After only two minutes a car came by and stopped right in front of me. It was a nice big Audi, one of my favorite cars, and the driver told me that he would take me. I threw my bag in the back seat, sat down in the front seat and said to him that the other guy was going to St. Laurent too and he was first. The black dude came over and asked but the driver just said there was no more room and drove off. I felt really bad for that guy, but I also didn’t want to take a risk of not getting a ride. I still had some ten hours of travelling, boating, bussing and passport stamping ahead of me before reaching the guesthouse in Paramaribo again. The black guy was in his own country and his own language and had only three hours hitchhiking to do.
The driver was a really nice guy even if he was a bit racist maybe leaving that black guy at the side of the road. He was a retired French policeman in his late fifties who had worked in France and some of its colonies. He told me very interesting stories about Devil’s Island and its inmates.
The conditions were horrendous in those years, and the prison was closed in the late 1940s. About eighty thousand prisoners had died there and the ones who finished their sentences were just moved to the mainland, were they often caught by local bandits who enslaved them or sold them. Some prisoners were so desperate that they mutilated themselves so that they didn’t have to work anymore. Some blinded themselves or bought slime/spit from prisoners infected with Tuberculosis. It’s hard to imagine that people would choose to get infected with a deadly disease. Another weird story he told me was about how many poor pregnant women from Suriname would cross the river border as soon as their water broke so that they gave birth in French Guyana, letting the baby claim a French Passport and a monthly welfare paycheck based on European standards. He wasn’t happy about that.
After three hours driving and one roadblock we arrived in St Laurent and he dropped me off at the docking place for the motorized canoes. I took one back to Suriname. I was dropped off at the immigration office next to the water and I was stamped back into the country.
A taxi driver tried to rip me off, saying it was very far to the boat dock where the buses to Paramaribo were. The mofo asked me seventeen US dollars for a four-minute ride. The customs officer even helped him by saying this was true. I told him he was crazy and just walked there in less than ten minutes, even with my backpack. From there I took a minivan back to Paramaribo. I paid about sixteen US dollars for this and shared the minivan with a girl and a grandma with a cute little baby. A quick three-hour ride for the same money as what the taxi driver asked me before. I arrived back at my first guesthouse early in the evening.
That was a lot of details, but I just want to make sure you get a sense of how most of my transport went, all over the third world. I had to be constantly careful not to get ripped off or treated like some dumb tourist. Worldwide, I’d say that the ratio of generally friendly and helpful people to those who try to take as much of your money as possible is about fifty-fifty. This means that you have to make a judgment call with every person you meet. It’s easy to treat the good ones as if they weren’t, but you have to take that risk. I made a promise to myself that I would take hitchhikers with me once I was back in Holland.
Suriname: Paramaribo part two
Once I was back at my old guesthouse I showered and started talking to some new guests. It was Thursday night and I was told that Havana Lounge was the wildest place to go out. Me, a Dutch guy and an English girl from the guesthouse went there but I couldn’t do any damage there – unless you count damage to my liver and my lungs. I was pounding the drinks and smoked like a chimney. The Dutch guy was into the English girl but I could spot him being friend-zoned a mile away. The club was filled with Dutch girls looking for a Surinamese banana. Dutch girls don’t do it for me anymore, so who am I to judge? After all, I’m totally into Asian and Latin girls now.
The English girl went off with some Surinamese guy and the Dutch guy talked to a Dutch woman all night. I tried to hook up with a girl of Indian and Italian heritage, but I couldn’t even get a kiss out of her. I went home to get some much-needed sleep.
That Friday I wanted to catch on some sleep before I went out, but after I collapsed I didn’t wake up till about one at night. I didn’t feel the need to shower, shave, dress up and still go out that night.
Saturday was my last night out in Paramaribo and I had already given up on capturing a flag there. That left me with the all-or-nothing option, and I approached at least ten girls in just two hours – without much success. But there was a group of four girls hanging around with two guys. I had my eye on the skinny tall dark girl with an amazing round ass. I was pounding beer after beer and didn’t see it happening in my mind since I’d already failed at approaching so many girls that night. But suddenly the girl named Rachel walked up to me and asked me to dance.
I danced a bit with her and her three girlfriends. That felt a lot better and it was something I had gotten used to: being the center of attention. My player mood was still off, though, and my words came out slow and were still lame. I even mispronounced words a few times. In my own language! Back at the bar I talked to the guys and girlfriends a bit. They decided to leave and I exchanged phone numbers with Rachel. I expected to never hear from her again.
When I woke up the next morning I had an extreme hangover and a vicious cold. I stayed in bed all day and felt a bit feverish and all-over rotten. My nose was clogged and I had trouble breathing. I texted Rachel for a meet-up anyway. I was going to leave in two days but I thought What the hell, a quitter never wins and a winner never quits.
We met around seven at night in a quiet waterfront bar. We talked a bit and it looked like she was definitely interested. She even paid for some drinks herself. There was no time for several dates over the next couple of days and I wondered what her plans with me were. I felt truly sick that night.
Rachel wanted to visit a girlfriend who was working at another bar and turned out to be a hottie too with nice boobs. I had fun in that bar with the regulars there. After a while Rachel and I went back to my guesthouse. All the people who were still sitting on the guesthouse porch saw me sneaking the girl in through the side gate, but not the personnel.
We took a hot shower together, but this just made me cough only more since now everything in my nose and throat was liquefied. I kept as much as possible in but was fighting an uphill battle with my snot reserves.
Rachel had a cute face and her body was simply amazing. I couldn’t stop touching her big round butt. It was so firm it was nearly muscular. We kissed a lot and walked back to the bedroom. Her skin was all shiny from the shower gel and although I was quite suntanned I looked pale as a vampire next to her pitch-black skin. I had never made love to such a dark girl. The two black girls in Brazil were a lot lighter than her. Ever since I’d reached the north of South America I’d made it my mission to find a cute black girl to have sex with and now the moment was there. She gave me a blowjob and then rode me like a cowboy. She was only twenty-three years old and her body felt so good that night. I was sick as a dog and had a fever but I forgot all about it. We made love for a long time. She kept saying that she couldn’t believe I was almost thirty-five.
We were up for a second round when her girlfriend called and asked her where she was. We put our clothes back on and went to meet her friend in another bar. She was accompanied by a guy she’d met in the first bar. He was a loudmouth drunk claiming to be some kind of big gangster. He was all big talk and kept ordering drinks that night. The fever and the drinks were hitting me hard and I said I wanted to go back and sleep. I took a taxi and Rachel came an hour later after she made sure her girlfriend went home safely. We banged again before we passed out and I was glued to her body for the rest of the night.
The next morning she went home and I smuggled her outside again. Of course some guests saw me and they congratulated me on my score. There were a few Dutch guys of Surinamese heritage around and they kept praising me. She did have a really banging body. That day I was
still sick but I went to a lot of logistical trouble to send a package home. The taxi driver drove all round town to get me to some outside office of a company that sends packages to Holland. I took the bus back to the center and found out that the taxi driver had taken the long way round to make a few extra dollars. “What a bastard,” I thought, but it also reminded me of all the times I cheated people out of their money when I was a cab driver myself. Once I’d sent the package my backpack was about seven kilos lighter and it was a pleasure carrying it around again. I bought some more Dutch food and longed to go home more than ever. The day I went home was less than three weeks away, but that was still a while.
That evening Rachel came by my place and we had some terrific sex again and I took some naked pictures of her. We got up in the middle of the night and said goodbye to each other. I still have contact with her from time to time.
A taxi picked me up at four in the morning. This cabbie was in a good mood, talked a lot and brought me to the airport. The sounds of Inner Circle with its famous song Sweat rang in my head, but this time I didn’t think of Evita in Lima but only of the beautiful black girls I was going to meet in T & T and Jamaica.
Chapter Seven – The Caribbean
Trinidad and Tobago – Port of Spain
A short flight later I arrived in Port of Spain, the capital of this small island state. After the usual struggle, which in this case included a local bus and lots of walking in the hot sun, I found my guesthouse. The place was quite a dump and a room without bathroom still cost twenty US dollars. The woman working there was one of the ugliest and least attractive women I had ever seen in my life.
It was obvious that the busy week before had taken its toll on my body. I was still sick and didn’t do much more than getting some food and resting a lot.
The weather was terrible so my plan to go to the beach for a day failed. Since I only had three nights there I needed to get my butt in gear and go out at night.
I found a place called Stumble-In, which had a couple of very hot girls inside, but I was too tired to get in the right mood to do anything.
There were no taxis around and a couple of rich kids dropped me off at the guesthouse. It was very nice of them to do so, and they gave me advice on where to go for a good party, but I was too short on time to go there.
I decided then and there it had been a stupid decision to go to Trinidad and Tobago for only three nights. If I ever go back there it will be for at least a week and with much more money.
The third day I walked around the city as much as possible to at least get a glimpse of life in T and T. I tried the local specialty called Shark and Bake, a big chunk of fried shark meat on a bun. I really liked it and had the feeling all that protein gave me some extra power. I went out that night with an Italian guy to Stumble-In again. The night was OK, but it wasn’t cheap and pretty much useless since I had no place to take a girl if I succeeded in getting one. The woman who owned the guesthouse had made that perfectly clear to me.
Italian Dude and I walked back together to the guesthouse and two hours of sleep later a taxi picked me up in front of the guesthouse and drove me to the airport.
In my half-sleep in the taxi I nearly had a vision about seeing my friends and family again in Holland. My life would be so different once I returned home, and I had no real plans for the future except for writing and publishing this book.
Jamaica – Kingston
Sleepy as I still was I had not been paying much attention and took the wrong bus after the first change from the airport and ended up in Trench Town, the famous neighborhood where Bob Marley grew up. People were staring at me and my backpack in that local bus. You could see in their eyes that they wondered what the hell I was doing there. Trench Town is one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. There are at least two murders in Kingston EVERY day. Luckily I could speak English here and I soon found the right bus without getting robbed or shanked just two weeks before heading home.
The hostel was pretty cool and I met some nice people there. One of them was Mark, an English black guy of Jamaican heritage. I convinced him to go out to Club Quad. Mark surprised me by walking up to hotties very quickly and started talking to them without hesitation. He didn’t get anywhere with them but in his defense, they looked like straight up gold diggers or high-class hookers but it was admirable. Club Quad, a four-storey club with an expensive top floor was very disappointing and a complete cock-fest, with very few girls.
We walked over from Club Quad to Paddy Royal, a twenty-minute walk. According to Mark it was a mix between a regular club and a strip club. I would say it was more of a strip joint with lots of freelance girls inside. The entrance fee was low and the beer was cheap. It was a sleazy place inside, with a stage with girls stripping and shaking their asses and lots of dudes around it and some girls too. I think some of the girls were lesbians and they were daggering the shit out of each other. There were some guys playing pool in the back and lots of girls around who if you gave them some eye contact would grind up to you for half-a-minute and then straight-up ask you some hefty fee, like five hundred Jamaican dollars.
I gave one of them a hundred because that seemed to be the regular price, and she had kind of cornered me and started grinding on me when I came out of the toilet. Some big Rasta dudes were looking over and I figured I’d better pay her something to avoid trouble. I only did that once because I’m not interested in paying for pussy
This is also the place I met an English friend of Mark’s, named Peter. Peter was a short, white, poor looking fifty-something guy with greasy hair, a heavy English accent and a Jamaican wife back in the UK. He was always bragging about getting girls, but I never saw him with one (without emptying his pockets). Mark and Peter had known each other a long time and Peter supposedly had a lot of knowledge of Jamaica and especially Trench Town. According to him he was the only white guy allowed in Trench Town. I wasn’t impressed – I’d gone in there and got out alive. He was always high and drunk and I disliked him from the start. He didn’t like me either and was jealous I was going out with Mark. I was talking to Mark and Peter was giving him a drunken rant. Mark just kept talking to me without even acknowledging Peter’s existence. After a while Peter just walked away. That was the second time I was impressed by Mark.
Most travelers I meet are complete beta males but Mark had this alpha thing going on. I thought I could learn a thing or two from him and kept an eye on him.
Mark and I went out on Saturday night and ended up in a club named Fiction. The place was half-empty on a Saturday night and barely had any girls inside. Some foreigner with no game was trying to talk up some of the black hotties inside. It was embarrassing to watch; the guy sat next to the girl and tried to pull some words out of her. She was clearly giving him all the signals that she didn’t give a rat’s ass about him. He kept offering her a drink and she said yes, maybe to get him out of her face. I enjoyed watching this train wreck about to happen. He gave her the drink, sat next to her again, she barely left a spot open on the edge of the couch. As soon she had the drink in her hand, she turned her shoulder on him and his attempts to talk to her. He walked off like a beaten dog with his tail between his legs.
Like I said, there weren’t many people inside and most were couples. The crappy music didn’t help either. I wanted to see how much of a bitch that girl really was and walked up to her after she ordered a drink at the bar. Apparently her English wasn’t that good and she said something whose true meaning I doubted she knew. She said “I’m stuck up!” I just laughed in her face and kept talking to her; I got her to smile a few times and got a quick dance out of her. The foreign dude was standing in the corner watching the whole thing.
The girls walked off and when I saw her again later I asked her: “Hey, how’s the being stuck up going?” She laughed and we talked a bit more. She was a gold digger, though, and I didn’t pursue her much further.
Mark had already approached three girls in a corner close to the b
ar and I approached one of them. She said she lived in New York and I mentioned I was going there next week. We talked a bit; she gave me her number and we agreed to meet again in New York. Her friends left soon after and she joined them. The club was nearly empty now.
We walked back to the hostel and on the way there stopped at another bar. There were some girls outside and we got talking to them. There were some dudes with the girls but they were drunk and a bit annoying. The girl I was talking to looked OK in the dark, but the more I saw her, especially after we were in a lighter place, the more appalled I became by her. She was down to fuck and said she had her own place, but I didn’t want to get my Jamaican flag by fucking an ugly skank like her and got the hell out of there. Mark was into the other girl.
In the next days I soon found out he wasn’t the guy I thought he was. He was a great opener but a bad finisher, neither alpha nor beta. Over the next few days he chased the girl we met on the street but got nowhere, saying he didn’t want to pay for a hotel.
Mark was pennywise, pound foolish, as they say in England. He was cheap on going out, food and drinks, but he later told me that he was sponsoring the whole of Peter’s stay in Jamaica. Everything: his flights to and from Jamaica, the nights in the hostel and even some spending money. When I asked him why he said that Peter knew important people Mark could do business with. Making contacts and doing business was the main reason Mark was in Jamaica.
He sounded like someone with a good sense of business and was obviously well–educated, and I admired him for that, but I just couldn’t understand why he was hanging out with Peter. My opinion on Peter was that he was a complete leech who got drunk, stoned and a free vacation at Mark’s expense.
Around the World in 80 Girls: The Epic 3 Year Trip of a Backpacking Casanova Page 47