Okay, now pretend that this one is from Wednesday.

This is our second full day in Charlotteville. It's supposed to be a quaint little fishing village on a nice little bay, well off the beaten path. It's cute enough, and there's a bay with a tiny strip of sand--if you're really determined to use it as a beach, you could.

We went looking for a place to eat lunch yesterday, and found exactly one place that was open. It had two items on the menu: kingfish and chips, or shrimp and chips (oddly pricey, too--US$10 and $20, respectively).

When you see only one open restaurant in a town, you start to think that it must be a poor sort of place. Lots of people just seem to hang out on the streets, on the small dock in the center of town, on random benches scattered around. There were little tourist businesses everywhere--craft shops and cafes and the like--but most were closed.

The weird part is, there seems to be plenty of money washing around this place. There's a nice library which looks brand-new, a disturbingly well-manicured soccer field, and some nice-looking homes. A fair number of swanky cars can be seen in the town, blaring soca or hip-hop out of some crazy aftermarket amp. Yes, you see the spinning hubcaps, too.

And everybody seems to have a cell phone, and the internet cafes have DSL. And we're in a dinky town on a dinky bay, surrounded by jungle. Definitely an odd mix of worlds.

For us, the important part of Charlotteville is proving to be Pirate's Bay, which is about a 15-minute hike over a fat hill from the town center. After climbing a dirt road into the jungle, we decended about 180 stone stairs to get the the beach. It's unbelievably beautiful down there--a barely-visited beach in a little cove, surrounded by forest. We'll post pictures.

On our first walk over there, we met an amazing Trinidadian fellow who gave us a quick rundown of some of the tropical plants. He makes some fantastic hand-carved crafts out of coconuts (no room in the backpack for them, unfortunately), built a little shack for himself on the beach, and spends his spare time gardening in the forest--plantains, flowers, corn, among other things. He even had a documentary made about his craft work. And he's just chillin' on this beach, hanging out with tourists. Fascinating guy--grows or catches most of his food, but owns a car and a four-bedroom house in NE Trinidad. Looks like the classic rasta beach man, but has a sharp business mind, as well.

Anyhoo, we're just hanging out on the beach most of the time, sunburns permitting. Not much else to do here...and that's probably a good thing. After spending our first night in a dirty, buggy motel, we switched to a much nicer and slightly cheaper place called Seaville Chateau. Sounds fancy, huh? Not really, but at least there's a kitchen, a/c, and a TV. The TV is probably not a good thing, but at least we can cook for ourselves, so that we're not at the mercy of overpriced fish and chips.