I'm in Tobago now, sitting above Fort King George. I came here on my own with the plan of camping on the beach. The fast ferry was sold out, so I got the 6 hour cargo ferry with all the other stragglers, and it was a great ride. I met a guy my age named Alexis, who was a pannist (steel drum player) and was going to Tobago for a gig on Saturday, and also because things in Trinidad were getting too hot. Somebody tried to kidnap his friend and ex-boss right after he quit, and now his boss thinks he had something to do with it, even though he quit because during Carnival season he was practicing pan till four in the morning every day and missed work a few times, and thought he'd be fired anyway. Plus he's getting paid more now.
Being on a really large boat four stories above the ocean moving at 20 knots and subject only to the averaging out of the dozen waves the boat straddles at any given time (or some invisible wave of a much longer wavelength, I'm not sure which) is so refreshing. I have a ticket for the fast ferry, but I think I'll take the slow ferry back and get a cabin to sleep in ($6 more than the fast ferry). Wonderful. This ferry also had a previous life in Europe; this time the text was in Italian, English, and Spanish. So maybe it was the ferry across the Mediterranean from Italy (Sardegna, Livorno, Genoa?) to Barcelona. That's got to be an awesome ride. There's something so olde-style and elegant about traveling by ferry, even (or especially) if the boat is really 80s. It's also awesome in that it's usually a cheap luxury... that is, cheaper than the normal way: flying. Maybe on my way back to the states I'll get to take the ferry from Venezuela to Trinidad. I think there's a ferry from Martha's Vinyard or Nantucket to Long Island. It would be awesome to travel from Boston to Long Island by boat. Gotta do that someday.
Anyway, I came to camp on the beach and that's what I did. It was dark, so I had to sort of ask around about a good beach, but I found one that seemed really chill with lots of shade trees right against the water, with just enough room for my tent. It was the first time I'd used my #1 tent (thanks Hilary for bringing it to me!) in a long time, and whenever I use it I think of me and Trish traveling in Spain and Portugal. The tent is a pleasure to use. The polls practically snap together by themselves. None of the fumbling of pushing tent poles through those little slots, with the aluminum linking pieces getting caught. And even if this tent did use slots (it doesn't; it uses awesome fabric hooks that snap on and off like a dream) then it wouldn't be a problem because the polls are single pieces of shaped aluminum and perfectly smooth once slotted together, not a length of shitty fiber glass with little aluminum collars that stick out and get caught on things, yuck. Plus my tent is tiny enough to fit inside my Invicta and take up only about 1/3 of the space. This morning when I folded it up it was even smaller. Mmmm mmm! I love this tent.
It's also a bad-ass military green color that's really low profile and looks really awesome when you walk back to it.
I didn't sleep great, the way I rarely sleep great when camping in an unauthorized spot for the first time, but it was okay. The sound of the water lapping just off my right shoulder muffled the funny nighttime sounds that always make you jump when camping on the dl. The shade let me sleep pretty late into the morning, and of course everything was perfect when I woke up. I was wedged between a thin stretch of beach with palms reaching out over it running down and around out of sight to my right and a wonderfully maintained national park with nice mowed grass, shrubs and lots of stately palms. To my left there were a bunch of dive boats floating and waiting for their probably very un-rushed proprietors to show up. I took a little swim and left my bag in my tent to walk down the beach. Coming to Tobago and camping on a beach was a great idea.
For some reason everybody said the best food out that way was at the airport, so I went there and it was really good. I read Ana Karenina as I ate, and got to the best sentence in the book, "It all happened at the same time: a boy ran towards a dove and glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out."
You need to read a good part of the book before that point to fully appreciate it, but the short answer is it's about how what's happening to your brain when you're in love feels as you see everyday sights.
Anyway, my time in Tobago has been a culinary tour, wishing I could eat lunch two or three times. Last night I had a hot pink beetroot milkshake with granola in it. Bits of granola flew up the straw, but there was a big pile of it at the bottom, soaked in pink milkshake goop to chomp down at the end. Today (at the airport) I had a plate of rice, beans, macaroni, and BBQ fish for lunch, which was excellent. Before that I had this hard sweet burnt sesame balls called "bene balls" and drank a coconut. After I had a "corn pone" which was a spiced baked good that tasted like pumpkin bread. And I got a rock cake, which was just 28 cents of little tasty bun. And a fruit punch too. And for dinner I'll probably get a chana roti, maybe with tvp too, and more milkshake if the guy is back there.
It was also a mini-mall tour. Trinidad and Tobago are really big on minimalls, and what minimalls they have! I realized with dismay that I probably missed tons of awesome minimall action in my big walk around Port of Spain because it was Sunday and they were closed.
Right now I'm at Fort King George, which is way up on a hill over the town and the ocean, is an old fort, and is maintained in this really English way with beautiful flowering trees and bushes and short cropped grass and a few big ancient shade trees. Birds are making all kinds of awesome music and darting about. Plus I'm in the shade, and about to read some more Ana Karenina.
Signing off from one of the chillest places on earth....
