Goodbye South America for awhile

Carnaval at the streets of Port of Spain

After Paramaribo, Suriname I took the flight to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The visit to Trninidad was hellish experience, I never ever return to that country anymore! Immigration of Trinidad didn't give me permit to enter the country, because I didn't had any return flight booked. Also the officer didn't understood how on earth I can travel without having a) accomodation booked before hand and b) return flight booked beforehand. I had to buy a onward flight from Trinidad to Guyana before they let me enter the country. Ridiculous!!!! Secondly it was carnaval time in Trinidad and all hotels, guesthouses, etc.. were already booked for two days festival, which is the second biggest after Rio's carnaval (at least locals stated so). The city of Port of Spain is ugly, noisy, unclean, etc... The music was played from huge loudspeakers and it was like a midsummer festival in Finland. All shops, restauramts, etc... were closed. All the officers were not polite, but more or less arrogant. I'm feeling soooo happy I'm out of this country and don't need to visit it anymore. Trinidad & Tobago is not worth of visiting at all...

Carnaval time

On the monday morning I was flying to Georgetown, Guyana. As I thought earlier this is more or less like UK with Caribbean flavours. English is spoken, traffic is left hand sided, buildings are like from UK and the culture somewhat British. Staying here couple of days before saying goodbye to South America and continuing to Caribbean islands. The rest of my travel itinerary looks today like this: Guyana -> Barbados -> Grenada -> St. Vincent -> St. Lucia -> Dominica -> Antigua -> Jamaica -> St. Kitts -> Dominican Republic -> Haiti (if possible) -> Bahamas -> Venezuela -> Suriname -> Back at home.

Thus I'll be returning to South America and Suriname, because KLM has Promo Awards for it's Flying Blue members to fly back to Europe either from Panama City or Paramaribo until the end of March with 50% of award miles. I'll select Parbo, because it's much more pleasent city than Panama. Therefore I'll have a chance to taste still bushwacker drink and enjoy the dutch friendliness. Meanwhile my passport starts to look like a huge collection of visas and stamps and some officials on the immigration has said already to me that. Hopefully they can still find free space to place their stamps, I wouldn't like to involve process of acquiring a new passport during this trip...

Inca trail (and Machu Picchu) stamps at passport