Adventure of the month

You know the saying "Everything happens for a reason"? It's one of those things you hear all the time but if you notice, it is usually said when all has turned to shit. It is not when anything good has happened. It's never "What? You hooked up with Pedro Pascal?! It's ok. Everything happens for a reason." I bring this up in the context of my first attempt to visit country #129 aka Trinidad and Tobago.  Once upon a time, I had booked a flight to Trinidad, a ferry to Tobago and five nights at a hostel. An itinerary had been typed up, because yes, I am that person and packing was underway. That time was March 2020. The debut of Covid.  As my trip approached, the world was quickly shutting down. Two days before departure, I contacted both American Airlines and my hostel to make sure everything was ok. Both gave me the thumbs up. The next day, not even 24 hrs before my flight, I got the message that T&T had officially shut down to all visitors. I was piss...

In the 90's, the sketch comedy show In Living Color  had a recurring sketch about a Jamaican family. The central premise was that they all had upwards of a dozen jobs and would loudly deride any lazy lima bean who had the nerve to only have one job. This skit came back to me this week during a visit to Kingston. I was staying at the Eden Gardens Wellness Resort and Spa , which as the name suggests had a gym, sauna and all those other healthy things I hear exist. It was a rambling complex that eschewed room numbers for names, meaning if anyone had asked me what room I was in, my response would have been Sage. Having no room numbers to guide you makes locating your room a bit challenging so as I roamed around trying to find an herb, I instead came across a family counselor, a bridal salon, a clothing store, a nutritionist's office, 2 restaurants, a pool bar and an erotic toy shop. No,  for real . It would appear that even my hotel had multiple jobs!

It really could have gone wither way.  Back in 2010, I flew to Seattle, drove 3 hrs to Anacortes and took a 2 hour ferry to the San Juan islands, all with the goal of kayaking with orcas .  It is a beautiful part of the world and I'm so glad I got to see it and would go so far as to call the trip a rousing success but for one noteworthy fact. We saw zero orcas. Not a one- ok, well, maybe one if you count the one we saw on the ferry back to Anacortes but that was not the point.  Afterwards, I continued to exchange emails with the owner of Seaquest, the kayaking outfit we used and eventually learned that ours was the only trip all season that saw no orcas. My fortunes improved the next year when I flew to Cancun, drove 3 hours to Chiquila and took a 30 minute ferry to Holbox in the hope of swimming with whale sharks . This one was a slam dunk. I was able to swim with 3 whale sharks, saw countless others from the boat and enjoyed three days of stress-free island livi...

I realize that this blog is full of typos, grammatical errors and the occasional straight-up unintentional fabrication. I am not really keen on the whole 'proof-reading before hitting publish' thing and it shows. Therefore it is only reasonable to think that the title of this post is simply another one of my fuck-ups. Swimming with shurtles? What the hell is a shurtle, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Swimming with shurtles is simply the trendiest new multi-island activity.  It's quite simple, really. Famed nightlife and travel guru, Stefon, describes it thusly: It is when you have been in Barbados on a cruise and then a year later, you return there for work.  By virtue of having already been there, you already have the contact info for super cool man-about-town, Neville of Swimmin Wid Nevil fame.

Back when I began this blog in 2007, one of my first ever posts was about St. Thomas .  More specifically, it was about how badly St. Thomas sucked because of all those annoying cruise ship passengers.  Now, eight year later,  I was one of them, although as the only ship in town on this particular day, I prefer to think we were more of a benign nuisance. First time around, I was able to escape the circus by taking a ferry over to St. John's but with limited time, this was no longer an option.  This was also our last port of call so if there was ever a time to adopt the "if you can't beat 'em..." philosophy, this was it. We were initially signed up for an island tour with a well regarded guide that promised an informative drive around the island with stops at both scenic and historical sites.  Due to an snafu with our guy's PA equipment, we now found ourselves with the other island guide, the one known as the "party guide" .  His tours are less ...