Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The glories of Trinidad

Started out this morning at 7 AM after finally getting to my hotel around 1:30. The wakening time wasn’t my choice, it was brought about by hammering and sawing noises from the floor below. Turns out I was the ONLY person staying at that hotel last night. I should have expected something like that when my cab driver and I had to bang on the gate and honk the horn for 5 minutes to wake up the guard to let me in when we arrived in the wee small hours. This hotel is a conference center hotel up in the mountains about 45 minutes and 70 USd from the airport.

This morning it took running the water about 10 minutes to get it warm enough to take a shower. Probably a good sign that there weren’t many people staying at this place. But in my stupor I was clueless. It finally became apparent when I got to the dining room and no one else was there. The yet-untouched buffet breakfast turned out to be cold scrambled eggs and cold bacon, but the coffee & toast were good.

On the way back up to my room, the elevator suddenly stopped between the 2nd and 3rd floors. I rang the alarm bell and yelled for help for 15 minutes before anyone bothered to check on my disturbances. A guy came and finally pried the doors open from the floor below. I had to slide down and out into his arms as he helped lower me to the 2nd floor. That was probably more of a workout than he was expecting.

Back in my room I emailed Anne & Christine to check if they were able to send off my cell phone to Grenada by Fedex, and to bring them up to speed on my whereabouts and tribulations. I included a plea to get me the hell out of here.

The hotel called a local cab to take me to the airport. It turned out Cynthia-who-likes-to-sing, as I called her was a fun driver. She told me there are a couple hotels right near the airport where I could have stayed, but the booking service “likes to send unsuspecting rich Americans like me” to the hotel where I was. She’s pretty sure there’s some sort of family connection or nefarious goings on there. But she’s happy cause she gets cab business from the hotel since she lives near it. The return trip took almost an hour since you understand, unlike my trip to the hotel at 1 AM, there was now traffic to contend with.

So when I get to the airport at 11 AM I find out there is only one flight to Grenada & that’s at 9 PM, assuming we don’t have a hurricane come through beforehand. SOOoo I check in and resign myself to sit out the 10 hours, only to discover that there is not one, mind you, NOT ONE bookshop in the whole dammed terminal. I’ve already read the two books I bought yesterday at the Raleigh airport, so now the only thing I get to do is to use the one working tool I have, my laptop, to share and torture y’all.

The dammed terminal is freezing! So much so that I have to don a long sleeved shirt and long pants to stay warm. I finally get a reply email from Anne telling me she’s tried to ship my cell phone to Grenada by Fedex only to find they deliver there. So she’s shipped it off by International mail but to Grenada the fastest service is between 3 & 5 working days, so it may arrive after I leave for home next week. Of course!

Along about now I find an email from Christine. My therapist daughter tells me I have to surrender to being helpless and vulnerable rather than upset and maddened. She says that will flip the universe to support me in my travels rather than punishing me as it has been doing. AND, Oh by-the-way, she says she charges 90 bucks for this kind of therapeutic coaching, thank you.
Ok, ok. I surrender!

Shortly after I capitulate, I take a walk to stretch my aching old legs and spy a food kiosk down at the end of the terminal. It turns out that they have a cappuccino machine! Wow! Completely unexpected! So here I sit on my sore ass, torturing y’all, but bathed in warm sunshine coming through a sun drenched window near the food kiosk, enjoying a cappuccino & some Chips Ahoy cookies. Life seems good. Maybe surrendering works.


However, I’m still not sure I’m willing to give up complaining.

No comments:

Post a Comment