xini blog

So on to the diving. The dive courses were one of the few things we had booked in advance: I was going to become a PADI open water diver and James was going to get his Advanced Diver certification. The dive shop was owned by a German company (sounded safe and solid!) and had some good reviews, so we were looking forward to our courses. However, it turned out that those reviews were for their Crown Point branch and there was not much of the famed German gründlichkeit (thoroughness) to be seen when we turned up at the Speyside branch. It had all looked so promising. The night before we started, the girl from the diveshop had given us our theory books, so that we could start reading, which was nice. When we turned up at the required time, the dive master had not shown up yet. When he did, it became clear he was looking after a group of divers (who were already qualified and just came to do a couple of dives a day, so he had to sort out all their tanks, and ferry them to and from the dive

Speyside is on the opposite side of the island to the main tourist hub of Crown Point and it does feel quite far removed from it. It goes about its business - from what we could tell, this involved fishing, goat herding (and racing) and minibus driving with a bit of tourism thrown in - at a leisurely Caribbean pace and everyone seems mildly surprised when tourists turn up. Maybe this was because we did not come to the village on one of the organised tours (who all did exactly the same route and had exactly the same stopping points). Or maybe it was because we came to visit in the rainy season (meaning a couple of short downpours a day) rather than the main tourist season covering the Northern hemisphere's winter months. It was nice though to just wander the few streets of Speyside and not be accosted about tours, taxis, souvenirs or other services every couple of minutes. We did get chatting to a few locals about how things work in Tobago, which was entertaining and informative (an

We left Suriname as we had arrived, under cover of darkness. Stella's brother acted as our taxi driver at some ungodly hour to take us to the airport. Suriname airport is, as you might expect, tiny though it did have a business class lounge. We weren't travelling business class of course, but Stella had told us we could buy access to this for a few dollars, and comfy sofas sounded a lot more tempting that those plastic seats you keep sliding off, especially at 3am. However, before we could get that far, we had to hang around and go through customs. Everything seemed normal, showing boarding passes and passports, but then we were led into small gender-specific rooms one at a time. Some rather unpleasant images flashed through my mind as the none-too-friendly offical started to don rubber gloves. Fortunately he just wanted to rumage through my bags while asking questions such as "so, do you have and bombs or bomb making material?" and "are you a terrorist?" -

After lunch and coffee watching the rains come down (the roads flood for half an hour or so, but then clear leaving some potholes well disguised as puddles), we decided to try and fathom Paramaribo's bus system. The buses are little Japanese mini-vans and run a bit more like taxis in that you can get off an on when you want but the routes are set, and named by the places the buses go. The route we needed was PBO (Paramaribo, Billitong, Onverwacht) but how you'd know this without inside knowledge is beyond me; I guess everyone "just knows". Certainly not a bus map in sight. Anyway, once we found the bus stand, we got on and sat there for a while waiting for the bus to fill up. Don't expect to get a bus here and know what time you'll be getting to your destination. The bus is going nowhere until it's full. Eventually you get going, and so does the music. Personally I preferred the reggae to the Barry Manilow, but I guess tastes differ amongst the drivers. On

Groeten uit Suriname. I've been hearing a lot Dutch this last week, and speaking a little bit too. But I'll start at the beginning. First, a bit of advice for anyone travelling through Trinidad and Tobago in transit (being a major transport hub and all that). Even though we spent a night in Tobago before flying on to Trinidad, and then on to Paramaribo, if you make sure you say you're in transit when you get your passport stamped on arrival, you don't have to pay the TT$100 each departure tax when you leave. There, who says we're not penny-pinching backpackers. Eat your heart out Lonely Planet. Arriving in Paramaribo was dark. The airport seems to be in an area where there are no streetlights, no houses and no light of any sort (hopefully the runway had lights, but I didn't see them... just darkness and a bump as the wheels touched down). In common with airports in places like Bangkok or Bali, you're immediately jumped upon by "porters" trying to c

We've made it! We've left London and travelled as far as Tobago. Our day started at midnight. This was because the night before had not quite finished yet. Finalising the packing of rucksacks and packing up and cleaning the flat took a little longer than expected, and we finally left our house -cleaner and tidier than it has ever been - at around 11pm to drive across London to our first stop: Jason's Place at Tower Bridge for easy access to trains to Gatwick. Cheers Jase, you're a star. A midnight feast of Chinese take-away and about 4 hours sleep later, we were on our way to Tobago, via a couple of hours in Antigua (the plane routed via Antigua, so although technically we can say we've been there, we never set foot on the island - shame). And the guidebooks were right. Tobago airport is in the middle of 'town' (town includes fields with cows in amongst the houses) and within walking distance of a number of hotels. However, we succumbed to one of the taxi dr

I guess we should start with a quick summary of where we're planning on going: Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, Washington, overland up through New York, Boston and New England, up to Montreal (probably via Torronto), back down to Miami for a few days, Cusco (via Lima), then overland through Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. Then hop back to Santiago for a night before going on to Tahiti, then New Zealand, Australia (Melbourne, Tasmania, then down the coast from Cairns to Sydney), Singapore, Malaysia, and finally back via Hong Kong. The route we're taking is a little unconventional, largely because we're starting our trip with a visit to Suriname. Suriname is a name that usually conjures up images of.... blank faces. Even the travel agents rarely know much about it. The look of panic on the Trailfinders agent when we asked him about it was great. Image from Wikipedia Anyway, for those of you with hazy knowledge about Suriname, it's a country on the