Black and Tans

I met Karly on couchsurfing. There’s a theme here with fun stories from couchsurfing. She lived on the outskirts of Port of Spain, teaching English to Chinese students online. A great woman, we went around Trinidad (Trinnie), visiting beaches with her friends and drinking wine. The people in Trinnies Caribbean warmth is amazing - they’ve a habit of instantly relaxing you, cracking jokes at inappropriate times, and generally the goal of life is to have fun and laugh a lot. A very similar attitude to Irish people. After a few days of beach visits, and waking up hungover, I told Karly I wanted to climb some hills and do some exercise. She suggested Mount Saint Benedict.

Finished her lessons for the day, Karly said she’d come with me. Mount Saint Benedict is a monastery perched on an outcrop of rock, framed by mountains behind it, overlooking the middle portion of Trinidad, and it was within walking distance of where we were. She’d never walked up before, but had visited and told me the icecream was amazing. Perfect. Ease back into the exercise. We walked to the bottom of the road to the monastery, and Karly went in to ask some locals in a bar drinking, what's the best way to walk up. The guys look at each other, shrug, and tell us it’s a biteen dangerous to walk up, better to take a taxi. 24TTD. We could do a hike up around there or walk down or something, but the road is very windy going up.

On the drive up we’re chatting to the taxi man, and he’s telling us it’s actually grand to walk or hike during the day, and that there is one hike that brings you up on top of a ridge with amazing views, a half hour hike when you're up there. He pointed out the road that we’d need to take for that path.

The monastery was founded by a group of Brazilian monks a hundred years ago, and was very pretty, and if the weather hadn’t been misty I imagine the view of the island would be spectacular. We had a bit of natural yogurt with honey and passionfruit, worth the drive up. All in all, a nice little spot. After the mixed messages so far today, Karly wasn’t 100% on where we were going hiking, so she asked the woman at the monastery information desk.

She informed us that there’s none, and if we don’t know it we should consider not taking the road the taxi pointed out. All a bit odd, the taxi man was fairly adamant about the hike. But maybe hill walks aren’t a thing in Trinidad? I checked Maps.me for the craic, but it also had no trail. I still fancied my chances, if we get lost, we get lost, be grand. We know where the road downhill is and have a map in the worst case. Karly was happy to head along with this, so back down the road we went, and we’re chatting away, and she's telling me if we meet a black lad we turn and run, no questions asked, she's not getting robbed here, bloody ‘ell.

So we headed back down the road, took the turn, passed a house, and then- overgrown road, path disappeared. Maybe the information lady was right and there is no path? There were stairs to the right leading up to the monastery, so I gave that a look, it was fairly overgrown too, and an open gate led to a black spot where the monks burned plastic waste. Nice monks. So that been a no go, we decided, fuck it, we’ll see where the main path takes us.

Our moods were still upbeat despite the setbacks. The weather was perfect for hiking, not too warm, not cold, and I was chatting away with Karly about the Wolfe Tones and how they are number one in the Irish charts at the moment. Rambling down the road, we came across a load of little colourful wooden huts on stilts. With the sun shining it made a pretty picture, and we stopped briefly, trying to figure out what they are. Continuing, chatting away, when go tobann! the path ended in a clearing. Nowhere to go from here.

A buzz and a sharp pain. What?

More buzzing, another sharp pain on the leg. That’s not good.

I slapped it and a black and yellow carcass dropped to the ground

It dawns on me what those colourful boxes are.

‘Ah shite, run like fuck Karly run!.

The escape route was back past the huts, colours turning black with bees. The bees were pretty agitated. They didn’t take well to someone slapping one of their own dead. When a bee stings you, apparently it releases pheromones to attract other bees. And not the fun pheromones, no no. Attack pheromones. When said bee dies, it releases a lot more pheromones. Fuck!

We put our heads down and ran like fuck down the path we came, slapping and flailing at the beads, who were swarming around us by now- fastest 500 metres I ever made. Even half a kilometre away the bees were on to us, I got them all over my forehead, arms, and legs, Karly brought a few on her jeans and in her hair, and had a nasty few on her neck- we get halfway down the road, look at each other, and start laughing- hope you’re not allergic to bee stings dog!

We kept going downhill, and didn’t die- turns out it wasn’t the black lads we should have been afraid of at all. It was black and tans. We didn’t even get honey out of it. We went into the bar where the lads had recommended a taxi. The stools were empty, we ordered two drinks, beer for Karly, a pint of the black stuff for me. It was the worst-poured Guinness I’d ever seen.