Trinidad: Port-of-Spain

The very first experience we have of this city is a steel pan band. It’s deafeningly loud, and exceptionally good! Then in the crowds around Frederick St, a local guy called Marcus strikes up a conversation with us about Manchester United. Immediately, Jon senses a ploy which might prove costly in terms of finance and time-management, so we quickly disengage. We walk right up to the north of town, up towards the hills which seem to look like the ridges in northern Venezuela. Well, geologically, they must be pretty much identical, for mainland Venezuela lies just 7 miles to the south of Trinidad.
At the Botanical Gardens we meet Lewis, who offers to drive us up into the mountains, but taxis are frankly a bit more expensive than converse and pavement, so we move onwards, drenched to the skin by a tropical storm, and happy to have found Jonny’s Coconut stall.
We arrive in Independence Square tired and hungry. How about trying the most important and famous street food of Trinidad and Tobago, ’Hot Doubles’? These consist of layers of fluffy pancakes upon which is spooned plenty of chickpeas in a fiery pepper sauce. Wow! There’s a strong chance that these might just be THE taste sensation of our entire expedition, and it’s only the second full day… Hot Doubles are in fact SO tasty that we return to the same stall an hour later for a repeat prescription. Back in Frederick St we manage to stumble upon a food hall where we try Callaloo, a very thick soupy dish made with okra. There’s a distinctive Indian presence here on the island, which extends from the shop owners to the local delicacies. But more of this later.
“Hey London guys!” Well it’s a small city centre, and Marcus had found us again.
“What you lookin’ for?” he drawled, and somewhat foolishly Simon started to answer the question: “Roti”
“Ok, come on!” and with that Marcus had already shot off, parting the crowd and beckoning us to follow. Slowly it began to dawn upon the travelling duo that at some point in this new friendship, money would be changing hands, and not necessarily in the credit column of team Jon and Simon. But what can you do? And after all, part of this trip will be ALL about the people we meet down on the street, and wow, this guys is being greeted by just about everybody he passes, so he must be a very familiar face around these parts. As the walk with Marcus progresses, the questions Jon is asking him start to illicit quite detailed information about his background. Yes, of course he’s a ’guide’ but not an ordinary sort of guide, he is part of an organisation which specialises in connecting tourists in Port-of-Spain with real Trinidadian life. So clearly Marcus had identified us in the crowd earlier and picked us as likely dudes for his services, but then this is a good thing, because what he knows and what he wants to show us is pretty much what we want to know and experience.
He’s served in the US Navy on the Alamo, and now he works with the underprivileged sectors of urban society and builds bridges between life in the ghetto and visitors to the city. But aren’t we on a sophisticated island, maybe part of the developed world, rich in bourgeois western values and lifestyles? Well lets just walk a few blocks east and take a hike down Charlotte St and down into George St. Woosh! We’re back where we love life best, it’s the street scene of the developing world, with its frenetic pace, distinctive aromas (not least of peeled lemons wafting on the breeze), pumping music, market stalls and the hardships of lives lead permanently in the shadow of poverty. And to the east of George St. lies a series of tenements riddled with barbed wire on every balcony. Marcus tells us that here is the no-go area, with gangland warfare, drug deals, gun-point robberies and high speed chases. We’re safe here with Marcus, they all know him, and he has an instinctive feeling for where we can go and when. We even pass a large workshop devoted to the production of steel pans. All this exploration has worked up some pretty strong hunger pangs, and so back in Independence Square we manage to track down a Roti shop, where we ask for the works. This is a whole meal wrapped up in a massive chapati, complete with some tasty pickled mango still on its stone and some chicken with many, many bones…
It’s time to buy some rum before we leave the Caribbean (until April, that is!) and we meet a wonderful elderly couple who run a liquor store: a sophisticated Indian gentleman, who, just like Simon’s dad, had spent his career working for ICI and his wife who is also the Philippino Consul to Trinidad. They have a great framed photograph of the time they met Prince Charles, and it turns out that she had even worked with Mother Teresa when they lived in Calcutta. We exchanged stories for quite some time!