Despite that fact that we talked about going to Trinidad and Tobago for over 6 Months we waited until the very last minute to make any plans. The week before we left we purchased two round trip tickets to Port of Spain on Continental. Our flight took off at 10am from Austin with a stop in Houston. The flight from Houston to Port of Spain was approximately 5 hours. When we landed in Port of Spain at 7pm and it was dark and poring down rain. It took us about 40 minutes to clear immigration and customs and get our bags. Our driver Jose DeSilva was holding up a sign with Shannon's name on it when we walked out of the customs area. Jose went to get the car and we started our adventure. The drive took us through downtown Port of Spain. The city has some modern high rise buildings contrasted against small shack like businesses. Traffic was good and this was my first experience driving in a country with right hand drive vehicles. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the driver making turns from the left lane across traffic. I quickly realized I would not be able to drive in the city without a lot of practice. It was a little late for most restaurants and Jose was kind enough to stop for some take away food. We ended up with some BBQ chicken, cole slaw and fries. The restaurant was a walk up Chinese place with a lot of chicken plates as options. When we walked up there were 4 local boys waiting for food. They were carrying on a conversation in a local dialect that I could not understand at all. Both islands speak english but they also have their own language and it was very difficult to understand anything they said. We also learned quickly that the locals will speak very softly when speaking to us. This made it difficult to hear a lot of things they said.
We arrived at Monique's Guest house at about 8:30 PM. We ate our dinner and crashed for the night. We had accomodations planned at Monique's for the first two nights of the trip and all other plans were still up in the air. The hotel room was fairly basic with two double beds, AC, and a TV. It appeared to be pretty clean and the hotel staff were helpful. The driver that picked us up from the Airport ended up being a tour guide and we ended up hiring him as our main transportation while in Trinidad.
On Monday morning we spent about an hour looking at our travel guide book to determine where we wanted to stay and the activites we wanted to do on the trip. We decided to walk to a restaurant called Adams for lunch. On our way to the cafe we had our first experience with a Trini man. He poked his head out of a shack and said "Well Good Mornin my snowbunnies, and how are you today?" We laughed and said good Morning back and kept on our way. From the outside Adams doesn't look like much but it ended up being a very nice bistro style cafe. For breakfast we tried the Trini to da bone special that included buljoi and cocunut bake. We also ordered a hummus plate and a chicken sandwich. Buljoi is a mixture of salt fish, tomatoes, onions, and spices. We put the buljoi on the cocunut bake bread with a little hummus. The combination was a little strange for breakfast but it all worked out.
We contacted Jose and asked him for assistance in getting around the city. He ended up taking us to a travel agent to get a flight to Tobago, the ATM for extra cash, and the ferry landing for a return ticket from Tobago to Trinidad. When we were done with errands Jose drove us to one of the highest points around called Fort George for a view of the city. Fort George has a lighthouse and it housed many cannons to protect the bay. This gave us a great perspective of how large Port of Spain is.
At about 6pm Jose dropped us off at the Kapok hotel for dinner and we decided to take a route taxi back to the hotel later that night. We had dinner at the Bois Cano restaurant. The restarant waas very nice and we had a wonderful table outside on the patio. We started with a couple of frozen drink and we ordered a few different items to share.
Our dinner consisted of a garden salad, stuffed crab backs, cassava fries with garlic sauce, and chicken samosas with a tamarind sauce. After dinner we attempted to catch a route taxi. 
Route taxis are any car in Trinidad with a H on the license plate. It is a bit of a challenge to see the plates at night and we tried to flag a car down for about 10 minutes. We decided to walk up the street a little ways and ended up taking a detour to the Haagendas store for some ice cream. It is fun going into retaurants and seeing items like an ice cream cone listed at $24 dollars. Of course that is $24TT which is about $4 american at a 6.3 exchange rate. After our ice cream adventure we again attempted to flag a route taxi down. A car stopped that did not have an H and we took our chances on it. The driver had his music cranked up with island music and we were driving with two other riders. The ride only cost $8TT to get us to the hotel, just over a dollar and you are dropped at your location!
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