Keepin' It Real on the Streets of Cap Haitien

The hotel's rooms were fine but the bathroom had a pretty weak plumbing system. When we were ready to leave the room for the day we realized there was no "do not disturb" sign.

So we made one.

A notable part of the free hotel breakfast was a spicy peanut butter they provided for our toast.

Over the course of our time at the hotel we solved the mystery of why the heck there were Norwegian police guarding the airport.  It looks like they are on some sort of UN mission, as they have UN patches on their uniforms and the hotel parking lot is always full of UN police cars. Safety wise it was nice to have them around but mostly I just thought they were interesting. I don't think I've seen any UN personnel of any type before.

The city started off orderly enough but it seemed like the farther we got from the hotel the garbagier and more crowded things became.

The Place d'Armes is a very well kept square with lots of locals hanging out in the shade. It looks as though many a rabble rouser met their end in this square. The French burned slave revolutionary Mackandal here in 1758. He managed to escape the first time but they caught him again and toasted him good. Mulatto revolutionaries Oge and Chavannes were broken on the wheel here in 1790. Then finally in 1793 slave emancipation was announced here. Busy place right?

On one end on the square is Notre Dame Cathedral which was built by the French in 1774 and so was present from some of the previously mentioned bloodshed. It's one of the few colonial buildings left in the whole city. Lonely Planet described some mosaics and other ornamentation inside but I didn't see much of anything, just plain colored walls and the like. It was definitely one of the barest churches I've laid eyes on, which was especially off-putting because the building itself was pretty nice. It was like the place had been robbed or something.

The Université Roi Henri Christophe.

We had sort of a fake goal on the other side of town in the form of visiting the cemetery, but we got to see real life happening all over town. All over garbage.

We did some window shopping minus the windows.

The main tourist destination in the area is Citadelle Laferrière which did sound pretty cool, but I guess the road there is so bad you have to rent a donkey. And I read it's covered in hucksters. No thanks. The pictures do look cool though, admittedly.

Well there was another little fort called Fort Picolet within walking distance of the hotel so I thought that might be a nice consolation prize. Nope.

I'd say we did an excellent job finding the place considering this was the only sign for it we encountered.

There were plenty of scenic ocean views.

We caught some rays on the beach with the locals.

We got fairly close to the place before we gave up. The path ended and we were eventually just walking along the tiny space between the ocean and a cliff. If the tides came up we'd be toast, so we made an executive decision to call off the mission. It was a nice walk though so whatever.

We had a celebratory Sprite on the way home.

The hotel restaurant was crawling with police at lunch time.

Lydia likes dessert.

Cap Haitien, Haiti. So Garbagey

We snoozed at the Miami Admiral's Club until our flight to Haiti. This lounge's claim to fame was that they had showers. It was much bigger but also had a lot of weirdos in it so it was a wash.

We finally got to enjoy the business class service this flight. I opened with a dish of warmed mixed nuts and a large pour of Woodford Reserve bourbon. We visited the distillery on our tour of Kentucky's bourbon trail. Sometimes I whisper "hello my old friend" to the bourbon before I drink it. But that's neither here nor there.

I didn't even want any salt or pepper but I opened the package anyway. How decadent.

I always thought that they didn't give you metal silverware on a plane because it's a security risk. Turns out they're just cheap.

I watched Leonardo choke his enemies in The Revenant while I choked down more expensive alcohol. We're both heroes.

Haiti looks nice when you're really high up but it's all downhill from there.

We had agreed upon a hotel car pickup upon arrival but shockingly there wasn't one so we said yes to one of the pestering taxi men and hit the road. A nice and confusing surprise when we exited the airport was the several Norwegian police outside guarding the place.

The scene that unfolded reminded me of Africa a whole lot. Garbage was everywhere. Lydia wondered why there were no beachfront hotels in town until she saw the beach. The "beach" in Haiti is pretty much where the dry garbage meets the wet garbage.

The worst part of the city looked like someone was trying to colonize a landfill. The people seemed impressively clean in contrast to their surroundings with their clothing and the nearby buildings full of bright colors.

The Hotel du Roi Cristophe was fine by our standards but pretty much heaven by theirs. After our long journey we were content to spend the rest of the day inside the hotel's walls.

Until I started traveling I had no idea how luxurious flushing one's toilet paper really is. Nothing says "cleanliness" like having a basket full of poopy toilet paper in your bathroom.

Dinner at the hotel's restaurant was solid. Lydia had "Haitien specialty of conch" and I had "goat with creole sauce". Both were excellent.

I got rice and fried plantains as my sides. I think the mushy stuff bottom left is mashed okra. It wasn't bad.

And that was that. I wasn't about to go out in Garbageland at night. No way. We did some reading and kept it real until bed time.