Chronicles of a Shoemaker's Daughter

It is still November 16th and our Grenadian "rescue team" had gone so far as to canvas a number of exhausted and confused tourists, who just wanted to get to Grenada. Most of us looked like the proverbial "deer caught in the headlights" by now. The Grenadian gentlemen, enusred us that they would find us suitable accomodation, that we could afford. In short order, with the help of an airport representative and the Port-of-Spain telephone directory, they had narrowed downd the choices of digs, but it seemed very unlikely that LIAT would ever reimburse us if we opted not to stay at the Belair. Several couples/families were quite distraught by now, as their luggage never made it from Barbados. I felt a bit smug by this stage, because I had been travelling only with carry-on bags, packed to the brim, mind you, and I was sitting on them! Some travellers opted to wait all night at the airport. Other passengers/families were Caribbean nationals and had family or friends i...

When I think about the second leg of my November journey, I can still hear the sweet Caribbean-accented voices of the flight attendants, "welcome to LIAT, the airline of the Caribbean" ... in retrospect, they should warn passengers that LIAT is an acronym for "leave island any time." In my case, though, I thing the airplane gods must have really wanted me to have some sort of semi-romantic interlude in Trinidad, which incidentally was nowhere on my travel itinerary. It was Friday the 16th, not Friday the 13th ... but there were elements at work that day that conspired against a smooth, uneventful transition from a place in the Leeward Islands or northern(ish) Caribbean to an island in the Windward or southern part of the Caribbean. My friends on the St. Kitts & Nevis Friendly Forum found this little side-story quite amusing, and they wondered how I have become so gifted at the art of embellishment. What is really sad/wonderful about this little tale is that it...