Most of you know that among my other failings, I am a scuba diver. One of my regrets is that I didn't take up scuba diving until after I finished my assignment in Jakarta. Indonesia has some world class scuba diving and while Trinidad doesn't have world class scuba diving, the sister island, Tobago, has some very good diving. Determined not to repeat my "mistake" I set off today to find a scuba dive shop.
You know there have to be dive shops when the country's flag looks so much like a scuba flag. The Trinidad and Tobago flag is the one with the black stripe.
When I first came down here, I assumed there would be dive shops in Port of Spain itself. So far, my search has turned up nothing. There are six listed in the phone book but none of them are in the city itself or in one of the immediate suburbs. Undeterred, I selected a couple that are on the peninsula near Port of Spain and set off to find them. A task which is easier said than done because of the local habit of giving addresses that are only meaningful to the local mailmen and which aren't posted anyway. As often as not the locals give their address as "Orchard Gardens" which is a subdivision of Chauguanas without a street name or number. Which is all right given that they almost never put the number on the building and street signs are sporadic.
The two I picked were in Chaugaramas which is unrelated to the town I decided not to search, Chauganas. I did find one but this entry is mostly about what else I found today.
The locals like to say that "God is a Trini." And as much as anything that comes from the country's history with hurricanes. They will gleefully tell you that no hurricane has ever hit Trinidad. This is not quite true but it is close. NOAA has a cool little application that shows the track of every hurricane for which they have data. Here is the plot for Trinidad.
There is Trinidad in a big blank space. The two that passed south of Trinidad were tropical storms at the time. One of those had been a hurricane but dropped down to tropical storm status before getting near and then restrengthened back into a hurricane. One of the one to the north happened in the 1890's. So they aren't lying about having never been hit by a hurricane. Tobago had one become a hurricane right over the island but that doesn't count.
While there is undoubtedly an element of luck to this, on such pieces of luck an industry is built. In Trinidad, that industry is riding out Hurricane Season.
This is what I found when I went looking for a Scuba Dive Shop.
This behemoth may be the largest private yacht I've ever seen. This one and many others are here to avoid hurricanes.
Though most of them were no where near as big as that one, there were a couple hundred of them of all sizes and shapes.
And what does the bored yachtsman do while waiting to be able to take his yacht safely back home. Well someone thought he might like to scuba dive and so in the middle of this complex designed to maintain yachts and pamper their owners, they put a dive shop.
That's it tucked in the corner behind the boat and much smaller than the nail salon next to it. Apparently if you have enough money to keep your boat in Trinidad, you care more about your nails than you do scuba diving.
One final note. The address described this shop as being located on "Level 2." If that's correct, they are either counting from the top down or being scuba divers they consider being underwater as an acceptable level.
