The Ballards

When I was at school, we learned Geography from Cambridge University Press World Geography books printed in the late 1950s: all hard covers and British Empire trappings.
Some of them still had countries like Nyasaland and British East Africa in them: African colonialism and its asociated kleptocracies had yet to make their mark on these frozen instances of seemingly authoritative reference. The books were as interesting for their dated and stilted language and black and white glossy pictures as they were for their educational abilities.
I whiled away many a happy geography lesson (where we were meant to be learning about sedimentary glaciation or some other such rubbish) flicking through these books and wondering what these countries were really like.

One of the items I remembered from these books was about the Great Trinidad Pitch Lake. Apparently, scaffolding poles and tractors left too long on the surface slowly disappear in to the pitch and emerge, years later, twisted and torn by the huge internal pressures of the lake.
I always though this was fascinating (far more interesting than the physical geography of Devon which we were meant to be concentrating on....) and when, 25 or so years later, I went to Trinidad, I jumped at the chance to see the lake for real.

We drove down through the centre of Trinidad via the one dual-carriageway the oil money allowed them to build before it ran out. Nowadays, driving down it is like some apocalyptic post-industrial Hollywood film: the skeleton of the industrial era rotting away through lack of maintenance; plants growing through the tarmac, and the odd chunk of embankment sloughing away cutting off the slow lane. Rusting oil barrels delineated the section of road physically missing: apparently they had been there for several years in 1987.

The dual-carriageway ran out very suddenly and we were back to the frankly appalling roads endemic to the island, populated almost entirely by beautifully maintained but mind-bogglingly mediocre Japanese saloon cars.
They had flashing light strips running up and down the doors, across the bonnet in KITT-like strips, hundreds of Earthing strips down the sides, immaculately maintained chromed wheels and tyres far too big for the wheel arches, furry dice, sunstrips, spoilers, multiple whip aerials. Obviously Paddy Hopkirk had done a job on these guys...... You were left asking "yes, but why? I mean, a Toyota Primera?".
The lake was down a very long track and had not seen a tourist in many a year. Thus it was entirely undeveloped: no fences or Visitor Centres. It looked like a big lumpy roadway, and was very slightly spongy to walk on. Being impervious to water, rains collect in any hollow, and being black, it absorbs the heat so these freshwater traps are great for swimming in: like baths.
They were mining the pitch as we looked on: the tractor would keep moving very slowly, and you could see the tyre marks it left. Presumably if it stalls, they write it off.......

My favourite was the Trinidadian method of emerging from a T-junction to turn right.
The first car (they drive on the left) stops in the approved position and waits. Following cars don't queue up behind this car, but to the left of it, revving their engines.
By the time a gap appears in the traffic there may be a line of perhaps 12 cars ready to go all at once, stretching across the road, across the gravel run-off, and on to the grass.
Actually, it's very efficient, if a little dangerous, as they all go at once and at high speed, accompanied by quantities of gravel and grass. Third World driving....