Will post more from the West Indies when I have more time and better connectivity.

Nothing here ever happens the way you expect. Nothing. This morning I was late for a flight because the island was getting its first traffic circles, so the construction slows down traffic to an L.A.-style crawl. My cabbie decided to take a back road through the mountains and promptly got lost. Which was fine, actually. The hills were beautiful, and LIAT (formerly Leeward Islands Air Transport) is always late anyway. It’s the only airline I’ve ever been on whose schedule should really just be considered a series of optimistic suggestions. No worries.

Except this morning. Naturally, this flight was on time.

The lady at the counter said that I would have to book a new ticket entirely, with a large out-of-pocket charge, and that all flights were full because of the Cricket World Cup (about which more over in puduland; it’s literally a life and death competition, with one murder and several riots so far), so I was stuck for at least twelve hours and possibly longer. But we chatted for a few minutes anyway, since that’s how things are here, and pretty soon, she smiled and said she had an idea about how to re-route me, taking two steps backward to take one forward, but I would have to buy her breakfast.

So, long story short, I got re-routed for the low price of one ham-and-egg sandwich and a juice box.

LIAT may be late, but you can’t beat that kind of customer relations.