainly no exception. She drove, talked, phoned, and carried on business conversations while driving. And she's admittedly a bad driver. Thanks for telling me that, by the way - it's just the thing to calm me down. Not that I was really stressed about it, but it was somewhat laughable watching the whole thing from the back seat and having my coworkers turn, wide-eyed, and stare from the front seat.
The plans for the evening are to patronize a local establishment called Solimar. The cuisine is a mixture of Trinidadian and international fare, and the menu is quite extensive. I opted for the Green Curry Shrimp, and man-o-man, was that ever good. My boss decided it was time to sample some rum, so we had, uh, a few. Let's just say that the following morning was not the easiest I've ever had. We cabbed it back to the hotel and had a few at the hotel bar. There are a few local brews: Caribe and Stag: A Man's Beer. Apparently women are not allowed to have this libation due to its...well...probably because of its decidedly masculine advertising tactics. I'll just leave it at that. And that's Day Two.
