Lorne-to-be-wild

Three things I have never done: Take a vacation with my son (Luke), take a vacation (without an excuse of traveling to a conference or business meeting) during the school year (since becoming a college professor), take a vacation in (or even go to) the Caribbean. I managed to kill all three of those birds with one stone this past weekend.

Luke and I set off early last Thursday morning (5 AM) for a long day of travel, arriving at Piarco International Airport on Trinidad at about 10:30 PM via a change of planes in Miami. By the time we arrived at our hotel (more like a B & B – Forty Winks is in a small inner suburb of Port of Spain called Newtown, is very central to a lot of interesting locations and restaurants and is run by a very nice, helpful and kind proprietor, Pam, and her small staff) in our rented car it was near midnight. We debated whether to rent a car. First of all, public transport is very cheap on Trinidad. Second, they drive on the left side of the road – English style. Third, we were not sure of the parking situation at the hotel. We checked and found that parking was not a problem, which eliminated concern #3. As for #1, it was going to cost about $80 for a taxi to and from the airport to the hotel, and we thought that we could add a lot of convenience to our travels with our own car. We decided we could deal with #2 (which we did quite well save for tending to edge too close to the left hand side of the street, and since sometimes the roads are narrowed by parked cars and other times they end abruptly on the left, that made for some hair-raising moments). We also debated whether to go to Tobago, the other main island of Trinidad and Tobago, but decided it was too much of a hassle even though it entails just a short and reasonably-priced return flight.

For such a small country (although it is quite populated – over 1.3 million people), Trinidad and Tobago has a lot going for it. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the country is its music: calypso, soca, pan, and parang are all versions of music that are Trinibagian, and the steel drum instrument (the pan) was invented by the Trinbagians. There are competitions among various musical groups from all over the country, with the stiffest being among the steel bands, who maintain their own panyards. Trinidad and Tobago has one of the most amazing Carnival celebrations in the world. The main element of the celebration is the parade and it is composed of members of mas camps, which create themes for each Carnival including elaborate costumes. Like the panyards, the mas camps are located around, but mainly in Port of Spain (the capital).

Trinidad and Tobago also boast some tasty foods with the most earthy being the roti (a stew either wrapped in a paratha – Indian flat bread – or served separately with pieces of paratha and named bus-up-shut because the pieces look like a torn shirt) and the “bake and shark” a fishburger, per se, although the bake is much more than a hamburger bun and the fish is shark (but sometimes cod). Bake and shark is a meal featured at the beaches.

One thing we did not know when we planned the trip is that Friday, the first full day we were there, was a national holiday to mark the end of the Hindu Diwali festival. Forty percent of Trinbagians are of Indian descent (and another forty percent are of African descent), so the Hindu traditions are well-recognized just like the Christian traditions of Carnival and Christmas. Diwali featured a long weekend, which meant that many shops and restaurants were closed for most of our stay. But, that made traffic less of a problem for us.

Some interesting things we did included making visits to two beautiful beaches: Manzanilla on the southeast coast and Maracas Bay on the north coast; climbing (by car we admit) up to Fort George, which produced incredible views of Port of Spain and its suburbs; viewing Caroni Bird Sanctuary, which features the incredibly stunning Scarlett Ibis, the country’s national bird; and driving around much of the island and seeing a few interesting sites perhaps the most notable being the Lion’s House in Chaguanas (which is where Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul grew up and is the setting for his great novel “A House for Mr. Biswas”). We also visited the national cricket stadium (Queen’s Park Oval), the main soccer and track stadium (Hasely Crawford Stadium), and saw some parang and soca entertainers.

The economy in Trinidad and Tobago is boosted by the fact that the country has oil and thus making it the richest of the Caribbean countries. It was easy to see that the economy is going strong. There was a significant amount of new construction taking place, especially in and around Port of Spain. I was surprised at how expensive it was to eat in a sit-down restaurant, especially in relation to average incomes; the price of a meal was no different than it would be in the USA.

I highly recommend Trinidad and Tobago as a place to visit. November is one of the rainiest months there, but also a time when air fares are low. We got a little rain, but the temperatures were mild day and night, although it was a bit humid at times. I uploaded some pictures from our trip for your viewing (pleasure).

I had the opportunity to travel to India (specifically Bangalore – its official name is Bengaluru – in the State of Karnataka in the south of the country), and while the time I would be able to spend there was short, I felt compelled to make my first visit to that somewhat mysterious country. My traveling companion was my colleague, Terry Ryan. We had a one-day business meeting, and had time to be tourists for two days. Terry did not bring his camera since I “always” bring mine, but unfortunately, mine conked out before we arrived. Our friend, Ravi, brought his camera one day, so we did get some pictures (a sample of which I posted via Picasa).

Spending three days in a place that takes a day to travel to is a major challenge. Internal clocks get out-of-whack quickly what with a 12.5-hour time change (when its 8 AM here, it is 8:30 PM in Bangalore), and just when one starts to adjust that clock, it gets thrown out-of-whack again. Combine those perturbations with having to sit on an airplane for literally two days, and you can see that this was not an easy trip in terms of its effects on my body, especially for a person like me, who tends to exercise almost every day. In Bangalore, there was little opportunity to do more than sit in a car, visit a restaurant or tourist site, and get right back in the car for the next item on the itinerary. I’m still fighting the effects of the double jet lag.

You can read about the “technical” details of the Bangalore and Mysore (a smaller city to the south, which we also visited), so I will not bore you with those items here. I recommend starting your reading with the articles about these two cities in WikiTravel. Instead, I will provide some observations about what I saw.>

First was the fact that while Bangalore is about the same size as Hong Kong in terms of population, it is spectacularly low-rise by comparison. Perhaps I didn’t see enough of the city to make a fair comparison, but I noticed only a few tall buildings. These seemed to be very new and geared toward the wealthy.

Second were the traffic patterns. As far as I could tell, drivers do not think about “lanes of traffic”. Instead, they think about the road as a conduit, so the traffic jams seem to be caused by everyone trying to vie for limited space when a road narrows rather than only sheer volume (although there is lots of that). Moreover, since there are multiple modes of transport from buses to trucks to vans to cars to auto-rickshaws (three-wheeler taxis) to motorbikes to the odd animal-drawn cart, and these travel at different speeds (the cars and vans are faster than the trucks and busses which are faster than the auto-rickshaws and motorbikes), the pecking order is that the faster vehicles try to get past the slower ones, but the slower ones don’t really want to give up their ability to get through the conduit. This leads to lots of honking of horns and chaotic bunching of vehicles. Another thing that happens is that vehicles do not pass through uncontrolled intersections in an orderly manner. Drivers make the assumption that they have the right-of-way through the intersection, and the only reason they will slow down or stop is if the vehicle coming along at the same time is bigger. So a motorbike will come to an abrupt stop as an auto-rickshaw enters an intersection in a perpendicular direction, and an auto-rickshaw will stop for a car, and so forth. Moreover, all vehicles tend to just pull out of drives without hesitation.

Third was the disparity not only between the ways that people live, but also the way in which the public infrastructure is not synchronized. The first disparity is pretty easy to explain and is well-known about India: people who are living from hand to mouth are scattered among those living at a middle or upper class standard. In Bangalore, which is probably the most prosperous city in India, it seemed like there were a good number of people living at a reasonably decent standard, and fewer who seemed to be living in somewhat dire circumstances. The other disparity is that there is no consistent melding of infrastructure. That is, while there are a lot of paved roads and some sidewalks, most roads are not necessarily framed by sidewalks – so there is a strip of dirt between many roadways and the buildings that line them. And, since they get a lot of rain in Bangalore, this strip is often muddy. Or even if the strip had been paved at one time, it is not maintained so that the curbs and sidewalks seem to be crumbling away. Of course, both of these disparities are noticeable in other developing countries that I have visited.

Fourth was the women’s clothing. It is colorful and bright and almost always women wear traditional dress — saris. Men dress rather simply; for most part they wear a shirt and a pair of pants. Terry and I were invited to attend a wedding. The level of dress was even more spectacular among the women and more formal for the men.

Fifth was the food. South Indian food features mainly vegetarian dishes, which was perfect for both Terry (a complete vegetarian) and me (a 95% complete vegetarian). Clearly we did not get to sample the full range of dishes available, and mainly ate the more snack-oriented/breakfast dishes such as dosas, sambars and idlis along with tasty chutneys, all typically served on and in stainless steel dishes. We only drank bottled water and no liquor. Most of the chutneys were somewhat spicy, but Karnataka spicing is supposedly not quite as hot as in the food of other South Indian states.

Finally there is the fact that cows essentially roam around at will. There are not a great number of these large animals around, but there is one along nearly every street. Typically, they just lie along the side of a road, and sometimes they graze from heaps of old flowers or grass, and sometimes they wander into the street. I did not see anyone hassling any cow. Oh, and there are lots of stray dogs visible all over the cityscape. I guess there are lots of cats and monkeys, too, but I saw no monkeys and only one cat. However, Ravi told us that monkeys sometimes come into his kitchen looking for food.