Caribbeaneana

So here’s the first view of the Caribbean, from the seaside here in Ft. St. George.  Personally I could have done with more blue sky, but on the whole there’s not a lot to complain about.

I’ll be boarding the larger boat on the right tomorrow, for a week at sea.

The flight in was full of groups of missionaries, each group distinctive in its own particular t-shirt.  Since the country is already pretty much Christian, I guess they’re here to convert the natives from Christianity to some other kind of Christianity, from Wrong Jesus to Right Jesus.

Oh well, as long as they actually help the poor instead of just preaching at them . . .

There was a live calypso band in the baggage claim of the airport, just to get us in the proper mood, and the Caribbean-English dialect of the locals is guaranteed to make me feel at home.  (It occurs to me that the Caribbean approach to the English language is pretty much the same everywhere in the former Empire, from Antigua to Jamaica to Belize, but the local Afro-English creoles are all different.  [The local one isn’t Creole, but “Kriol.”])

Went to a recommended seafood restaurant for dinner.   The conch ceviche was good, if enormous— I ordered a “small,” I really did!— and then I had snapper fried with green coconut, which was pretty good.  Salsa came with the  meal and was sweetish, with mango or some other fruit, and I had some drinks with rum and fruit juice and other things, which have now put me in the correct frame of mind.

The poolside bar may now be beckoning.  I’m going to have to check, as soon as I’ve spent a little more time digesting.