Laugh-a-Minute Book About Traveling the Caribbean Islands

Caribbean Sunset

Destination: The Caribbean

Book: A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean: A Grump in Paradise Discovers that Any Place it’s Legal to Carry a Machete is Comedy Just Waiting to Happen,  by Gary Buslik

A Guest Post by Jessie Voigts of Wandering Educators

I am happy to share with you today a book that just made me laugh, and laugh – and learn about Caribbean cultures.  Gary Buslik has written one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean (Travelers’ Tales).

When I first opened the book, the VERY FIRST chapter made me laugh (The Time I Accidentally Urinated on Idi Amin). It gets even funnier from there – Gary explores different cultures, ethics, philosophy, race, religion, and more – all the while making the reader laugh, with his wry sense of humor.

Gary explores different places in the Caribbean, the various people he meets as he travels, and of course the ever-present dilemma of intercultural differences. This book truly is a gem, in that it humorously explores some of the cultural differences the traveler experiences while in the Caribbean. I’ve only been to the Bahamas in the Caribbean (YET!), but I could still relate to the book – nodding my head yes at certain aspects of travel in the Caribbean, and making notes NOT to go to certain places (cockfighting). He certainly brings a great sense of place to his book – you feel like you are there, with him.

Here is an excerpt from our interview with Gary – you can read the rest at Wandering Educators .

WE: What is your favorite thing about the Caribbean? Least favorite?

Caribbean Drummers

GB: A lot of newbie travelers rave about gorgeous sunsets and sugary sand and exotic cuisine, but my favorites are the small things. I love meeting stray dogs you see on almost every beach, giving them a good scratch on their bellies, and telling the locals to shut up and mind their own business when they try to shoo the dogs away. Last December I found a sweet cat on the beach in St. Maarten, and every morning we had breakfast together in the hotel lobby café, with me sitting in front of one plate, she another, her dirty little butt on a placemat. It drove the manager stark raving nuts, so it was a double pleasure. I also enjoy stepping on the flip-flops of margarita-slurping tourists walking in front of me.

My least favorite thing about the Caribbean are mosquito nets. Any membrane that gets between my bladder and the bathroom at two in the morning—and I include pajamas here—is never my friend. If you turn on a light in the middle of the night, your “mosquito” net—a misnomer if there ever was one; they should be called “large-furry-things-with-buck-teeth” net—resembles a Night of the Living Dead reunion. The result being that while trying to make a mad dash from under the elastic, I get more tangled up in netting than a drunken groom in a garter belt, and my wife comes to my rescue by spraying my face with something that smells suspiciously like nuclear waste.

My other least favorite thing is steel drum music. West Indian bands never take breaks. I was not alive when they built the Panama Canal, but in hearing “Yellow Bird” for the zillionth time, my eardrums can imagine what the isthmus must have felt like when that huge, hardened-steel, saw-toothed gnawing wheel ground its way from one ocean to the other.

Dr. Jessie Voigts

Dr. Jessie Voigts is the Publisher of  WanderingEducators.com and will be contributing each month to A Traveler’s Library. She has a doctorate in International Education, and is passionate about intercultural learning. She and her husband are Worldschooling their daughter, and enjoying every minute of it. She is also a nature photographer and lives on a lake.

Caribbean photos by Vera Marie Badertscher, all rights reserved.

Thanks Jessie–even the subtitle has me rolling on the floor. Readers–any humor books about travel that you would like to share?

You might also want to read related posts about other islands:  Hawaii, Indonesia, the Caribbean by Patrick Leigh Fermor, not to mention beaucoup about Greek Islands (search for Greece).