We settled on Grenada, where its massive runway – as large as LAX’s - absorbed our little commuter plane like a flea on a Persian carpet, its grandiose scale the direct by-product of the US invasion a decade earlier in what turned out to be the first in a series of provocative international military incursions. Now the US could station C-130 Hercules transports and in short notice thwart any efforts the diabolical Caribbean Communist Conspiracy might dare to instigate. Evidence of battle was still apparent in the capital’s outskirts where bullet pock-marked buildings stood derelict ten years after they’d assumed ground zero in the brief turmoil. I framed Babe standing in a bomb-holed wall and next to the perforated hulk of a rusted, half-sunk trawler. Our taxi driver proudly pointed out the prison high on a prominent ridge where the locally infamous disc jockey ‘Block D. Roads’ was still under detention, a nick-name he’d earned after shouting that phrase ad nauseum on the air the first night of the attempted takeover. 

We found St. George wrapped around one of the finest deep water bays in the Caribbean, with our choice of crescent beaches on the islands west side. The vertical terrain emphasized the beauty of the place as if holding it up for display from any angle and seemed to have gathered the population at its southern end. We spent only brief intervals in the capital - as pretty a city as we’ve ever bothered with - exchanging dollars for the kaleidoscopic local currency and bickering with officials only to find that securing visa’s for Guiana would be a lot easier than for Surinam, as we’d originally hoped for, the first in a long list of Plan B’s we have to fall-back on. 

Seeking desolation on the islands southern shore required testing our fortitude in one of the suicidal local buses – tiny toaster-like things, the first of which we crammed in to with ten or so other potential victims, the Reggae music close to ear-splitting, the driver laughing uproariously at his sidekick’s smart-ass remarks, each taking turns sucking on a cigar-size ganga joint as we careened around cliff-top hairpin turns at absurd speeds blind to on-coming traffic. Guardrails had yet to make their debut in Grenada, upping the insanity factor. Down below some of the sharper turns remnants of vehicles lay crumpled like the carcasses of dead chicks fallen from high nests, mute reminders of gravity’s unforgiving terms. 

At one otherwise secluded bay, we couldn’t seem to shake a local cop who, owing to the nominal crime rate seemed to have nothing better to do than trail behind us like a lost spaniel. Subtly attempting to ditch him, we ducked behind the thick foliage where eventually the bugs drove us back on to the beach, then into the water. Plopping down close by in the shade weaving origami figures out of palm fronds and making idle chit chat, he was eventually distracted by a fast dingy that pulled into the far end of the beach from one of the off-shore yachts at anchor when its two occupants unloaded a picnic lunch and the comely female stripped off her top. We’d intended to go naked on this otherwise empty expanse, but couldn’t hardly with a tedious badge in such proximity, and resolved to sample only the most secretive of venues thereafter.

Hiring a private taxi to deliver us to the small boat harbor on the opposite side of the island the following day, we were dropped off by skiff on tiny, vacant Hogg Island a mile or so offshore, where the skin diving was kelp-cluttered but the island itself provided a lush, peaceful, completely private little place, a full morning void of others, with perfect weather.

Grenada served as a hub for a variety of evocatively-named places, inspiring a spontaneous island hoping spree north. Though favored by sailors and sport fishermen, we were dismayed to find Union Island a bit disheveled for how pricey it proved, having little to do with the tropics and too much to do with turning a fast buck. But its proximity to a cherished dreamscape of mine made going there requisite: years ago while paging through a glossy coffee table publication entitled simply The Caribbean, I paused awestruck at one aerial photo that to me embodied the very essence of the entire region; the Tobago Cays - jewels afloat in an ethereal cobalt universe, improbably perfect yet actually somewhere on this same planet - glimpses, surely, of heaven. 

And from Union they lay but a boat ride away. We had to go.

An ungainly charter vessel that fell far short of our ideal of romantic cruising bobbed dockside, and the dozen or so other couples that crammed aboard squashed any notions of intimacy I’d envisioned those years before when first imagining this foray to exotica, but everything was so prohibitively expensive that hiring our own boat was out of the question. Our loutish companions began guzzling at the all-you-can drink offerings before we even cast off, and the strong afternoon breeze muddied the turquoise right out of the usually crystalline waters –  disappointments that left us feeling foolish for ever signing up for such a circus. 

Swimming ashore at the first cay visited, the lot of us crowded onto the small beach we’d anchored just off of, and it was all we could do to separate ourselves enough to spread out a towel. By then we felt completely short-changed, and swam back to the boat where at least we could claim empty deck space and savor a semblance of privacy. Paradiso al fiasco.

Our disenchantment was complete as we headed back to Union when passing by one of the smaller, prettier cays only to find a t-shirt concession stand right on its otherwise lustrous beach, totally dissolving what little sheen remained right off the whole shabby experience. Hell, we’d discovered more pristine places than this before on countless occasion – just stumbled on to them, and had had them all to ourselves, and…and oh, hell, what’s the point of bitching about it? 

Nirvana is where you find it. We’d just have to keep looking.

In our over-priced room that night Babe flamed a big doobie as we spent hours transfixed by a much-anticipated lunar eclipse – ultimately the finest and only cheap entertainment around - my main recollection being how the light-play gave the moon a much more spherical look than I’d ever previously perceived it to be, an effect that abated as our high wore off and the earth’s shadow shifted, and we recalled we were still wasting precious time on dismal Union Island. 

Conversely, Carricou Island – the next anchorage north - proved old-time Caribbean, closer to Hemingway’s ideal, not Jimmy Buffet’s, which is to say unaffected, unpretentious, guileless, organic, poor. Thankfully not a tourism-based economy, Carricou was just people getting by, supported tenuously with haphazard infrastructure. This was clearly someone’s home, not someone else’s temporary escape, and certainly because of this its inhabitants were the most amicable we’d met anywhere in the Windward Antilles; genuine, warm, responsive and even a little proud as we admired their gardens, procured home-grown fruit from their stalls or played along sometimes teasingly with their laughing, well-mannered children. We were quite charmed, and sensed the feelings were mutual. 

Under an overcast morning we flagged down a van to take us to the island’s very southern tip, the road running right across the small runway we’d landed on just days before, where a large sign cautioned “STOP!: Watch Both Ways For Aircraft Before Crossing!” – one of the more endearing public safety warnings we’d ever encountered. Beyond the airport civilization thinned out among rolling hill country, and at the top of the farthest hill stood a moribund, essentially vacant inn where we bargained for transport out to one of the many small islands that could be gazed at from its empty restaurant’s 180 degree overlook amidst a half-dozen others scattered across a fabulous horizon. The proprietor struck us as far removed from his east-coast big city origins and wound a little too tight for the tropics. When the boy who had been assigned to whisk us off couldn’t get the outboard motor started he incurred the owner’s wrath in a barrage of thickly Brooklyn-accented obscenities until the little motor finally coaxed to life, and we were eventually deposited on an islet of ten or so acres of thickly vegetated sand all to ourselves for the better part of the day. Given our preferred mode of undress, we were grateful for the thick cloud cover – the water and the air remained quite warm – almost toasty, and given the absence of any shade or breeze we would have otherwise burnt our bare asses crisp. 

Giving up hope for an afternoon taxi back into town from the desolate inn, we began hiking the three mile return, crossing farms and a massive cemetery where goats occupied themselves pruning overgrowth around weathered head stones, then boarded an over-loaded bus van heading back in to town, squeezing in among a sweaty but jovial throng of locals. 

Returning to Trinidad we caught the once-a-week flight to Guiana now that our papers were in order - to borrow a cliché from old spy movies. Unfortunately, nothing was in order at Guiana Airways; what was suppose to be a two hour layover turned into a seven hour ordeal for a four hour flight, followed by more hours waiting in Guiana customs inside a cramped hundred degree terminal - testimonial to the dynamics of a fine-tuned bureaucracy. Adding insult to injury, we then had to locate our packs in a ceiling-high pyramid of luggage created by the Olympic-hopeful baggage handlers aggressively practicing their hammer-throw with results that would have impressed the Pharaohs. Climbing up to sort through this man-made mountain I made the disturbing discovery that every item that hadn’t cracked or been ripped open exhibited suspicious foot-long razor slashes, and I’m guessing the only thing that spared ours this fate was its vintage military surplus pedigree. After I’d repelled back down and one unbelieving fellow passenger asked how on earth I ever managed to locate our things, I confidently advised him the visibility improves considerably once you get above the tree line. 

Being the only non-locals arriving we had no problem attracting a cab driver to deposit us at a camp I’d read of that I only guessed was somewhere in the thirty miles between the airport and the capital. The patient fellow give it his best shot for the better part of an hour only to find a locked swing gate at the end of what there, at that time of night, seemed the darkest road on earth. He knew of a few decent places in town, and getting through the sparse traffic initially proved effortless enough until rounding a corner in the city center to find the streets awash with midnight revelers who soon had the car surrounded, sticking their heads in admonishing us to “Go back! Go back! – the police are up ahead!” emphatically, until we did just that. 

Morning in Georgetown found us strolling in the shadows of the government administration buildings - largest wooden structures in the world – massive tinderboxes of the old world school of design prudently devised from the country’s most abundant materials; teak, mahogany, birch, unfortunately set among pitifully uninspired concretions and claptraps. 

Contacting bush pilots in the capital proved somewhat problematic, the condition of bush strips indeterminable, and the charter rates outrageous. Someone finally suggested we just hire a boat to go up the Damarara – as big a river as we’d ever seen which, if nothing else would theoretically also provide an infinite choice of campsites every night. So we searched out boat charters and were eventually connected through a fellow at one of the larger hotels who would escort us far upriver to what we understood was essentially a ideally located permanent camp.

The snaking delta paralleled the shore its last kilometer or so as we were driven along the coast veering inland to where a cabin cruiser awaited several miles upstream. By the time we’d stowed our gear below deck the capital had disappeared behind us replaced by a scattering of farms above and behind dark eroded banks, and then, as we swept up the first major tributary – the Parguesa and undisturbed jungle. Within an hour we spun into an even smaller waterway surprising vultures gnawing on a big black freshly killed constrictor that hadn’t quite made it in to the water before being ambushed, now draped lifeless across a car-size boulder jutting out into the river. The boats quieting mufflers permitted sounds of the wilderness to percolate through effortlessly and facilitated our on-going intrusions - even on a rascally troupe of marmosets launching themselves from tree top to tree top directly overhead. 

All this lushness continued well into afternoon when we broke through to lowland swamps as spiky grass tufts replaced the tall leafy woods except where clumped island-like sporadically in the mist. A dock jutted into view and a ways behind it an enormous and incongruous log and thatch dwelling – to be all ours for the next several days. If that wasn’t enough of a shock, we were then introduced to ‘our cook’ – a sweet faced girl from a local village charged with meeting our every culinary desire. We hadn’t signed up for the Conde Nast treatment, but there it was, like it or not, and we weren’t sure liked it. But the locale was the important thing, and after all, we were in the thick of Guiana’s hinterland out here where tiny, ill-named marsh tyrants bobbed from reed to reed, army ant highways bisected the ground, and a river full of caimans were all just a stone’s throw away from soft pillows under white netting. 

Nui, our cook, seemed too young and carefree to have two children, smiled perpetually, and possessed a puritan work ethic. Though her English was rudimentary her culinary skills were impressive. She was constantly flustered by our letting her decide what to prepare – hell, we’d have been happy with sliced fruit. Between her services and the big house’s appointments, we felt a little duped - we hadn’t signed up for all this comfort and would have much rather have preferred living out of the camping gear we’d been lugging around with us if it meant more intimacy with the surrounding exotica. Not that we didn’t find any wildlife close by; before the end of the second day we’d observed red howler monkeys, agouti pacas, aricari’s, turtles, a snake, plus countless bird, butterfly and insect species. It was enough to keep me reloading the camera, but somehow lacked the scale and drama and risks that, for example, the Orinoco’s or Daintree river forests offered right outside our hammocks each night and each morning in terrain that required some serious commitment just to survive in. 

Our first night out on the river Nui’s uncle toted us around in a dinghy shinning his spotlight on night blooming lily’s under a full moon and blinding lurking caimans that froze like the proverbial deer-in-the-headlights. We followed closely as one un-amused alpha male ambled toward shore, and as Babe and I stood up unsteadily for a better view, Uncle withdrew and swung a lasso overhead then shot it out on to the gator’s snout triggering the creature – bigger than our boat- to explode like a depth charge, rocketing Babe backward on top of me as the both of us pan-caked at the bottom of the dinghy laughing our terrified asses off. 

Daytime dugout forays up a local rivulet through a virtual cave of overhanging branches was a superb jungle-book sampler, following taper’s tracks, drifting quietly up on unsuspecting amphibians and fantastic sized bugs. And it was tranquility itself not hearing any motors, not having electricity for days. 

But we soon grew frustrated with the limited exploration possibilities; hiking - owing to the surrounding swamps and rivers, and no boat access without a guide – at his leisure. After returning to Georgetown I couldn’t help but wonder if we couldn’t have done a lot better on our own. On the whole what we’d seen of the real countryside had pretty much been a tease. As it was, we left feeling as though we’d been kept on a tether the whole time there. 

Tobago  - Trinidad’s littler sister island, had held a special place in my psyche ever since one Saturday in my tenth autumn when Swiss Family Robinson debuted at the local movie house – a seminal event at that impressionable age in drab L.A., the most thrilling vicarious entertainment I’d ever experienced, proffering all the excitement my dull little existence lacked, much of which was presented through the eyes of the movie families youngest son. I went back to see it three times, and clearly recall when Filmed in Tobago, West Indies in the opening credits appeared, and how by the movie’s end I vowed I’d go there some day or die trying. Such are the priorities imaginative youngsters set for themselves and the goals they define a life worth living by.

The little fiberglass ragtop two-seater seemed perfect for plying Tobago’s palm-lined roads, where traffic was non-existent as I hoped against hope to find the very locales the movie was filmed on, perhaps through meeting someone who knew something - anything, of the filming these forty years later, and this required our traversing the place end to end with mixed results. We did encounter one old-timer who recalled how a hurricane had pounded the island during production and how the Disney film crew played a noteworthy role in the recovery efforts to the profound thanks of local residents. Attitudes had changed a bit since, best evidenced by the unprovoked scowls and insults posed by one child we encountered on a morning walk and another one in town. But only the islands children seemed to harbor this rude and unexpected grudge.

Speyside’s considerable distance from Tobago’s resorts resulted in few visitors, and we were set upon by hawkers eager to sell any sundry and quite possibly stolen wares and edibles before we even settled into our weather-worn rental house, where I was compelled to eject two of the more aggressive lads. Another fellow clearly trying to impress us offered a diving excursion out to ‘protected’ reefs that were specifically and officially off-limits to boats and divers. Taking the morale high road, we resorted to jammed, if small, sightseeing boat out to Little Tobago - a designated Brown Booby colony that also attracted sea eagles, shearwaters and various shore birds that congregated on the designated sanctuary in their thousands where they’d grown nominally tolerant to handfuls of visitors at a time. And it was out there that the vistas the little island offered began looking almost familiar – like something I’d seen in a previous life time or, perhaps, as a ten year old in a darkened movie theatre one Saturday afternoon. 

With this little venture under our belt we had now sampled the extreme far corners of the Caribbean, formulating decidedly mixed impressions, not the least of which was that in the process we’d spent too much time in undesirable locals – of which the Caribbean had far more than we could have anticipated - and in the process we confirmed that inferior experiences on islands are greatly magnified by the fact that once you arrive you become essentially their prisoner and remain so until some means of escape can be arranged. 

If, on the other hand, we somehow managed to appropriate an island all to ourselves, the exact opposite was true. Though never easy and requiring no small modicum of preparation, when graced with such an enviable and illusive circumstance the solitude and exclusivity so profoundly absent in our day-to-day lives gives these experiences a truly incomparable quality, which is to say; a world unto one’s own. 

Perhaps it’s not really surprising more escapists don’t attempt it, or more entrepreneurs don’t exploit the concept. The uninitiated tend to construe the notion of a marooning as the antithesis of luxury and safety, and this is more often than not correct. So instead, marketers of tropical bliss have co-opted crap like ‘over-water bungalows’, and other such nonsense synonymous with opulence and invariably at the most obscene prices. Every time I see one of those glossy ads I think of the pristine island we were intentionally abandoned on in central Indonesia, or the one off Australia’s Cape York Peninsula, or the nine acre Eden fifty miles off the coast of Belize with its little palm frond shack, 80 square mile lagoon and dugout canoe - all to ourselves - and the half-dozen other such idylls we lucked upon for a mere pittance, and how, upon leaving each, we had said to each other: we must never tell anyone about this.

The following are John's previous articles for the magazine:

• Late Autumn In Laos ~ In The Laotian Jungle
• Explorations In Nepal ~ Deep In The Hinderlands
• Indonesia ~ Adventure
• Explorations In The Amazon Basin ~ Into The Unknown
• Adventures In Surinam ~ Into The Jungle
• More Adventures In Surinam ~ Explorations

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