Rambling Robert's Travels

This blog chronicals the travels of myself, Rambling Robert, on my next adventure to South America.

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I am a world traveller. I do not work as such. I have been homeless and unemployed since 1October 2003. I worked as a chef for 30 years in America.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

greetings from Trinidad Tobago

Greetings from T.T.
I am staying just on the outskirts of Port of Spain the capital of Trinidad
Tobago. this country is fantastic!! I have NEVER been anywhere where the people
are more friendly than here! The food is fine also and the weather too, well
just about perfect! Let me back up a little and tell about my adventures in
Venezuela.
I now have a new country to refer to as my least favorite place I have ever
been. Venezuela SUCKS. let me be more clear: Venezuela Sucks!! Sucks !!! SUCKS!!!!

What a shit hole.
It is the Zimbabwe of South America. (Venezimbabway)Hugo Chavez is a former Colonel in the army. he is a corrupt retard who has turned a once prosperous wonderful nation into a black hole of corruption. Highest crime rate in South America. 31%annual
inflation. Shortages of everything from no natural gas to cook with to no rice in the stores to US 12.00 dollars for a kilo of tomatoes frequent blackouts, water outages,...People are rude, unfriendly and just plain mean. Impolite greedy trying always to rip you off. Cops ask to take your passport and demand a bribe to give it back. If you dont have it they ask a bribe or they will take you to jail for not having your passport with you! Like the opposite of the rest of South America. I will never go back to Venezuela until they revolt and get
rid of Chavez.
I arrive from colombia and take a shared taxi to Maracaibo. I was with 5 other travelers all Colombian but only I went through customs I got stamped out of Colombia and into Venezueala all nice and legal like. we almost get in a car crash when we get to Maracaibo. the owner of one of the cars involved is screaming at my driver and finally takes out a pistol and fires two bullets into the taxi. I am in this country for less than 3 hours and I have been shot at!! Fortunately noone is shot. the whole time I spent in Venezueala it never really got any better!...

Actually the only people who were nice to me were foriegners who owned hotels where i stayed. No one was ever nice except when i gave them money and most of the people I paid were shitty too! I had a week at a nice hostel called El Gallo in Coro. a couple of nights at Chichiriviche at Morenos place a few nights in Choroni/Puerto Colombia. this was the nicest town i saw there. Then I went to Guiria and after getting jacked around for 20 hours finally was able to buy a ticket for a boat to Trinidad Tobago...
so I took a ferry boat to go from Guiria Venez-HELL-a to Chaguamaras
Trinidad on last wednesday Feb 16. then we went to the ferry and waited 2 hours on a line to board. Worth it all to get out of this horror show of a country!! The boat ride was nice but the seas were a little rough.
I arrive with Samuel a guy from Finland I have beeen traveling with for
the whole time in Venezuela and we hook up with an american who was robbed at
gun point of all his cash and ATM cards in Venezuela and a Scotsman and another
american and we all get together and rent part of a house for 12USD each.
It is carnival time and I absolutely love Trinidad after 5 days. the carnaval is like mardi gras but of course completely different. Scantily clad women dancing all over the place. People throwing paint on one another. lots of music. drinking in the streets. Beautiful costumes, you know, like uhhh Carnival in the Caribean!!!

I will stay here in Trinidad until March 8. Then i have booked into a hostel in Buccoo point Tobago (the other island that makes up this country) for $US15.00 per night in a dormitory. Hang around there for a while and then I must be back in Trinidad for a flight out of Port of Spain on April 1.

I have not been in an english speaking country for 10 months. so it is kind of cool to be here for this as well. but they speak with such a strong Pigeon creole accent that i found it easier to communicate in South America in spanish than i am finding it here. Perhaps in a few more days it will all clear up for me...
i will write more in a couple of weeks. Here are a few quotes for you all to think about until then.
Peace and Love,
robert
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."Thomas A Edison

"Let's not quibble! I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, "I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right." tallulah bankhead

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one
can go." TS Eliot