What I did on my Winter Vacation

(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up a full screen version of the image.)

Saturday, March 16

It rained heavily overnight. The cottage may be a little rickety, but at least it doesn't leak.

Today, we took a trip to the capital city, Scarborough. It has a mall. It has a KFC. It has several traffic lights. It used to have the only cinema on the island, but that closed down. It has no parking.

Knowing this last fact, we parked by the Botanic Gardens and walked through it into the downtown area.

Botanic Gardens in Scarborough

Tobago is not in the world of 24-7. Most stores in mall closed, along with most other commercial institutions, but sidewalk stalls & some restaurants were open. I bought a pair of shorts from a sidewalk stall. I should have bargained. I don't know how. They were still cheap. We had some nondescript Chinese food downtown, and went home. Our big day in the big city.

On the way home we stopped at a roadside overlook just outside of Speyside, the town just before Charlotteville. It was a lovely peaceful place with a view of King's Bay.

We then went down to King's Bay for a swim. Very calm water, and shallow for a long way out. The sand had a peculiar silky smooth extremely fine texture, almost like clay, except not icky.

That evening, the bar next door had their big Saturday night blowout with live band & barbeque. Jenny and I had our big Saturday night Scrabble game. Oh, sometimes the excitement gets too much for me.

Sunday, March 17

The music went on last night until 2:30. The band quit at 1:00, but they went on with recorded stuff (1,5,1,5,1....) With some trepedation, I finally got up, put on some clothes, and asked them to take the volume down. They did, but not so's I could notice on the spot. I guess my ears had hit their compression limit. But when I got back home, it was not so intrusive. And they finally quit about 15 minutes later.

In the morning, I walked Jenny to the Methodist Church for services. I poked my head in, but did not stay for service. I hung about and read a book outside, listening to the singing, which was enthusiastic, and pretty good. Uptempo Gospel stuff with keyboard, electric guitar, and drums, led by a female choir and a singing female leader of services and male pastor. 3 1/2 hour service. You get your money's worth at church out here.

Before the service started, I spoke to Kenneth, an elderly member of the church who was interested in what I was reading. I showed him my library copy of "Roosevelt's Secret War, FDR And WW II Espionage." He told me he was an ex-member of the government, had preached in America, and was writing a book on Churchill himself. He asked me if he could have the book when I was done with it, and where he could find other source material. I apologized that it was a library book which I was obliged to return, but he should visit us some evening when Jenny the Librarian might be able to help him. I told him to speak with Jenny after services, as I did not expect to be there at the end. She would be easy to spot: the only white woman in the place. He chose to have a note passed to her. Jenny, not knowing that he had spoken to me beforehand, was suspicious of a note from a stranger, and did not respond. An unfortunate miscommunication.

Meanwhile, I walked back to the cottage, but stopped off for lunch at a local food stall. There I met Ivan Grekov. Ivan was a gregarious gypsy, a nautical vagabond sailing the world on his boat, making a good living writing and implementing navigational software. He is of Greek and Norwegian parentage, born I forgot where, and raised in Bulgaria. He speaks 20 languages, has been all around the world, and found himself in this little corner of the world at this particular juncture. He invited us to join him and a bunch of other sailing people for dinner at a local restaurant that evening, and we did.

This was a fascinating bunch of people! Marsha & "Bananas" were a couple that made their home in Woodstock, NY, except Bananas would take off a couple of months of the year to run charters on his boat, while Marsha has a business as a hand crafter of scarves. Eric, Ute, and their 7-year old daughter Julia from Germany been sailing around the world for 3 years. Australian Phillip & Canadian wife Di. Ships passing in the night happend to converge in this backwater port on this particular day in March. They may not see each other again for years, but will keep in touch by e-mail. What a different sort of life. Fascinating, but not, I think, for me. We were invited to sail with Bananas on Tuesday.

Tomorrow we made plans for snorkelling at Pirate's Bay.

Monday, March 18

Today it rained all day. So much for Pirates bay.

Nothing of note happened today except that I made my first ever 7-letter word in Scrabble.

"WARNING" vertically on the right. 84 points