Trinidad Time

It still seems a bit unreal that I am writing to you from Trinidad in the Caribbean, onboard Logos 2. It has been a long held wish to be onboard one of the ships in the Caribbean and experience the great book sales here. The past couple of days I have been kept busy helping out in the holds and the bookshop. But lets come back to that shortly.

On Friday afternoon, I said goodbye to the family again for the 2nd time in 12 days and got the train to Copenhagen airport. Everything seemed to be going fine until I was waiting at the gate to board the plane to Gatwick and I noticed that the line didn't seem to be going very far. 30 mins after the plane was due to take over, an airport worker told us that our plane was still in Florence. There was another plane but it was too small for everyone and didn't have a crew ready. The last 36 people to go through the gate would have to go to Malmo airport in Sweden to fly to Gatwick. So sometime later, there I was in a minibus full of fellow Brits and one Swede, heading over the bridge back to Malmo. I was soon kicking myself for leaving the Swedish Krona I had with Heather, as it was already past the time when I had expected to be sat at my aunts house eating my dinner.

Anyway, by 10.30 I was at Gatwick, rejoicing that I had my luggage, which had been sent on the plane from Copenhagen . My aunt (who lives 40 mins from Gatwick) and I ended up eating our dinner at 11.30 but it was worth the wait.

On Saturday it was a 10am flight to Trinidad. When it was booked, I was told that it was a direct flight to Port of Spain but after 8 1/2 hours flying, we actually landed in Barbados first. I made sure I went off the plane onto the tarmac, just so I could say I had been. An hour later we were on our way for the short 40 mins flight to Trinidad.

I was glad to find it wasn't raining when I arrived as I had been hearing all the previous week about the rain. Amazingly, since I got here we have only had the briefest of showers. Otherwise the weather is nice - not too hot and fairly bright.

I stayed up as late as I could Saturday night to try to overcome any jetlag - it was about 9pm when I got to bed - 3am in Denmark.

Sunday it was straight to work - helping stock the shelves in the bookfair after a very busy Saturday. We probably sold 12-14,000 books in that one day. That is a lot to restock.

In the afternoon, a group of us went to a nearby hotel to watch the Euro championships final. A very worthy win to Spain. It was a good final and it did seem strange watching the game in the middle of the afternoon.

When we got back to the ship, it was straight back into the fray, helping keep the shelves tidy, answering visitors questions etc. As I have joined the late night holds team, pulling books from the days sales,between 10 and midnight, I had a nap for a couple of hours then it was down to the holds to get up the stock to replace that bought by the 4000+ visitors that had come through the bookshop. Incidently, all these pictures were taken today, Monday, a much quieter day.

Trinidad is a remarkable place. It is an ideal location for this ship. The people here are English speaking, relatively well off and a high percentage are Christians. They love books and have very few bookshops here in Port of Spain. That is why the ship can come back every couple of years for a month at a time and still be enthusiastically welcomed and see such good sales. On some days it has averaged €20 per person. A much needed boost to the organisations finances.

In all my years on the Doulos, we never had the bookshop as stacked up with books as this ship is but it is essential if we are going to keep having the good sales. Even one of the meeting rooms has been converted into a book shop for all the "deal bag" special offers. It is exciting to see all the people filling up their baskets.

The area we are berthed in the city of Port of Spain, is not very attractive or what you would think of when you think about the Caribbean. It is a long way to the nearest beach. But I am here to work not be a tourist so that is not a problem.

Thankfully, due to the ship being sponsored by a local broadband internet company, we have Skype here so it is not difficult to speak to Heather back in Denmark. It's just hard to get the Liam in the cabin to talk to him!

Hopefully Heather will do a blog soon to give her perspective on what is happening.