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As the wheels of the Boeing 737 struck the
asphalt and spun to life with a puff of blue smoke, two thoughts
occurred to me. First, we were finally back in the Caribbean,
evidenced by emerald blue ocean staring at me from across the
dusty dry strip of land separating the runway from the sea.
Second, I needed to find Kalik. In case you were unaware, Kalik,
brewed in the Bahamas, is the best beer in the world and my brand
of choice. Kalik and adventure are bed buddies. Kalik is suntanned
bodies, memories, slumming along the shoreline looking for conch
shells. Kalik is beer, but more than beer, it is a state of
carefree bliss. Kalik is the sound of rattling cow bells amongst a
thousand drumming, beating, sweating, rythmic black bodies on a
humid Caribbean night.
In short, I was thirsty. And my skin was
already squandering the precious little moisture the dry Canadian
prairie climate allowed it.
The island onto which we had just landed was
Providenciales, of the Turks & Caicos chain. These islands are
located just south of the Bahamas and north of the Dominican
Republic, home of Presidente, another fine beer, though not the
target of this particular mission. This was to be my wife Ana’s
and my first overseas vacation with our new little son Magnus. At
the ripened age of 7 months, he was already jetting off to the
Caribbean for a dirty weekend.
The scene at the airport was similar to
other Caribbean airports - unintelligible patois, white teeth,
stunned tourists. After some sweaty pacing in the sun we found a
taxi driver to take us to the hotel. That first taxi ride in a new
country is where you always pay your ignorance tax. You know you
will be charged at least twice as much as you should be, but the
sooner you dish out, suck up your pride and forget about it, the
sooner you can begin to figure the place out. We piled our gear in
the back of the van, gave him the name of the hotel, then glued
our asses into the hot vinyl of the seats, trying hard not to let
the sweaty baby slip from our grasp. Extensive government funded
research shows that squirmy babies have a 150% greater chance of
escaping their parent’s grasp while vacationing in the Caribbean,
and a 200% greater chance of being left crying in a crib while the
parents are enjoying a cocktail and sunset on the balcony. As the
van took off and we began the sweltering ride, Ana’s wandering
finger found conclusive proof that the Caribbean heat softens
babies’ gums and promotes dental activity; Magnus’ first tooth!
‘Hey buddy,’ I said to the taxi driver, ‘in
our culture it’s customary for a taxi driver to give a free ride
if his passengers find their baby’s first tooth during the ride!’
‘Uh huh, yeah mon,’ he replied glumly. I
didn’t think he was going for it, maybe my attempt at humour was
premature. Enough subtleties. It was time to embark on my hunt.
‘Hey, can you get Kalik beer here?’ I asked
innocently.
‘Whah dat?’ he asked.
‘Bahamain beer,’ I explained.
‘You in de Toiks, mon,’ he kindly pointed
out. I decided to take this line of questioning no further. After
spending years in the Caribbean, I knew it was sometimes better to
give in right at the start and avoid frustration.
‘Oh yeah? Thanks man,’ expressing my
gratitude for his clever observation.
We were soon at the hotel, named the Turtle
Cove Inn, and got checked in and to our rooms within 5 minutes, a
minor miracle in this land of leisure. On the way up to our room I
noticed a sign for a liquor store across from the hotel lobby.
‘Ana my dear, I shall return shortly with a
case of beautiful cold Kalik to stoke up this sweet little bar
fridge,’ I pronounced, and in one swift motion deposited the
sweaty baby onto the bed and stuffed some moist beer money into my
pocket.
I walked out of the room and into the open
air corridor. Here, the walk turned into a shuffle, which in turn
transformed into a jog by the time I reached the stairs. The
eighteen steps posed no difficulty as I took them six at a time,
gaining momentum, then hit the ground at full speed and sprinted
around the pool, hurdling over the suntanning Speedoed Quebecois
in their lounge chairs, through a small grove of palm trees, not
stopping to check for falling coconuts, around the side of the
hotel and into the short corridor which opened into the blessed
liquor store. Applying full brakes, I skidded to a halt barely in
time, scaring the living shit out the dude at the counter, who
appeared to be sleeping standing up. ‘It all in de knees mon,’ a
friend from Barbados once told me, ‘us Caribbean men, we learn to
lock de knees, den you can sleep while you look like you woikin.’
Great skill, that one.
I frantically slid open the beer cooler and
scanned the shelves. The first beer I saw was Miller Light, what
the hell? Next came Presidente, ohh, that’s good, I’ll have to get
some of those later, after the Kalik. Wait, where is the Kalik??
There were no goddamn cold Kaliks in the cooler, just a couple
local brands! Ok, don’t panic, I thought to myself, I’ll just buy
a warm case and put them in our fridge and let them cool for a
bit. Eyes shift rapidly to the cases of beer stacked against the
wall. The familiar blue Kalik label was not jumping out at me and
the rapid scan confirmed my fears. No Kalik.
‘Hey, do you guys have any Kalik? You know,
Bahamian beer?’ I asked the guy behind the counter, who was now
fully conscious.
‘No mon, no Kalik,’ he answered, offering no
alternatives.
‘But you normally have it? You’re just out
for the moment?’ I pleaded, hardly trying to mask my
disappointment.
‘No mon. Well, sometimes, but it rare,’ he
carefully explained.
Rare? Rare?? Four leaved clovers are rare.
Two headed dogs are rare. Passenger pigeons are friggin rare. How
can beer be rare?
‘What do you mean ‘rare’?’ I had to ask.
‘We don’t get it often,’ he told me.
‘But it’s available on the island?’ I
continued, trying to stay calm.
‘Yeah mon,’ he concluded, offering no clues
as to the whereabouts of this apparently endangered beverage.
‘Okay. Well, then I guess I’ll take six
Miller, just to tide me over for now.’ I was actually very thirsty
and since the price of the Miller Light (not to mention the
alcohol content) was comparable to bottled water, I went for that
option. ‘This will just make that first Kalik taste all the more
spectacular,’ I thought. I hoped.
I returned to the room and explained the sad
situation to my understanding wife, who was now using towel grips
to maneuver the sweaty baby around on the bed. ‘Don’t worry,’ she
said pointing her finger out the balcony window, ‘they probably
have Kalik at the hotel bar, it’s just over there.’
Minutes later, baby Magnus, in his hot new
sunglasses and hat, Ana and I were on the deck of the hotel
restaurant/bar overlooking the beautiful yachts in the marina,
enjoying the rays of the hot sun. With what was to become a
ritualistic interrogation I would soon perfect, I asked the
approaching waitress, ‘Do you have Kalik beer? You know Kalik,
right? It’s made in the Bahamas.’
‘No mon, no Kalik,’ she reported.
‘But how can that be? The Bahamas is so
close I can practically see one of the islands from here. The web
sites I read said Kalik was available all over the Turks & Caicos.
How can it be?’ I desperately questioned. Was I starting to sound
pathetic?
‘No Kalik, mon,’ she said apologetically,
‘but I tink they got Kalik at the supermarkets.’ Well, at least I
can always go there to get some if none of these bars have it, I
thought, trying to calm my feelings of angst. I then decided that
I wasn’t going to let the rareness of Kalik get me down and
instead ordered up a couple of Coronas for Ana and I, with which
we toasted our own happiness and fortune to be able to visit such
a wonderful place. But on the inside, beneath the smiles and glee,
I had begun plotting my next move in the hunt for Kalik.
Day 2 arrives with no Kalik hangover. The
previous nights plan to find Kalik failed, though we did find a
lovely Tropical Chicken Salad at a harbourside restaurant called
Tiki Hut. To make things worse, our server was a Bahamian who
claimed to be a Kalik lover but didn’t have a clue where to find
it, though she did say it was available from time to time in
certain places. The only real success of that episode was the
discovery of a delicious local brew, called Turks Head Light,
which helped to get me through this time of trouble.
I would follow this routine over the next
couple of days. See a restaurant or bar. Go into said
establishment. Ask for Kalik. Get looks of dim recognition, but no
solid leads. Much talk of the existence of Kalik, but no proof.
Much ado on my part, and much nothing. Though I was becoming
increasing disappointed and increasingly tempted to abandon my
quest, I didn’t let this sour our vacation. We adventured around
the island, on and off the track well traveled, one afternoon
finding ourselves all alone on a mile long pristine beach with our
beautiful little baby, eyes lit up, enjoying the pleasures of the
warm Caribbean sea for the first time. Another afternoon, we
happened upon a local conch shack called Boogaloos which produced
a magnificent conch salad; an almost spiritual mingling of hot
goat peppers, fresh onions, crunchy conch and tangy citrus juices.
The perfect beverage to accompany such a meal would have been a
Kalik, but I settled for Turks Head lager which was much, much
better than nothing at all.
Finally, on our last day, I seemed to get a
break. As we were driving across the dry landscape one morning on
the way to the beach, we passed a huge supermarket, parking lot
packed with cars, people carrying out groceries and crates of
beer, looking like a very probable location to find my beer. I
walked into the massive store and immediately saw the beer
section, which was a full aisle teeming with boxes of brews.
‘Finally,’ I thought, ‘my search is over. Why on earth didn’t I
find this place earlier? I can taste that sweet beer already, let
me at it!’.
I charged down the aisle, rapidly scanning
the shelves, left and right, up and down, looking, wanting,
needing, finally reaching the end of the line and
finding….nothing. I panicked, thinking I must have somehow missed
it, so I turned and slowly walked back down the cursed alley of
ales, analyzing each bottle as I passed. Turks Head, Heineken,
Guiness, Miller, Corona. ‘OK, those are pretty standard export
beers,’ I rationalized. Next came Samuel Adams, Carib, Sol,
Presidente, what the hell? It got worse. I was then faced with
obscure Japanese beers, Spanish beers, French beers, Haitian
beers. Haitian beers?? They seemed to stock every type of beer
ever made, from every part of the globe, from lagers to bitters to
ciders. Every beer you could imagine except the one beer I was in
pursuit of; Kalik. It was then I experienced a wave of sweet
surrender wash over my body. I knew it was not meant to be. I was
not going to find Kalik and I accepted it. I was overcome by a
strangely comforting sense of detachment. I could feel my spirit
floating up and out of my body and soon I was hovering overhead,
looking down at myself reaching out and picking up a case of
Presidente beer, walking up to the checkout, laying down some
coin, and exiting the building out to the car, which I got into
and drove away.
At last, I was at peace. We spent our final
day on a perfect beach, with perfect weather, and as the end of
the day approached I recognized my failed mission was actually an
opportunity…to set off on another hunt for Kalik somewhere in the
beautiful Caribbean next winter! |
