Limin'

Quest
Jack and Hannah Ormerod and Lucia, Delphine & Fin
Mon 3 Oct 2016 18:59
Position: 10: 40.7N 61:38.0W

Mick finally turned up on Quest! After we congratulated his safe crossing from Grenada and ushered him inside like children, we made him sit under one of the vents to feel the full force of the air con and for a little while, he didn’t speak. ‘What do you think of it here, Mick?’ Jack asked. ‘It’s great, isn’t it? Have you noticed how much cheaper everything is?’ Mick grimaced. ‘It looks like the kid of place to commit a murder and hide the body.’ We all looked up at the closed hatch door. ‘It does?’ We’d been immersed in the air con to really take in the atmosphere. 

We had braved the heat to go and check in at the marina earlier though and Debra, the lady at reception was both gentle and gracious welcoming us into Trinidad. By her side was a local newspaper. The front page caught my eye. A young, glamorous-looking Asian lady had been kidnapped the week before, heading from store to her car. No one had seen her since. When Debra went to photocopy our ship’s papers, I turned the newspaper around so it wasn’t upside down any more and began to read. No clues, no suspects. 'What do you think happened to her?’ Jack asked Debra when she came back and she gave us a sad, small smile. ‘Maybe taken for the trade in body parts.’ She must have seen the look on our faces because she added, ‘the body parts aren’t removed here on the island though.’ We nodded. Oh-kay.

Having heard the biggest supermarket was also near one of the biggest malls in Trinidad, we let ourselves get excited about it, except of course Fin who up until now, I’ve failed to mention is still in Grenada. Sounds terrible, no? The thing is, eight months ago, when we first arrived in the Caribbean, we called the government vet in Trinidad anticipating we might come here in hurricane season. Now I wonder if they were having a bad day and thought it might be fun to cheer themselves up by giving us the impression that bringing Fin here would be harder than flying her to the moon. When we decided to run from the tropical depression which has since turned into the enormous Hurricane Matthew, Jack took Fin anyway to the vet’s to get an export certificate. The vet Jack met that morning was Emma, a young lady from Ireland, though her mum is from Aberystwyth. Ha!! Nice, small world. 'We’ll look after her,’ Emma said without pause, ‘so you don’t have to keep her on the boat in Trinidad. She doesn’t look like a square inch of trouble.’ Jack called us on Quest to make sure we agreed. Fin didn’t have to pee on the boat for a week? I tried not to cheer down the phone. Jack was mournful though when he came back to Quest. ‘The old lady at reception looked at Fin and said, “Your spoilt, aren’t you?” and I wanted to ask her what she meant but I thought I’d better go before Fin got too upset.’ ‘Spoilt?’ I replied defensively when he’d finished. ‘Yeah, that’s probably true.’ 

So with Fin not here in Trinidad, we can go to the shopping mall, to the movies, round the island twice if we want to. Indeed, the mall was our first guilt-free outing and boy, was it good. And even colder than Quest, so cold that Delphine’s lips went blue until we bought her a hot chocolate on the first floor. ‘Have you seen the virtual reality goggles in the Samsung Store?’ ’There’s a whole Sketchers store downstairs!’ ‘And a bookstore with Dork Diaries!’ Every discovery we made felt like a victory. Don’t get me wrong, the Caribbean is wonderful in almost every way but shops that sell clothes even slightly made out of cotton are a welcome sight too. In this sense, Trinidad may well be our answer to the, ‘Lu, all your shorts are too small,’ and ‘Delph, do you have any t-shirts at all now without any holes?’ 

The finale was the toy store. An aisle of board games to stare at. Which one would be the best for us, we wondered in turn? Pictionary for Delph, Monopoly for Quest's capitalists, Scrabble for Quest’s geeks (I can’t in the world think who this could be)… ‘What game do you recommend?’ Jack asked the helpful-looking shop assistant who immediately got stuck in and described the features of the different games. ‘What about this one?’ Jack asked, picking up the classic Clue. ‘It’s about murder in the neighbourhood and you have to discover who the murderer is.’ ‘Aha,’ Jack said, looking happy, ‘a bit like Trinidad, then.’ The shop assistant looked equally happy. ‘Yes, but the difference is that in Trinidad, you never find out who the murderers are.’ We’ve discovered that Trinidad is on target to have 400 murders this year. And yet, this place is impossible to dislike. Go figure.