Trinidad Carnival 2011: Day 1--Getting to Trinidad

TRINIDAD!!!!! Wi REACH! I have arrived and there is already so much to say and so little sleep to keep going on, lol!

Security getting through the airports was RATHER serious when travelling with a host of liquids including rubbing alcohol, shaving cream, and sunblock.  THREE times they scanned the one bag smh! Try to remember to pack all these things in your CHECKED luggage don't be like me and earn yourself a return trip to the check-in point and a whopping $50 charge for a 3rd piece of checked luggage (thanks AirTran)!

Fort Lauderdale International airport was chaotic, and slow.  Constant multiple SIMULTANEOUS announcements over two systems for every little thing...and what is up with all the people headed to South America who held up their flights by having to be called to their gates?  Did they pay the same cash I had to pay for my flight? lol!



That was that bag's THIRD time through the scanner! smh!

 Arrived in Trinidad at Piarco International 11:15pm on Caribbean Airlines....you would think being this late meant less waiting around to get through and get OUT the airport...and you would think wrong!  One girl was POWER walking to get ahead of us to Customs and I thought she was exaggerating the need to get there so fast.  Til we got around the corner and saw the long curling lines!  Jaw dropping the amount of time I had to spend there inching forward!

WORD TO THE WISE: If you are a CariCom national (from one of the Caribbean community member islands) PLEASE be smarter than me and walk with  your native country's passport, NOT just the U.S. or other naturalized country's passport, so you can join the Trinidad citizen/resident/Caricom national line!  It's shorter, faster, just better!  This is one time the U.S. passport does not help at ALL. lol

Okay through Customs and out to find a local phone provider's kiosk, and we run into B-mobile's which is the first thing you see in front of you as walk out of Customs.  However this late at night the apparently very popular carrier was sold out of the cheap phones and their least expensive available phone was $100 USD, so after standing in that line for what turned out to be no good reason (and lol'ing at the guy wishing to hurry up and clear the line and close up shop before a late flight coming after us landed and sent another wave of incoming masqueraders etc. his way), I headed over to the Digicel kiosk a few steps down.  More Murphy's law foolishness as they had the cheap phones but were out of SIM cards.  Lucky for me my luck is stronger than Murphy's law and SIM cards arrived while we were still there, so in short order I was set up on my local Trini phone and number with credit for talk time added and ready to roll.

Baggage claim was another line, but moved faster than Customs (is there anything that does NOT move faster than that Customs line? lol)  We had taken so long that our bags (myself and one of my crew arrived on the same flight) were already waiting for us off to the side. 

Next came the drama with taxis.  I had scheduled one, but the man wanted to charge us way way WAY too much to handle our itinerary for the week or so, so I made an executive decision to simply roll with a taxi driver who was already waiting inside the airport to make a fare.  Turns out to be a great choice because not only was he very informative and helpful, he was also very generous when I spotted a street vendor selling doubles made right in front of you: he paid for both my meal's and my friend's!  Lol my friend said he seemed to have taken a liking to me why he did it, lol!

We were dying to get near a shower and a bed...but that bed never quite came for me...you'll see why next blog post!

And blog coming soon on the actual guesthouse, La Calypso.

Won't be doing this much verbiage after this cause there is no time...straight photojournals and I try and do a blurb beneath each as to what's going on in it!

Micro-sleeping now cause between Wednesday morning and now, Friday morning, I have gotten about 4 hours sleep...smh all day wednesday on the road and on the plane, all day thursday on the ferry and in Tobago and liming with the latest arrival in my crew, and now trying to NOT neglect the blog in the middle of all the fun in the sun! :-) Good times!

Next: A day in Tobago!

YouTube videos are up, and will keep coming, so check them out, subscribe to my channel, and see live action views of Trinidad, Tobago, and Carnival 2011!