Soca Warriors go!

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?" - I couldn't quite work out whether he was serious or not but decided to play safe anyway. He grunted and wandered into a back room. I stood there for a while until eventually timidly asking if I could leave. Another grunt which I took as a yes, and met Esther outside, who'd had a friendly enough chat with her interviewer who only wanted to know if she smoked or not.

If by any chance you ever do end up at Suriname airport, I recommend the duty free. It's not often you can pick up a litre of good single-malt whiskey for under £10, and it amused me to get a nice Speyside malt as we were about to spend some time in the town of Speyside in Tobago.

As expected, we didn't get much sleep in the lounge, and the plane smelt as bad as the one we'd arrived in. No, it was worse - we were in the back row next to the not-cleaned-this-week toilets. Well at least we had better company on this leg; rather than a odd guy throwing up on himself, we had the Suriname youth swim team on their way to Puerto Rico for an inter-Caribbean tournament.

When we arrived at Trinidad, the airport was decked out in the colours of the Soca Warriors, the nickname of the national football team (Soca's a style of music btw, not a mispelling of the irritating name given to the game by Americans). The T&T team were due back that day from Germany, and while not quite victorious, that wasn't going to stop the party. People were genuinely very pleased with the teams success, and were looking forward to boom years now that World Cup success had put them into the conciousness of many potential tourists.

The flying bus service got us from Trinidad to Tobago nice and early, and we then lost the time we'd gained waiting for our transfer to the hotel up in Speyside. Eventually we gave up and went back to the taxi-lady who'd been manning (woman-ing?) the stand by arrivals. She turned out to be actually a taxi driver. Tobago has quite a few female taxi drivers which is a Good Thing in my opinion.

The morning was bright and sunny, and after a short trip on highway past the Dwight Yorke stadium (they're very proud), the roads got steep and windy, the dogs and chickens added an element of fun to the driving, and the overtaking got more dangerous. We passed through some sleepy little villages (it was before 8am after all), and glimpsed blue seas far below as we rounded hairpin corners, until we swept down the hill into Speyside with a beautiful view of the bay and the islands of Goat Island and Little Tobago a mile or so out to sea.

We arrived at the hotel as breakfast was being served, and persuaded the waitress ("whatwouldyoulikethismorningladiesfirst") to let us join in while we waited for the receptionist to arrive. We got chatting to a Dutch couple at the table next to us. They'd just come from a long trip in South America and were on their way home, so we picked their brains for a few experiences. They weren't particuarly happy, as the showers were out due to a power cut in the town. The neighbouring village was hosting its annual fisherman's fête and a reveler, who I'm guessing had had a rum or two more than he should have, had fallen asleep at the wheel and collided with a electricity pole. In a way he was lucky - if he hadn't hit the pole he'd have been over the cliff, but the pole snapped and came down in the road pulling all manner of cables with it. Anyway, it'd add to the rustic atmosphere.

The room in the hotel was lovely. We had a balcony overlooking the sea and the islands, lots of space, and a comfortable bed. This is what the Caribbean is meant to be like. All we had to do now was relax, sip a bottle of Carib, watch the England and Dutch games the next day, and sit back and relax until we start the diving course on the Monday.