Day 9: Boxing day

A travel day: a 1½ hour drive to the airport, and back to Port of Spain. We walked around the city, and found it dead to the world. All the restaurants and bars were closed, even on the Aripata strip. They take Christmas very seriously in Trinidad. This forced us back to the Hyatt Regency, for a late-lunch/early-dinner of a fish sandwich and a different girly drink -- a frozen mango daiquiri.

This was a mistake. My right big toe, which had been hurting a little for days, became really swollen, enough to stop me from walking. A little WebMD research indicated gout, which is aggravated by alcohol, fish (and I've been eating fish twice a day, and fruity drinks; and suppressed by coffee (which I haven't had enough of) and vitamin C (which I haven't taken since I left the US. Gout, that dread disease of sedentary, cranky, boozy old men. (Of course they're sedentary; their joints are frozen). So it looks like lifestyle-change time. Gotta give up the fish. I can't possibly drnk any more coffee; it would kill me.

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