Even if you’ve seen my Flickr Photos of Trinidad you may have missed this one — it’s a detail of the damage inflicted on my rental car when I backed into a post during a tropical storm. When I brought the car back to the airport Econo-Car Rentals charged me an additional $1700 Trinidad Dollars for the damage, as it affected three separate panels on the car — bumper, brake light and body. Fortunately that sum translates into just over $300 CAD.

I wouldn’t have to pay a cent if I could get them to send a copy of the repair bill sent to the good folks at American Express, but I’ve been trying to do that almost two months with no success yet.

I can’t say for sure if the people at Econo-Car are just on “island time” or if the opportunity to rip me off was to sweet to pass up. Whatever the case, the only way I could possibly expedite this would be to fly back down there and complain in person, and until ticket prices fall below three hundred bucks that’s not really an option.

So if you’re headed down to Trinidad and/or Tobago and are looking for a cheap and cheerful rental car, my advice is to walk straight pass the Econocar desk and park yourself next door at Thrifty. You’ll spend more but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for…

And if you don’t heed my advice and find yourself driving a beige Mazda 323 with license plate number PBL 2015, kindly do me the favour of letting me know if those damages have been repaired. I need closure on this!

Now with share-y, taggy, web 2.0 good-ness!

I’ve got about forty photos up so far on my Flickr page, and also a couple of videos on YouTube. The photos are a bit of a work in progress—I’m still adding descriptions and I don’t know the names of some of the other authors at the NALIS reading.

Little help, Ray?

Almost one car per capita makes for a wicked rush hour – the 1 hour drive to the airport took 3 this afternoon!

One thing you may not know about my trip to Trini is that I’ve rented a car. A right hand-drive car. And today Ray and I are going to attempt to drive through morning rush hour traffic all the way from our hotel in St. James to the town of San Fernando, down the coast of the Caribbean Sea.

Oh, and unlike Bermuda where the entire island has a speed limit of 20 km/h, there are lots of accidents here!

Writing this from my hotel balcony, overlooking the rolling hills of St. James. More soon!