There were no gaps in the verdure covering the slopes, not even on the vertical cliff faces. Vines hung down all around the rocks, covering them as if by a veil of green fibers. There were small beaches fringing the cliffs, and where areas were there were no beaches, the water had carved small caverns. It was very wild seeming, and tropical to boot. We could see, off in the distance, the mountains of Venezuela. All in all it was quite a spectacle. When we rounded the point into the bay, we saw what appeared to be an endless sea of white masts both in the water on moorings and docks, and out of the water on the hard. There was a place where large barges could be hauled out, and many more where a boat such as ours could be taken care of. There were just a couple of small problems: there were no open mooring buoys, and we needed to clear customs. We ran into an English couple with whom my family is acquainted, Peter and Wendy on Keesje II. They were flabbergasted that we had turned around and headed south, and were thrilled to see us again. We decided that it would be best to find the people that owned the buoys, so we pulled up to a dock to ask for some direction to the owner of the buoys.
This was where the real fun began… As we pulled up to the dock, a worker came outside to greet us. Phil hopped onto the dock to catch lines. Dad proceeded to interrogate the worker, “Can you tell us who owns these mooring balls out in the bay?” The response was a half-mumbled, half-stuttered, half-assed, incomprehensible statement. Dad asked for clarification several times before he finally was able to get a clear answer. We went to the customs dock, where dad cleared us in, Phil and I searched for the owner of the moorings, and Doug put on the sail covers. As we all did our duties, the Adamo was being scratched by an errant bolt sticking out of the fender, damaging the BRAND NEW paint job on the rub-rail. Dad was highly pissed about that, so he complained to the front desk. In the end, we stayed the night at the dock, without water or electricity, but we had full access to all of the hotel’s amenities (yes, a hotel owned the customs dock), including a pool, a gym, and washrooms. I never did get to use the gym… but Phil and I did use the pool and the washrooms, it was nice to bathe in fresh water again. After that we went out for a couple of beers with Peter and Wendy, then returned to the boat and ordered pizza. At UF, most of my sustenance consisted of pizza, but on the Adamo, I hadn’t eaten pizza in months.
The next day came bright and early. By 11:00 am we had to be moved to another dock, so dad gave me the job of finding dockage rates at all of the marinas in this bay, the rates for haul-outs, and a place to get some canvas work done. As Phil drove me around on the dinghy it rained without letup. We moved to a dock where the rate is $16 US, per day, with electricity and water included for free. When dad saw the rates, he told the crew to immediately mobilize; this was the place for us. We had to moor up to the dock stern-to, which was a ton of fun. Today was spent at the boat. We watched Forrest Gump, I put waterproofing on the canvas, and I worked for the first time since St. Croix. Dad went and got a rental car, and the plan was to go into town and get dinner. Before we left, though, the dock master told my dad that we could grab a couple of beers for ourselves on him because it was his birthday. I had half a beer left, so the two beers were for dad and Doug. The beer was in a cooler inside of a small office. Actually, it was a large shipping container that had a partition built into it. The room formed by this was the office/party room. Dad opened up the door and smoke came billowing out; do I detect the sweet smell? Dad grabbed two beers and jokingly told the guys in the jam packed room, “Hey, it smells nice in here.” They thought that it was funny; we all did. As we headed to the car, dad handed Doug the beer. I watched him as he took a sip; the expression on his face was priceless. I got the feeling as though it was not to his liking, because he gave the beer to me and said, “Here, you can have this. I don’t want it.”
When we got to town, we saw a fast food place called Wok and Roll. I told dad, who then immediately told us that tonight we were going to eat Chinese food. I can’t even remember the last time I had Chinese. The service was extraordinarily slow, or so it seemed since I was hungry. The meal I ordered, Mongolian beef, was spicy as hell; I was sweating and I could feel the heat in my ears. $164.00 for dinner, and I could only manage to eat half of it. Relax; it was TT dollars (Trinidad and Tobago’s currency). It really isn’t worth much; it’s like monopoly money and has and exchange rate of $6.00TT to $1.00US. Everything here is cheap, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still hungry, because I only had a chicken spring roll and half of the beef. Tough shit, I guess. Right now we are about to watch “Beavis and Butthead Do America” and relax; we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. Dad says that we are going to get up early and go explore the island. I love a good adventure.
Exploring is undoubtedly one of the best parts of island hopping, and one can get a much better feel for the island by straying off the beaten path and getting a bit lost. We began the day at 6:30 am, just after sunrise. We breakfasted on bacon and eggs; it was a hearty breakfast and we would doubtlessly need the energy for a day like this. For starters, our ride of choice was an old, beat to hell Nissan; a typical, small, piece of shit rental car. Before the trip even began, before we even got in the car, Doug said, “I would not be surprised if the bumper fell of while we were driving. This thing looks like crap.” Phil, the gypsy, was riding shotgun when we left. Before the day was over, we would all have our turn, but in the meantime it looked funny; the two big kids crammed in the back and the 14 year old in the front with dad. I still can’t get over the fact that most of the islands down here drive on the left side of the road, but even more bizarre is the fact that some of the cars have the driver’s side on the right.
So we set off, our goal being to find the road that runs along the north coast. The roads here, as we soon discovered, do not have adequate signage, and it is nearly impossible, unless you have lived here for a while, to know at any time exactly just where in the hell you are. Furthermore, as we also found out, the map that we were given with the rental car did not have the correct street names on it, further complicating matters of navigation. At one point, we turned off onto a small side-street, thinking that perhaps it led to where we wanted to go. Instead, we found a neighborhood of pastel-colored shanties with corrugated metal used in roofs and fences. The roads were fairly steep, and incredibly narrow. We passed by a group of people sitting outside of a shanty on the side of the road on the way up the hill, and they seemed surprised to see us, a group of white people with blonde hair and blue eyes. After reaching a dead end, having to go in reverse down a hill with a 50 degree slope, and go back the way we came, a member of that very group stopped us as we drove by. “What’s the word?” he asked. “We’re just driving around.” “Man, you don’t go drivin round in des holes. You jus can’t drive round here like dat. You jus go back da way ya came. Even if ya Phat, ya don’t come drivin tru des holes. Da niggas here is grimy. An ya don’t stop fa nobody here.” I came so close to just laughing at him. Who the hell did he think he was; he certainly didn’t scare me, because after a few days of not showering, I was feeling pretty “grimy” myself. He had an attitude, was full of shit, probably wanted to impress his buddies, and was definitely just trying to scare the white people. I’ve been in scarier places than that before. Dad just told him whatever and we continued our explorations.
We found what appeared to be a major road heading north to the coast, so we followed it a ways and discovered, after talking to a local, that it did not lead to the coast, but to a waterfall instead. The situation was a comedy of errors. In order to get there, however, we had to drive through a small creek. The bridge had collapsed, so now the road simply ran through the water. The bottom was rocky, and it was only a few inches deep, but we could all hear the car bottoming out as we drove. The path was not paved, and diverged into a flat, grassy road, and a sloped road made of large, loose rocks. We chose the grassy road, but found that it dead ended at a house; no waterfall today boys!
There was a concrete ditch by the side of the “road” for drainage, and as we backed of the driveway of the house, dad drove the right front wheel into it. It was almost the exact width of the wheel, and as he tried to get out of it, the back wheel also got stuck. Dad turned to the right and hit the gas, moving the front tire out of the rut, then hit the reverse, moving the back tire out as well. He was now straddling the trench, and before he had a chance to do anything else, we suddenly heard a loud “Psssssssssssssssst” and watched the front right side of the car lower. A sharp stump hidden in the knee high grass had cut though the wall of the tire. Shit. Now we had a problem. Dad decided that to prevent further damage to the car, it would be a good idea to put a stone in the trench to prop up the right front wheel as he backed up. As he backed over the rock, the wheel made it just fine. Unfortunately, the bumper didn’t. The bumper got caught on the stone and fell off but for a couple of screws on the far left side. The right side was now being dragged on the road. We scrambled to tell dad to stop the car, lest the bumper be removed entirely. When we informed dad that the bumper was dragging on the ground, he only replied by saying, “No f…ing way. You guys are shitting me right? Damn it!” He hopped out of the car, took a look at the bumper, and then pushed it back up into place. “Hmm, this isn’t the first time that this has happened to this car.” I don’t know how he could tell, but I believe him, this car was a piece of shit, and it was no surprise that something like this would happen.
While dad hooked up the bumper and replaced the flat, and after finding Phil’s sunglasses he had lost somewhere in the jungle brush, Phil and I walked up the steep gravel road in search of the waterfall. We didn’t reach it. We got tired of walking and turned around. We departed and were just about to cross the small brook when dad told me to wash off the flat tire that was now in the trunk. After rinsing the mud off of the tire, and securely replacing the tire, an SUV with large letters saying “POLICE” drove up. Two officers hopped out and immediately asked us to open our trunk. I suppose they thought we had a body in the trunk or something after seeing me close the trunk. We explained that we had just put a flat tire in the trunk, and after opening it and pushing on the tire to see that it was indeed flat, they asked to see Dad’s license and asked further questions.
Finally, they returned to their vehicle and went on their way; and I half expected them to shake us down for money.
We decided not to drive across this bridge, though there actually were tire tracks across it. Yes, those are tires filled with concrete acting as the pillars.
We spent the next thirty or so minutes driving in circles on and off the highway looking for the road that would take us to the north coast. We finally found it, but it had an altogether different name from that on the map. We followed the road into the mountains, and things began to get interesting. The road changed from asphalt to groomed concrete and became much narrower. The road also began to wind much more than earlier; the guardrail disappeared entirely. On top of this, the slope became dramatically increased, to the point where the car could just barely make it over the hills, and we could feel the transmission beginning to conch out; it was heating up to the point where we could feel the forward drive gear engaging by a jerking motion. We followed the road for quite a while, ascending into the mountains on what seemed like an insurmountable trail. We eventually reached a fork in the road, right in the middle of a samll town, and figured this would be a great place to go to the restroom, grab a Stag (local beer), and ask for directions. After doing all of these things, and after a few strange looks from the locals, we continued slowly on our way.
Driving on these hills was made only more interesting when we would encounter another car moving downhill, which usually occurred while turning a corner with a grade of 60 degrees. Just when I was beginning to think that we would forever be following the snakelike road, the car inched its way over the last turn and roared up onto the top of the mountain. Dad had to floor it to get over the hump. The car was barely moving until Dad turned of the A/C. The extra couple of horse power got us over the hill. Doug kept saying his Jeep would have been the perfect car for this ride. When we finally did reach the top, the view was incredible. There were sheer drop-offs on either side of the road, which followed the ridge on top of the mountains, and not a single guardrail in sight.
As we drove, we ran into another fork in the road. We decided to take the uphill route and discovered much to our chagrin, that it became a dead end. There was a grassy knoll here, with benches and a sign saying: Beach Trail – Length 8500 feet. 
We walked a ways down the trail, though not to the beach, and took some pictures. Phil saw some ants carrying leaves, and I explained that these were leafcutter ants. The ants carry the leaf bits to their nest, where they use them as a fertilizer. They cultivate a mold that grows on the rotting leaves, and it is this mold from which they draw their subsistence.
After the hike, we returned to the car and took the other side of the fork. It took us to the North Coast road, which was much more modern, less steep, and less winding. Finally, we had reached our road. We stopped at a rest stop and bought some foods from a vendor there. I didn’t like any of it. Fortunately, we did stop for lunch a bit further down the road.
After the hike, we returned to the car and took the other side of the fork. It took us to the North Coast road, which was much more modern, less steep, and less winding. Finally, we had reached our road. We stopped at a rest stop and bought some foods from a vendor there. I didn’t like any of it. Fortunately, we did stop for lunch a bit further down the road.
It was a small burger shack perched on a hill overlooking a postcard worthy beach packed with people and palm trees. Burgers cost $10 TT, which equals $1.67 US; damn, the exchange rate is good! After eating burgers and some of the local specialty “bake and shark”, Phil climbed the mango tree out front of the place. Then we headed back to the boat and called it a day.
Mom flew in yesterday, and boy was dad eager to get to the airport. On our way we looked for a gas station and found, after 20 minutes of fruitless searching, that there were surprisingly few on the main roads. When we finally did find one, we were greeted by a few surprises. First off, the car only held 7 or 8 gallons of gas; in fact, I’m surprised we didn’t run out the previous day. We asked the attendant to put in 7 gallons, and almost filled up the entire tank from 1/8 of a tank. In fact we had to ask him to stop. The bigger surprise came when we asked the attendant how much it would cost us: “That will be 36 dollars.” Dad asked, “US or TT?” The biggest surprise was the flat response, “TT dollars, of course.” Wow, that basically meant that gas here costs approximately $1.00 US per gallon. I suppose when one considers the fact that Trinidad is an oil producing nation, and is fairly close to Venezuela both in terms of geography and economy (i.e. lots of trade), it isn’t so shocking. But still… one dollar per gallon; when was the last time we had a price like that in the states?
