What I did on my Winter Vacation

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Sunday, March 10

We were sitting around after breakfast on Sunday, figuring what to do for the day when Jenny ran into Gerard Ramsarak. He is the proprietor of Pax. He is a small wiry energetic man of Indian (that's Asian Indian, not West Indian) descent, and quite the entrepreneur. It was his vision that gave Pax its character, and his drive that directed its operation to so please its guests. He told us that he was constructing another guest house on the other side of Trinidad, and invited us to go see it. That appealed to us. So we piled into his car, and in convoy with two other vehicles, set out across the island.

The drive revealed something of the general state of the economy of Trinidad. When one drives through the US, one sees some blighted areas, but mostly landscape that is well kept and tidy, if not luxurious. In Trinidad, virtually every area showing signs of human habitation also showed signs of lack of upkeep: Haphazardly repaired buildings, abandoned vehicles, uncollected trash, etc. My impression was that for the most part, people were too concerned with maintaining an existence from day to day to be bothered with keeping up appearances.

We reached the eastern edge of the island, and turned north to follow the coastline around to the rugged North Coast. It is a beautiful area with dramatic coves and cliffs to the sea. If you could ignore the temperature and the occasional palm tree, you could think you were in Scotland. This area was the site of a couple of luxury developments to try to attract a tourist industry, and Gerry's was one such.

Gerry is an architect by training, and he had envisioned a most beautiful guest house overlooking the sea. It was designed in a 19th century tropical style with balconies and balustrades, columns, high ceilings, and elegant tall doors and windows. There was a Romanesque bath house by a pool, and wrought iron work on the windows. The construction, however, was modern, with ceramic tile flooring and contemporary frame structure. The guest rooms were all of different sizes and shapes, and there was one really spiffy penthouse suite, accessed by a spiral staircase, with two rooms and an outdoor patio. The furnishings were all restored early 20th Century bedsteads and desks and dressers.

The work, however, had been bedeviled by shoddy construction. The structure was complete, but interior and finishing work was not, and much of it was being demolished and redone to correctimproper work. The ironwork had not been primed before painting, and was rusting. Floors were not level, and the cement had to be broken up and relaid. The ground was settling under the patio and outside retaining walls and staircases, resulting in cracks in the newly set cement. There was major settling under the bath house foundation, with the result that it looked more like a ruin in Pompeii than a 6-month old structure.

We spent some time exploring the place while Gerry consulted with contractors and suppliers about interior trim for the place, and then headed back. On the drive home, Gerry's cell phone rang. It was obvious from our end of the conversation that he was speaking to someone on the same road as we were and headed towards us. Shortly and SUV appeared over a hill, and Gerry waved hello, stopped the car, and got out to talk with the occupants of the SUV. After a couple of minutes, he came back to the car, started off, and offhandedly remarked that the person in the other vehicle was the President's daughter. This was someone with whom he had apparently had dealings before her father took office. Her father was to preside at the opening of the new guest house when it was finished.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

At dinner, we found ourselves seated next to a foursome visiting from England. One of them, Jan Bayliss, it turns out is part of a folk duo performing in her country called Eos. Gerry dug out his guitar, and Jan, Jenny, and I swapped some music for an hour or so after dinner until it got too late to be noisy.

Monday, March 11

Today we resolved to complete the hike we started Saturday when we went to the fire tower. The tower was about the 1/3 point of a loop that went along a ridge, and down through some rain forest back to the monastery. However, this time we figured to make the trek the other way around, doing the long gentle uphill climb to the fire tower, and the short steep descent home. Well, it turned out that the uphill section was longer than it was gentle. It was indeed beautiful, starting out along a stream with some disused waterwork equipment rusting in the jungle like some scene from the computer game Myst.

The trail crossed the stream on a stone bridge, and then switchbacked up the side of the mountain on the far bank. As it wound relentlessly uphill, there was some relief from the heat and humidity, but I still found my heart pounding with the unaccustomed exercise. We finally reached the top of the ridge, and picked our way along rough terrain. The trail got progressively more overgrown and less distinct, and there was still no sign of the fire tower, which would have signaled our return to familiar territory. Eventually, some 3 1/2 hours into the trip, the trail petered out into half a dozen branches that might or might not have been trail, or maybe just bare spots in the vegetation. By this time, I was seriously exhausted. Other than a solitary hiker around the stone bridge, we had seen absolutely no one on the trail. I was starting to worry for our well-being, and convinced Jenny that we should return the way we came, rather than trying to find our way around the loop to the fire tower.

Downhill was easier, but it put strain on yet another set of unprepared muscles. About 2/3 of the way back we noticed a branching trail to the right, one we had eschewed on the trip up. 15 minutes further on, when the landscape changed from rainforest to conifers, Jenny remembered seeing that on the crude trail map we carried. A quick comparison between the surroundings and the map showed us our error. The branching trail had been the one to the fire tower. We had gone several hard miles to a dead end. At this point, I was not going to turn around and head back uphill to the branch to complete the loop, so we continued back the way we came.

After 5 hours of strenuous walking, I had really overextended myself. Returning to the starting point, I was never so glad to feel pavement beneath my feet again. I collapsed in the gift shop of the monastery and indulged in a truly delicious pineapple juice drink. Did the last leg back and hit the rack. I knew I was going to feel the results of that hike for a few days. I am definitely out of shape.

At dinner that evening we fell into conversation with Sheila, one of the few Trinidadians staying at Pax. She was a soft-spoken erudite woman of 75 years, who had traveled all around the world, and a delight to talk to.

About 9:30 I got the unexpected message that there was a phone call for me. It was my friend Mark (our driver to the airport in the US), calling to inform me that my house had blown down. What actually happened was that a severe windstorm the day before had blown down a tree along my driveway, which fell on the power lines to my house. This ripped some siding off my house where the wires were fastened, and power, phone, and cable lines were lying on the ground. My neighbor Teddy had kindly climbed up to fasten a tarp over the hole and called the utility companies. The power company came and reattached the electric line, but phone and cable would have to wait until I could get home and place the order myself. (The 800 numbers for those utilities were not valid from outside the US.)