Hellfire and .........paperwork
One really amusing thing about the Caribbean is arriving at a new island. You are required to check in; the same way you would if arriving by plane. While these processes are streamlined in airports, owing to the thousands of tourists that arrive each week, when arriving by boat the process is, shall we say, more interesting.
Generally there is an isolated shack in a port.......unmarked, paint peeling. You've got to ask at least 5 people where it is before you find it. In Antigua, there were three small offices next to each other; Customs, Immigration, and Port Authority. The process they had come up with involved filling out the same form 3 times and shuttling between these offices. As the offices are literally within an arm's reach of each other, one person and one form would have reduced costs by 66%.........but who's counting, right? We made a total of 7 stops between these three offices to hand a duplicate form to the next clerk. All the while, a ghetto blaster is booming what could only have been an evangelical Christian dictator of some kind bellowing in a voice Hitler would envy. "Say it to me brothers...........say it........saaaaaaaaaaaay it". You can't laugh, smirk, or poke fun at this lack of separation of church and state because everyone is listening to it. If one of them is offended by your reaction...........oops, lost your passport, Mr. Smart-ass American. So you stand there being nice to them as this surreal ballet of duplicate paperwork set to the tune of the Right Reverend Idi Amin of the Church of the Heavenly Apocalypse (or whoever it was). We were just trying to get out of there before the Chicken Sacrifice. And oddly, Antigua is not the first place this has occurred - St. Kitts and Nevis Customs and Immigration also seemed tuned to the same station.
Oh, and that's just the check-in process. It has to be repeated when you check out. I just keep mumbling to myself that I could be standing in the security line at BWI behind a senior citizen wearing 30 lbs of metallic jewelry that they find one beep at a time in the security scanner.
At the end.........."Thank you so much........we enjoyed your island and do enjoy the rest of your Sunday". Goodbye Antigua. Beaches.......A-; People Watching A-; Food B-; Weather A+. On to Monserrat tomorrow.
Generally there is an isolated shack in a port.......unmarked, paint peeling. You've got to ask at least 5 people where it is before you find it. In Antigua, there were three small offices next to each other; Customs, Immigration, and Port Authority. The process they had come up with involved filling out the same form 3 times and shuttling between these offices. As the offices are literally within an arm's reach of each other, one person and one form would have reduced costs by 66%.........but who's counting, right? We made a total of 7 stops between these three offices to hand a duplicate form to the next clerk. All the while, a ghetto blaster is booming what could only have been an evangelical Christian dictator of some kind bellowing in a voice Hitler would envy. "Say it to me brothers...........say it........saaaaaaaaaaaay it". You can't laugh, smirk, or poke fun at this lack of separation of church and state because everyone is listening to it. If one of them is offended by your reaction...........oops, lost your passport, Mr. Smart-ass American. So you stand there being nice to them as this surreal ballet of duplicate paperwork set to the tune of the Right Reverend Idi Amin of the Church of the Heavenly Apocalypse (or whoever it was). We were just trying to get out of there before the Chicken Sacrifice. And oddly, Antigua is not the first place this has occurred - St. Kitts and Nevis Customs and Immigration also seemed tuned to the same station.
Oh, and that's just the check-in process. It has to be repeated when you check out. I just keep mumbling to myself that I could be standing in the security line at BWI behind a senior citizen wearing 30 lbs of metallic jewelry that they find one beep at a time in the security scanner.
At the end.........."Thank you so much........we enjoyed your island and do enjoy the rest of your Sunday". Goodbye Antigua. Beaches.......A-; People Watching A-; Food B-; Weather A+. On to Monserrat tomorrow.