And so it Begins...Again

Early on Saturday, November 1, we saw WW's sister Susie off, headed back to New York. His older sister, Ginny, then kindly drove us to the airport. A sunny cold day. Some nine hours later, we were joining the queue at Trinidad and Tobago immigration, passport and duly completed form in hand.

Because we had been forward in the plane, we were near the front of the lines that formed behind and beside us. In reasonably short order, WW and I approached the young immigration officer Tom in his booth. We handed over our passports and forms.

Tom put on his best despairing po-face and announced, "Well, I can't accept THIS" (pointing at my form). He stabbed a little line at the top that said "Please complete in black or blue ink". I had, shudder, used green.

Now, to me, 'please' is a request, not a requirement. Tom's opinion was different. "Go to the back of the room and do it over," he said. Fortunately, he also said we could return to the front of the line when I was done.

I went to the back of the room, took WW's blue ballpoint, and went over all the green information. I became blue with green echoes. Then back to the head of the line we went.

Tom took one look at the form and said, "You should have done it on a new form. This is completely unacceptable."

"What?" says I. "It's legible. It's what you told me to do."

"I meant do it over on a new form," he said.

"Well, can't you read it?" I asked.

Apparently that wasn't the point. "This," he pronounced with all his authority, "is a legal document. If I were in the United States and..."

I wanted to say, "We're Canadian and it would be fine. You can read it, that's what matters." But I felt silence would be the wiser option. Indeed, he appeared ready to accept it. Then he turned to WW.

"How long are you staying in Trinidad?" he asked.

"Just until tomorrow."

"Show me your flight itinerary."

"We haven't booked our flight to Grenada yet, we were going to do it on our way out," explained WW.

Tom was developing a slightly apoplectic look. Fortunately, WW had an itinerary showing we had a flight out of Trinidad booked for December 20. Tom, clearly exasperated but wanting only to be rid of these dreadful Canadians, stamped our passports and forms with considerable force. Unable to speak, he just rammed to documents at us and waved us onto the island.

The Liat counter was closed, but a nice man in a van drove us to a hotel where WW hooked up to the Internet and ordered our tickets online. But before we would get into the nice man's hotel van, we asked the two key questions: "Does it have Internet access?" and "Does it have a bar?"

Both affirmative...here we are. Tickets are booked for the 2 p.m. flight to Grenada. See you there!