A Green Drink with a Pink Umbrella

Last night at the first Tiapos of 2009, The Great Domin-Nik demonstrated her newest healthy energy booster. She says it really does impart a lot of energy, even though it's green. Plotnik decided it'd look better with a pink umbrella.



The Pink Umbrella is because yesterday Plot called Delta Airlines to make sure his and Duck's reservation to St. Lucia through Atlanta, and from Panama back to Saint Plotniko, via Houston, was still intact. It's a good thing he called. Without notifying anybody, Delta had canceled their Atlanta-St.Lucia segment, leaving Plot and Duck to layover three days in Atlanta for the next flight, and therefore miss their friends' pickup on St. Lucia in the sailboat.

So Plotnik fixed the outbound flight. The good part is that Plot and Duck have to leave a few days earlier now, woe woe woe, giving the four old friends, two of them old salts and two of them clearly only invited for their humor, two full weeks to mosey from St. Lucia through St. Vincent, the Grenadines and whatever other little islands are in the way, on their passage back to Grenada, where the boat is docked. You can imagine how good this sounds to Plot and Duck.

The bad part is -- no, there's no bad part.

The return trip is still an open question. After much searching, it appears to be impossible to fly from Grenada to anywhere except one of the neighboring islands. It will only cost $130 to take a 40-minute flight from Grenada to Trinidad, but then from Trinidad to Panama, you have to go either through the Dominican Republic or back through Miami, and it costs a boatload of dubloons -- probably $1300-$1500.

There is one more option -- Air Jamaica flies from Grenada to Kingston, Jamaica, and from there on to Havana, Cuba. OOOOOOOH does that sound good!

But that's for another trip. You sort of have to arrange your Cuba trip through the auspices of some shadow 'education' group, so you don't get busted on your way back into the US of A, and you need advance planning, plus a lot of cash. Not this time.

So Plotnik thought -- wait a second. Trinidad! Grandma Joy was just in Trinidad and she loved it. Trinidad is the island of Indian ancestry and great food, and is said to be one of the true jewels of the Caribbean. Why not just stay there a few days, and then fly home from Port of Spain, Trinidad? Plot and Duck have just enough Delta frequent flyer miles left to pull that one off. Plus, they'd stop in Atlanta again! so they could see JJ-aka-PP one more time.

True, the Plots have been looking forward to spending time in Panama, on a very different adventure, where they could speak Spanish, see and travel through the Panama Canal, check out both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and hoof it with the local campesinos. Trinidad will cost a lot more for everything, and they will have already seen several beautiful Caribbean islands. They may use up the money they'd save on airfare to Panama on hotels and green drinks with pink umbrellas in Trinidad.



This is a nice dilemma to have.

Look at the map -- it appears that the mayor of Port of Spain, Trinidad, would be able to see South America from her house -- it can't be impossible for Plot and Duck to touch webs on Venezuelan soil. Another Pin!

Yes, think of the pins! SO many new pins!