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...

Sometimes all you can get is a quickie. Such was the case with country #123. The excitement on visiting my sole remaining South American country was tempered (and then tempered again) by an ever changing schedule that kept reducing the length of my stay. By the time I touched down in Timehri, Guyana, it was 1am. I was only going to have 11 hours, most of them in the middle of the night.   Add to this an hour’s drive to our hotel in Georgetown and I was down to 10 measly hours. Damn you, slow front desk clerk!! Why am I only seeing my room at 2:15 am? Resigned to missing out on the city’s sights, I figured I could at least try the city’s beer. I headed down to the 24 hour casino, where in a perverse turn of all things casino, they did not sell drinks. Sure, you could gamble and get free drinks but if you didn’t happen to have a fistful of Guyanese dollars to feed into the slot machines, you were shit out of Banks. Since at this point, down was up and up was down, the pool bar- the o...