Time & Temperature

Time in Trinidad is a somewhat relative term. Most US to Trinidad flights land about an hour after they're scheduled to. If you have an appointment with an important person, you better be on time but be prepared to wait 1-3 hours to see them anyway (bring a book!). If you're officiating a wedding, you can arrive about 10 minutes before the wedding is scheduled to start because it probaby won't start for another hour. If the elecricity goes out, "not often" means it might happen once a month and "not for long" means it might be out anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 days. If the water pressure drops at our house, "not often" means once a week in rainy season (Jun - Dec) and once a month in dry season and "not long" means 1-3 days. Although this means we have no water upstairs, we thankfully still get enough of a trickle downstairs at all times to do dishes and take a shower. Phew! While time is a bit looser than in America, on the whole Trinidad does manage to keep to a schedule, so it's rather dangerous to assume that anything in particular will run late.

The temperature is always between 23 Celsius (70 Fahrenheit) at night and 32 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) in the day. Weather forcasts therefore don't really bother telling you the temperature (although it's printed in the national paper - Trinidad and Tobago Newsday). They're more likely to tell you about the weather approaching. I'm still a bit fuzzy on these, but I think it goes like this:

Rain - means rain:)
Tropical disturbance - means winds are picking up
Tropical wave - means there's a pattern developing
Tropical storm - something like our severe thunderstorm warning
Hurricane - run for cover