Trinidad / Tobago is very close to the eastern part of Venezuela & it can be reached by either ferry or plane. However the ferry only left on Wed returning the following Wed. But since that didn’t work into my schedule I decided to go to the island of Margarita in Venezuela and fly. The plane tkt wasn’t much difference than the ferry.
Wow when I got to Trinidad it was like another world cuz the people there are like so laid back! You could tell by the way they drove from the airport to Port of Spain the capital of Trinidad / Tobago. When I was taking the cab back to leave Trinidad the driver was driving about 60 Kmp on the highway to the airport which is 21 km from Port of Spain. So I was getting worried that I might be late for my flight. However in sync with the slow driving was the delayed flight!
I would say about 80% of the people are of African Black descendants! Then they probably have 15% of East Indian descent and the rest would be white! They are like into music, laughing and just hanging out with friends talking. They didn’t seem much different than the people in African in their character.
Trinidad/Tobago has about 1.3 million people of which 600,000 live in Port of Spain.
The currency is Trinidad / Tobagan dollar which they call TiTi and 6 TiTi’s equal $1 USD. I found that it was quite expensive in Trinidad / Tobago.But I managed to find a room in the Abernathy Hotel downtown for $167 TiTi’s or $27 USD. I consider this quite cheap for a hotel in downtown Port of Spain.Hey when I got there the country or at least Port of Spain was gearing up for Carnival starting in 2 weeks.
However the Pre Carnival atmosphere was already started. So everyday around noon there would be a free Soca concert in one of the parks! All the people working and others would assemble in the park for some real good entertainers. I went about 4 of the 6 days I was there and it was great to see!
It’s interesting to notice that all the African Blacks like the same music whether they’re 8 or 80! You never see that back home as the older adults would never be boogling to the same music as teenagers. But hey I’d see 80 year olds chucking and moving their bodies standing next to a 18 year old.
Yeah I’d say music is in their blood & boy can they move their bodies to the music! I’d say they got the beat!
I wandered around the city checking out the sights and the people. The Tinidadians and Tobagians speak English but when they talk to each other they can be hard to understand as they use a lot of slang! But after a couple of days I got to understand most of what they were saying! But what I found interesting was the different dreadlocks & headwear on the various people! I’d see old and young with these long dreadlocks! A lot of them would be wearing these high long knited hats over their dreadlocks!
I got a few stares cuz I guess they don’t see many people of Japanese descent at least who looked like me! But they do have Chinese who ran restaurants or stores & have the usual all business, unfriendly personalities like in Central & South America!
I took a ferry one day over to Tobago for the day as it’s a 2 ½ hr ride there. If I thought Trinidad was laidback well Tobago was like not moving at all!
Scarborough the main city on the island has about 6000 people and it is really slow moving! I took a taxi for about $ 2 TiTi’s to a beach and check out some sights. There seemed to be more tourists on Tobago than Trinidad! At least there were resorts where foreigners came and laid in the sun! But it wasn’t my style so didn’t hang around long.
There is a sort of big and little brother attitude between Trinidad and Tobago. But I found the people on both islands friendly and great to talk. In fact I got a big charge out of talking to them cuz of their mannerisms and words. I had this one girl telling me what sounded like “Moi foots gots bittens by mosquitoesies”. But a Trinidadian may say that’s not what she said! I got to know this Trinidadian guy and his girlfriend who were staying in the same hotel as me for 4 days. They were really nice people and we talked a lot. We both used our computers to access the wireless signal. They were doing business on the internet. They always had some great music going and we always ran out to get some take out in the evening. The funny thing is the big food there is KFC. I like chicken but it was getting to old after 2 days so I switched to Subway, instead!
But all in all I figure Trinidad and the people is one place I could live!
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