Trinidad and Tobago October 19th

A trip to the Caribbean wouldn't be complete without a good dose of sunshine. After two days on the water and sand Shannon and I were still looking pretty white. We decided we would make one last trip to the beach and we both made the decision to forgo the sunscreen. Apparently it only takes about 2 hours to turn two of the whitest women around into lobsters. We spent time laying in the sun and swimming to enjoy our last morning on Tobago. We were scheduled to take the ferry from Tobago to Trinidad at 1:30 pm. We left the beach around 11am and decided to make lunch, pack and figure out how to get to Scarborough to catch the ferry. When we got back to the house we ran into Eleanor and made arrangements to pay for our stay. Without access to and ATM we had to pool together US and TT$ to pay our dues. She asked us what time we were leaving and we said 1:30pm.
Eleanor said oh my you should be to the ferry 2 hours early to make sure you get your boarding pass. With that information we had to kick into high gear to make lunch, eat, pack and find a way to the ferry. We were ready to leave around noon and we made an attempt to get a route taxi outside the house. Our first attempt did not work because the gentleman was scheduled to take another route. Next we decided to go to Roshakies place to see if the same guy that gave us a ride to the beach would drop us off at the ferry. Thank goodness he decided to give us another ride and we made it to the boat on time. The ferry was amazing! The government purchased two brand new ferry boats in the last couple years. The boats transport cars and people from one island to the other for 50TT or about $8US. The seating area was set up as if you were on a luxury cruise liner. I was a bit nervous that I would be sea sick but I quickly realized that the boat was large enough that the waves really did not have an impact. The old ferries took over 5 hours to get to the Port of Spain. The new boat drops you to the other island in about 2.5 hours. Jose picked us back up at the ferry and transported us to the airport where we stayed at the Bel Air hotel on the edge of the airport. This ended up being the most expensive and worst place we stayed during the trip. We had a lot of time to kill so we decided to take some fun pictures around the hotel. At dinner we had a good laugh at the decor and the fact that the bread was served on a plate with a longhorn on it.




We had a 5:30am wake up call and we boarded the plane to Houston. At the airport we made it through all of the security check points and we were hanging out by our gate when we were approached by a man from security and immigration. He asked to speak with us for a few minutes. The man looked at Shannon's passport and then he looked at me and said and you are Kimberly, correct? This freaked me out because I did not have my passport out yet and he did not see any of my IDs. He said they were doing random checks on visitors to the country. He asked us questions about why we were in the country and where we stayed. He informed us that they had some issues with people staying at our first guest house and he was confirming that everything was OK. I think he was also trying to make sure we were not smuggling anything illegal out of the country. Thank goodness he realized we were very innocent and a bit naive about things we would possibly be taking out of the country. He let us go and we waited for our plane. Our flight took us across the Caribbean and we cruised over Cuba. When we landed in Houston we went through customs and had to put our bags back through security. Shannon purchased a bottle of rum and we didn't think about the fact that it would need to go into our checked bags. When security found the rum we had to take Shannon's backpack back to security and check it. We finally made it to our gate for the last leg of our journey.