The only way to maintain your sanity as a businessperson in Guyana is to go
away every so often.
Not only to rest and recuperate from the multitudes of
mini-crises that bombard you daily ...be it problems with water, electricity or
the all consuming VAT .. but also to get a bird’s eye perspective on your
business and begin again to think about why you started this adventure and how
you can make it better.
That's why our recent weekend in Tobago was
such an inspiration. We stayed at the Kariwak Village Holistic Haven and Hotel (www.kariwak.com) , which
sounds a lot like cold showers and brown rice but is in fact quite luxurious
and very, very comforting. The award winning gardens include herb beds which the restaurant uses
in its cooking. Any of you who had the pumpkin and dill soup on Wednesday at
Oasis too …well the dill was kindly donated by Cynthia the co-owner of the
hotel, a woman who glides about like Florence Nightingale attentive to the every
need of her guests.
When we told her we owned two restaurants, she said, "But
the food business is a bugger!"
She said she spends a lot of the time in the kitchen and tastes every dish. It
shows since the food is pitch perfect, being unpretentious but decidedly
accomplished. The fish in particular is exceptional….and the service something
we should aspire to. Between meals, we spent much of the time in various
hammocks, reading and sleeping, in a state of contented paralysis.
We did visit Pigeon Point beach and had crab and dumplings,
although the dumplings were rather chewy –apparently that is the way they like
them. We also visited Scarborough, a rather
rundown town but which in its heart has a small coffee shop, Ciao Café, run by
an Italian straight out of central casting. We sipped a very good cappuccino,
made from Illy coffee beans, outside on the balcony and watched the
inhabitants, 60% of whom appear to be Rastafarian, go about their business.
During our half day in Trinidad we managed to escape the
suffocating traffic and headed for Maracas
Bay to eat bake and shark,
returning in search of doubles by the highway.
It was a welcome break and we hope one that would inspire us
to improve our offerings and service, while also letting us remember we are
actually sane.
