www.vheadline.com Posted: Sunday, February 23, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Opposition Coordinadora Democratica (CD) wants international bodies to brand the Venezuelan government a “rogue State” because it is transgressing the law of the land by arresting Federation of Chambers of Industry & Commerce (Fedecamaras) president, Carlos Fernandez.

Opposition negotiator and former Chavist, Jose Luis Farias says he will take the proposal to a meeting of the Group of Friends scheduled in Brazil and will lobby the Organization of American States (OAS) general assembly  … “we want the OAS to guarantee compliance with the non-aggression signed last Friday.”

According to the opposition, Carlos Fernandez has done nothing wrong and the National Assembly board was out of order criticizing Spain, the USA and OAS for disagreeing with the government’s arrest of Fernandez.

www.tribnet.com

Project manager Manuel Rondón, second from right, is joined by, from left, superstructure manager Dave Climie, caisson manager Tom Sherman and construction manager Pat Soderberg, all involved in designing and overseeing construction of the new Tacoma Narrows bridge.

A DREAM TEAM: In the rarefied world of bridge building, the experts assembled for the Tacoma Narrows project are superstars, at the top of their game. Their Venezuelan boss, Manuel Rondón, has the task of turning them into a team.

ROB CARSON; The News Tribune

It's a routine meeting, and nothing about the conference room seems the least bit dangerous. Even so, Manuel Rondón starts things off with safety announcements.

He reminds people where the nearest exits are and how to reach them in an emergency. He gives detailed directions to the restrooms - just in case.

Rondón is a man who doesn't like leaving anything to chance. And, considering the task he has in front of him, that's probably a good thing.

Rondón is in charge of building the new $849 million Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The suspension bridge will be the longest built in the United States in 40 years, and it will cross a channel notorious for tidal currents and high winds.

The first bridge across the Narrows, "Galloping Gertie," shook itself apart in a 1940 windstorm, going down in history as one of the world's most spectacular engineering failures

"There's no room for error," Rondón says.

The physical challenges of Rondón's job are daunting, but the political ones are potentially treacherous, too.

He's surrounded by local residents angrily opposed to the new bridge and eager to find screw-ups. His company, Tacoma Narrows Constructors, is a partnership between two of the world's biggest construction companies, Bechtel and Kiewit, meaning he must satisfy the egos and expectations of two corporate offices. And his work is under constant scrutiny not only of the State Department of Transportation but also of thousands of commuters who drive through the construction zone each day.

The complexities of Rondón's job bring to mind the Flying Karamazov Brothers, juggling running chain saws, Jell-O and live chickens.

Relentless planner, negotiator

Rondón, 49, is a native of Venezuela, and the Narrows project is his first in the United States.

His Spanish accent, along with his fuzzy, gray-streaked beard and ready smile, can give the initial impression of a charming, sophisticated teddy bear. He loves music, good wine and good food. At the office Christmas party, he was dancing with the best of them.

But associates and employees say he's a detail man, an unrelenting planner and, when necessary, a fearsome negotiator. In the builder's offices, located in a Gig Harbor business park, he leaves no doubt who is in charge.

"What they say out here is, 'I wouldn't want to piss him off too much,'" said Tom Draeger, Rondón's boss at Bechtel's headquarters in San Francisco.

Draeger said he and other corporate executives chose Rondón for the Narrows job in part because of his bridge experience. His most recent job was a tricky retrofit of the suspension bridge over the Tagus River in Lisbon, Portugal, the longest in Europe. He added a second deck for freight trains and commuter trains while 140,000 cars a day continued to use the top level.

Rondón also was chosen for his ability to coordinate and lead, Draeger said.

"Leading these big projects today, one of the biggest challenges is coordinating all of the interests involved, and Manuel is very skilled at that," Draeger said.

"He struck me as a guy who could get the two biggest elephants in the construction business - Bechtel and Kiewit - working together."

Rondón downplays his personal role in the Narrows project.

He may be the boss, he said, but he is by no means the most important player. What is important is building a strong team and holding it together, he said.

"If you have a strong team," he said, "you can put Mickey Mouse at the head and the team can still function."

Arab oil embargo a windfall

Rondón was born and raised in Caracas, the son of an electrician.

"We valued what we had," he said, "because it was not easy to get."

His rise from a blue-collar background was, at least in part, a matter of fortunate timing. In 1973, when he was in college, the Arab oil embargo created a windfall for his country. Oil prices shot from $8 to $40 a barrel, and Venezuela suddenly had more money than it knew what to do with.

With some of it, the government created a scholarship fund to send thousands of top students abroad to study. Rondón was among the first chosen.

He went to Tufts University in the Boston area, where he studied electrical engineering, an experience he now sees as a stroke of extraordinary good luck.

"That was a turning point in my life," he says.

It gave him credentials from one of America's top schools, honed his English and gave him a taste for international culture and travel.

"Now," he says, "when I come to the States, I am at home."

Tufts changed Rondón's life in a more personal way, too. It was there that he met his wife, Yoko, the daughter of a Tokyo banker, enrolled in a child studies program. They were married in the school chapel.

After college, Rondón returned to Venezuela and a job with a subsidiary of Exxon. His first assignment disappointed him. He was to manage the installation of a lighting system in a commissary.

"Are you kidding?" he remembers thinking. "I graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University. I have a master's degree, and you want me to do this?"

But the job turned out to be excellent experience.

"That is where my passion for projects started," he said. "It gave me a taste of the things that were to come." He learned, he said, that "it is better to be the head of the mouse than the tail of the lion."

Rondón worked his way through a succession of building projects in the petrochemical and aluminum industries, each more complex and difficult than the one before.

He built an export facility for a bauxite plant, an office building for an aluminum smelter, a methyl tertiary-butyl ether production facility.

In the 1990s, his work in a consortium with the German company, DSD Dillinger Stahlbau GmbH, led to the Tagus River job.

"Why do you want me?" Rondón remembers asking his prospective employers. "I have no experience with bridges."

They wanted him not for his expertise in bridges, it turned out, but for his ability to coordinate, control and make decisions.

"We want you because you can make the consortium work," he was told.

The qualities that add up to that ability, Rondón said, are difficult to define.

"It's not something you learn," he says. "It's like an art. You have to be ahead of things."

Rondón's formula for successful management, he says, goes like this: Pick good people, entrust them with responsibility and give them the power to do their jobs. Tell people what you expect from them, and be a good listener.

"The most important thing is people," he said. "Building this bridge is not about the cable. It's not about the deck. It's about encouraging people, inspiring people."

'Did we have fun?'

Rondón's personal office is all business. It's an anonymous space, indistinguishable from dozens of others in the buildings Tacoma Narrows Constructors has leased.

There are no mementos or personal photos on the walls, just the standard desk and computer, a bookcase stuffed with technical engineering documents and a small circular meeting table.

He prefers to meet with his top people around the table and hammer out problems face-to-face. Phone messages sometimes pile up, he admits, and unread e-mails can languish in long queues.

His top people are an international mix of specialists from Europe, South America and throughout North America, several of whom have worked together on previous bridges. Suspension bridges are built so rarely that the top people in the field tend to know one another and travel the world from one project to the next.

Rondón's intense focus, which his whole team seems to share, is not the grim, joyless variety. The atmosphere at the office has a definite boys-in-the-sandbox feel. It is not difficult to imagine them as a pack of kids, racing around with old boards and their dads' tools, determined to build the best treehouse ever.

One of Rondón's criteria for the success of a project, he says, is: "Did we have fun?"

On the Narrows project, he says, "I expect to have them say at the end of the day, 'We did.' And that goes from the lady at the reception to my deputy."

Curiosity about the Narrows project abounds, and, as the boss, Rondón has been asked by dozens of civic groups to make presentations. For the most part, he dodges them. His interest is not public relations, it's bridge-building.

When the governor and his staff wanted a briefing, Rondón sent one of his managers instead of going himself.

"They were happy, (the manager) was happy and I was happy," he says.

On the Tagus River Bridge job, Rondón said, interest among the public and other engineering professionals was so high, it became a serious distraction.

"So many people wanted to come and see what we were doing, it got annoying," he said. "It was unsafe."

Safety is a top priority with Rondón.

"Every accident can and must be prevented," he says.

Rondón is determined to complete the Narrows bridge with no deaths or serious accidents.

"There is nothing more difficult than going to somebody's family and saying he or she is not coming back tonight," he said. "What is it worth at the end of the day if you sacrifice a human life?"

Despite an aggressive safety program on the Tagus River job, Rondón said, two workers died on the project, a heartbreaking disappointment for him.

"As project manager," he says, "it was my duty to make sure that the families were properly assisted, and it was the tradition that they would come to the site to meet us shortly after the accident.

"It is beyond words, the emotions that permeate a meeting like this."

'Isn't it beautiful?'

Construction on the new Narrows bridge began just last month, but Rondón has been in Washington more than three years, working on planning, contracts and budgets.

He and Yoko bought a house in Gig Harbor, near Artondale Elementary, shortly after they arrived from Lisbon.

Their daughter, Isa, now 21, is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Diego, 16, an aspiring drummer, goes to Gig Harbor High School, and Gabriel, 9, is a student at Artondale.

They loved Lisbon, Rondón says, but they like Gig Harbor better. He says they've been having a great time scouting out good restaurants, going to concerts at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, and, on summer weekend afternoons, going to Rainiers baseball games.

"We embraced the community," he says.

But they quickly discovered the community did not embrace the bridge.

When they arrived in Gig Harbor, antibridge sentiment was so high, Rondón said, people warned him not to tell people where he worked.

His son, Gabriel, came home from school and asked him, "Is it OK to say you work with the bridge?"

Rondón feels such pride in the Narrows project, this is disconcerting to him - but not surprising.

"It's going to be a big inconvenience for people," he said. "I would be upset, too."

But the fact is, he said, unless you build something in a green field in the middle of nowhere, construction always causes some disruption. The more urban the project, the greater the disruption.

Building a bridge is like having a baby, he said. No matter what you do, it requires a certain amount of time and involves a certain amount of pain.

Rondón firmly believes the finished product will be worth the struggle. Suspension bridges are works of art, he says, magical in their simplicity and grace.

"They are very elegant," he said. "I can talk about this for days.'

In his office, he pulls a big glossy coffee-table book off a shelf crammed with engineering studies. The book is a photographic record of the Tagus Bridge project, and he opens it face down on the table, so the panoramic photo on the cover is displayed in full.

He runs his hand across the length of it.

"Look at that," he says. "Isn't it beautiful?"

One of his great satisfactions in Lisbon, he says, after the bridge was finished and the construction material cleared away, was going back to a favorite restaurant on the Tagus River, where he often ate lunch during the project.

He would take a table by the window and eat lunch looking out at the bridge soaring above him. It gave him great pleasure, he said, sitting there and knowing he had some part in building it.

"I would think, 'My God, when we were first starting ... now look at it! Who would know that I had something to do with that bridge? That is my satisfaction - just to know it's there."

Rob Carson: 253-597-8693 rob.carson@mail.tribnet.com

www.washingtonpost.com By John Briley Special to The Washington Post Sunday, February 23, 2003; Page E01

The relentless wind scours Aruba's limestone coastline, crackly desert landscape and beaches by day and courses through the palms, Divi Divi trees and hotel courtyards by night, pausing for neither dawn nor dusk. It sends umbrellas flying from fruity drinks, turns a friendly tennis game into a cussing match and transforms carefully coiffed hairdos into raging manes.

And all of this is good (minus the &%#! tennis), because for much of my four days in Aruba I am skipping across the Caribbean on a sailboard, watching through the water as the blur of the sandy sea floor melds into rock formations.

I had heard that Aruba was a windsurfer's paradise -- dry, warm, modern amenities -- and I expected such conditions to attract primarily wind pilgrims. And, yes, the fanatics are here, but they are more than balanced by families drawn by the guarantee of sun (Aruba gets but 20 inches of rain yearly; the U.S. Virgin Islands, by comparison, get about 55 inches), young groups seeking a party (available), casino gamblers and cruise ship off-loaders. Visitors come from the United States, Europe (Aruba was a Dutch territory until 1986) and Latin America (the island is 18 miles from Venezuela).

My last trip to Aruba was in 1969, when I was 3, and my only memories are of catching my first fish (an angelfish that I released) and slashing my face open with my dad's razor. I figured now was a good time to refresh my Aruba knowledge. Besides, windsurfing had barely been invented in 1969 and beachside rentals were years away.

Flying 2,040 miles for only four days may seem excessive, but United Airlines' 41/2-hour nonstop flight from Dulles makes it worthwhile. Duncan from England, a neighbor in the one-story beachside studio complex where I am staying, isn't buying it.

"You're down here for only four days?" he asks me. "From Washington?" He and his wife, Isabelle, are completing a three-week stay, which Duncan clearly views as too little island time, despite the fact that he can't do much due to the hip he shattered in a kite-surfing accident (the wind-filled kite dragged him across a beach, slamming him into a van and then a brick wall; this is another reason why I windsurf). That I would fly so far from the cold only to turn around confounds both him and Isabelle.

But I get Duncan talking about wind -- the wind in Aruba, in Barbados, in England, in the United States -- and he forgets all about my short vacation. Because of unobstructed trade winds from the Eastern Caribbean, the wind blows year-round in Aruba, peaking May through June, when it averages 35 knots. Typically, January is one of the calmer months, with winds averaging 18 knots. I love wind, but Duncan is boring me so I ask if he's found an identifiable culture in Aruba.

"I don't know. I'm really not into culture at all," he says proudly. "All the sightseeing, history and the like. It does nothing for me."

Fortunately for him, there is little danger of being ambushed by living culture on Aruba, although archaeological evidence abounds of the Caquetios nation of the Arawak Indians, who inhabited the island from about 1000 until 1515, when the Spanish shipped them off to Hispaniola to work as slaves.

Aruba's modern population is a mix of Dutch, black and Latino and, not surprisingly, I heard an almost even mix of Dutch, English and Spanish spoken. Some Arubans still speak Papiamento, a Spanish derivative developed in the 1500s in neighboring Curacao to allow slaves and their owners to communicate -- but you won't need a Papiamento phrasebook to get by.

Honestly, when it comes to Caribbean vacations I side with Duncan. I came to Aruba to play, not learn. So I rally my rented Jeep to the north end, past the upper-class hamlet of Malmok, to where the pavement turns to sand.

A vague path snakes to the beach. The landscape is lunar-desert-meets-tropical-paradise: Cactuses jut from the sand and rock, defying the wind, and dune grass billows beside the glowing ocean.

Eve, my hotelier, told me that an off-road tour of Aruba's undeveloped north and east coasts would take about two hours. Eve is exceedingly nice but also happens to be a local, meaning she's probably driven the coast 50 times, and a Dutch woman, meaning she is pathologically efficient. After two hours I have covered maybe a third of the coast, have been out of the car more than a dozen times for closer views of the scenery and am quickly running out of film.

My camera spins from wind-rippled tide pools and wild ponies to broad limestone shelves, hideaway beaches and unrelenting waves that curl from dark sapphire to bright indigo before exploding on the rocks. (You can access some of the coast without four-wheel drive but not the bulk of it; I haggled a Jeep for $180 for four days, not much more than a standard car.) This expanse of wild, hilly coast surprises me. Aruba is heavily promoted to gamblers, honeymooners and cruisers and, per the brochures, appeared well developed. In fact, in a hilarious case of poetic justice, many of the high-rise hotels built to attract windsurfers actually block the wind, making windsurfing directly in front of the hotels far less desirable than along coastal stretches where only low-rise buildings stand.

But almost the entire east side of the 19-by-5-mile island is undeveloped. Aside from taking the trade winds -- and the associated non-family-friendly waves -- head on, the east coast consists largely of rock. It is not what most developers would consider prime vacation real estate.

Just to be safe, the government in 2000 established Arikok National Park, an 8,000-acre preserve that includes about one-quarter of the eastern coastline. The park harbors numerous caves, many with Caquetios drawings, the ruins of a 19th-century gold mine, the Boca Prins sand dunes and the Boca Keto natural pool (a deep, calm pool on the sea encircled by rock).

Away from Arikok and the rustic coast, Aruba is less than beautiful. Mostly flat, developed and dusty, it bears evidence of the almost 100,000 residents who share the crudely shaped parallelogram. Oranjestad, the capital, is a zoo of traffic and cruise ship escapees, who throng the same shops (with the same prices) one could find in many U.S. cities. Farther from the capital, middle-class neighborhoods mix with businesses and industrial lots. One of the nicer restaurants I try, Captain's Corner, is in a small strip mall (a huge plate of grouper and rice, a salad and two beers costs me $23, including tip).

Most tourists crowd into Palm Beach or Eagle Beach, a few miles north of Oranjestad, where high-rise hotels line the shore. I am staying just south of Malmok, in the Sunset Boulevard Studios, a tranquil collection of about 10 units with kitchens, cable TV and air conditioning.

The $100-per-night apartments, each of which has a private outdoor table, ring a courtyard with a small pool, hot tub and two gas grills. The studios are 100 feet from the beach, directly across a two-lane road. Every morning I sit in the courtyard with cereal, coffee and a book, and repeat the routine with beers at sunset. Besides Duncan and Isabelle, guests include a New York couple and their baby, an older pair from Kansas, and Alex, an Australian here for three months to teach windsurfing.

Similar lodgings line the road near Sunset Studios and, aside from being far more relaxing than the imposing hotels, are a quick drive from the island's nicest beaches -- soft sand, pleasant coves and thatched palapas -- near Malmok.

One exception, at Aruba's southern tip and resting in the shadow of an oil refinery, is Baby Beach, so named for its broad, shallow lagoon, which is guarded from the wind-whipped currents by a long breakwall. Outside that barrier is the best snorkeling on the island, a descending field of coral and rock swarming with fish. I get a decent workout kicking against the wind for 20 minutes, then drift back to the narrow opening in the wall and return to the placid lagoon.

A group of American southerners stand knee-deep in the water, drinking beers from the on-site concessionaire, their guts jiggling as they rave about car racing. They are having a blast, but the scene reminds me that you don't come to Aruba to get away from it all. Yet 20 minutes later, as I hike over a shoulder of petrified lava below the Seroe Colorado lighthouse, a half-mile from Baby Beach, and gaze down into the whirling churn of the Caribbean with no other people in sight, I think that maybe, just maybe, you could lose yourself here.

Three hours before my flight home, I am windsurfing again, zipping past beautiful wooden sailboats moored offshore. A strong gust sends me out of control and I wipe out in a flurry of arms, legs and equipment. Swimming back to my board, I see a plane descending to the airport and I know I'll be back in D.C. before my bathing suit is dry. I also realize that in four days in Aruba I have not thought about work once, the worries of my world carried off by the wind.

John Briley last wrote for Travel about ski biking in New Hampshire.

Details: Aruba

GETTING THERE: United has seasonal nonstop flights from Washington Dulles to Aruba on Saturdays only, from December through April, with March departures starting at $850 round trip. US Airways and American Airlines have midweek flights starting at $600 round trip, with connections. Continental, Delta and Northwest also serve Aruba from the D.C. area, with connections.

WHERE TO STAY: Most beachfront lodging starts at about $200 per night during high season (through April) and drops to $130 per night and up in late spring and summer. For example, the Renaissance Aruba Resort in Oranjestad (800-421-8188; www.arubarenaissance.com) has doubles starting at $209. The Occidental Grand in Palm Beach (800-858-2258, www.occidentalhotels.com) has doubles starting at $228 and dropping to $185 off season. Many hotel rates include breakfast.

Prices at many of the low-rise hotels are similar: The Best Western in Manchebo Beach (800-528-1234, www.bestwestern.com ), for one, has doubles starting at $200 during high season, with occasional promotional rates of $140. The caveat: March and April require a seven-night minimum stay.

To save money, consider an apartment. We got lucky with Sunset Boulevard Studios (800-813-6540, www.aruba-sunset blvds.com), which offers doubles across the street from the beach starting at $104 per night. Cheaper beds are available, especially if you don't mind driving to the beach. Aruba Harmony Apartments (011-297-588-6787, www.arubaharmony.com) lists small apartments in Oranjestad from $85 per night in winter and $65 per night off-season. Note, however, that Oranjestad is a congested city housing a massive cruise ship dock.

Most lodgings, including villas and private rental homes, are listed on the tourism office's Web site at www.aruba.com, with links to each property's Web site.

GETTING AROUND: Shuttles serve the major hotels and taxis are plentiful. If you want to rent a car, expect to spend about $160 a week for a compact. I paid $180 for a Jeep for four days and could have done better per day had I rented for a week.

WHERE TO EAT: My most scenic meal was at Ventanas del Mar at the Tierra del Sol Resort and Country Club in Malmok. The property sits on a hill -- so go early, grab a fruity drink and stroll the terraces at sunset. The grilled tuna with Oriental mango-tomato chutney and soy sauce is a winner, as is the seafood ceviche appetizer. Dinner for two, with wine, runs about $100.

La Trattoria el faro Blanco,next to the California Lighthouse, has perhaps the best sunset vantage on the island. The prices seem high for Italian food -- entrees average $30 -- but the mood is romantic.

WHAT TO DO:

• Sail boarding. The owners of Sunset Boulevard Studios also own Aruba Boardsailing School, south of the studios. Look for gear-packed trailers along the beach (the "office"). Rentals start at $30 per day for guests, $40 for non-guests. Other rental operations, with similar rates, include Aruba Sailboard Vacations (800-252-1070, www.arubasailboardvacations.com).

• Snorkeling is average along the Malmok coast, and the best beach in this area is Boca Catalina, about 11/2 miles north of the Marriott. The best snorkeling I found was outside the breakwall at Baby Beach, on Aruba's southern tip. Red Sail Sports rents gear for $10 per day. Info: 877-733-7245, www.redsail.com; located at the Hyatt Regency, Allegro Resort and Marriott.

• Touring the east coast is a must, in a four-wheel drive Jeep (as I did) or on horseback or mountain bikes. Numerous outfitters offer horseback tours, including Rancho del Campo, with tours from $50 a person. Info: 011-297-585-0290; www.ranchodelcampo.com.

INFORMATION: Aruba Tourism Authority, 800-TO-ARUBA, www.aruba.com. -- John Briley

www.washingtonpost.com By Gary Lee Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 23, 2003; Page E01

A wake-up caw jolted me from slumber on my first morning in Tobago. Out my window at Richmond Great House, the old sugar plantation where I had stayed the night, was the source: a pheasantlike bird covered in brown plumage, strutting across the lawn as if it owned the place. In a sense, it did. The cocrico, I later learned, is a species of wild fowl native to the island. It is to Tobagonians what the bald eagle is to Americans.

And so began a weeklong parade of exotic creatures and plants I spotted as I explored this little-known tropical outpost off the coast of Venezuela. At the botanical garden on the edge of Scarborough (the island's otherwise forgettable capital), there were Easter-yellow heliconias, blood-orange bougainvillea, cotton-candy-pink dichaea pieta orchids and dozens of other species of trees and flowers I had never heard of. In a boat ride off Pigeon Point, a beach favored for its delicate white sand and bath-warm water, I peered through 40 feet of transparent water at a forest of sea feathers, sea rods and other brilliantly colored clusters of coral. In an afternoon of snorkeling off Buccoo Reef, I saw wrassle, parrotfish, blue tang, butterfish and a dozen other species little-known outside the tropics.

That was 10 years ago. So impressed was I by the island's wildlife and flora that I gave Tobago the ultimate endorsement: I bought a home there.

Dozens of trips later, I still stumble across new natural wonders every time I return. Last month, a day after a nonstop 41/2-hour flight from Dulles, I found myself on a three-hour hike through the wonderfully unkempt rain forest that stretches across the northern end of the island. With infectious enthusiasm, guide Fitzroy Quamino led me down trails and under towering samaan trees, pointing at red-footed and brown boobies, rufous-tailed jacamars and even the rarely seen white-tailed sabre-winged hummingbird. Tobagonians are proud of their island's natural wonders, and Quamino recited the inventory of flora and fauna found here: 123 species of butterflies, 210 birds, 370 kinds of forest trees, at least a dozen kinds of wild orchids.

One reason for this impressive assortment of wildlife is the island's location. Perched about 20 miles northeast of Venezuela and 10 degrees north of the equator, Tobago has a tropical climate more remindful of the Amazon than the Caribbean. Days average 85 degrees, and even in the late autumn and early winter rainy season, showers rarely linger more than a couple of hours. The locals have worked hard to protect the island's delicate ecology. Its forest is the oldest nature preserve in the Western Hemisphere.

Situated at the bottom of the chain of Caribbean isles, Tobago's remote setting has also helped to preserve its pristine natural beauty. Until British West Indian Airways introduced a nonstop flight from Dulles last fall, it took at least three planes and a day and a half to reach from most spots along the East Coast. And so only about 175,000 tourists visit a year, compared with the million or so that throng the beaches of Jamaica or Puerto Rico.

Dwarfed in size and population by Trinidad, the more industrialized sister island linked to it politically since 1898, Tobago's 26-mile length and eight-mile width is deceptively small on a map. A drive around the circumference at an appropriately gentle pace -- stopping in a village for a chat with locals or taking a dip in its seductively warm waters -- takes a full day.

For nature lovers, one key diversion is Arnos Vale, a resort sprawled across several acres, with a lush garden of trees, bougainvillea, ginger lilies and other tropical flowers. I always stop for a picnic lunch in the fishing village of Parlatuvier, a couple of hours' drive from Scarborough. Duran Chance, who runs the country store there, will supply visitors with picnic supplies and local gossip. For a swim, there's no finer spot than Pirate's Bay beach at Charlotteville, a cove once used as a hideout for pirates.

Besides helping preserve its natural wonders, the island's isolation has helped locals cling to many Old World artistic and social endeavors. The majority of the 45,000 Tobagonians trace their roots to Africa. Wood carving, practiced by some impressive masters, is one art that carries echoes of the old country. Cullen and Lisa Andrew, who have a stall at the crafts market at Store Bay, are among the best carvers I've seen. Although they have never visited Africa and rarely travel off Tobago, Cullen's masks and figurines, hewn mostly from cedar and mahogany, look as if they'd been plucked from a market in Ghana.

"I carve what I feel," Cullen said. "And what I feel almost certainly harks back to Africa."

Another local art form with African roots is bamboo dancing, in which two players open and close long pieces of bamboo while barefoot dancers sally in and out. A troupe from the village of Les Coteaux dresses in African garb and performs bamboo dancing on different nights of the week at hotels across the island, including the Grafton, the Turtle Beach and the Arnos Vale Waterwheel. After hearing of the group for years, I finally saw them last month. The show, following a buffet dinner at Le Grand Courlan, one of the island's premier hotels, was one of the high points of my visit.

And then there is "pulling the seine," a method of fishing dating to the 1800s in which fishermen fill a net with bait and slowly tug in the day's catch. Tobagonians hang around with buckets to buy their share. On the beaches at Turtle Bay, Bloody Bay and Parlatuvier, visitors can watch the seine pullers and snag a red snapper, kingfish or other local fish from them.

Over the past 10 years, modernization and some development has begun to creep into the local culture. About four years ago, Jemma, a local who manages a rustic restaurant built in a gnarly tree in Speyside, began to take charge cards. In spite of local protests, the Tobago Hilton opened in 2001, complete with a world-class golf course. And in the same year, actor Harrison Ford built a vacation mansion not far from my own little house, bringing a celebrity status that seems out of synch with the island's homespun image.

But for the most part, the newcomers have been respectful of the island's special status. In my recent amble around, I ran into several such characters. Hira, a 75-year-old artist whose ancestors emigrated from India to Trinidad, produces heartwarmingly naive depictions of the Tobago landscape. Montrealer Cynthia Clovis, chef/owner of Kariwak Village, takes pride in using local spices and ingredients in her dishes. Gemma Cassimir, the Trinidadian public relations manager at the Hilton, boasts of the works local craftsmen used to decorate the lobby.

And so, in spite of the changes, Tobago's integrity and peaceful way of life remain intact. The palm and coconut trees that blanket the island still lilt lazily in the warm breezes. By unwritten rule no building is taller than a palm tree. Even on holiday weekends, the beaches never seem to hold more than a few sunbathers. In the summer, mangoes and papayas fall from the trees until some hungry soul comes along and snatches them up. And the cocrico still caws at daybreak, pulling me out of one dream and into another.

Gary Lee will be online to discuss this story during the Travel section's regular weekly chat tomorrow at 2 p.m. on www.washingtonpost.com. Details: Tobago

GETTING THERE: BWIA flies nonstop from Dulles to Tobago on Thursdays, with fares starting at $570 round trip, with restrictions. American flies from Reagan National, via Miami and Port of Spain, Trinidad, with winter fares starting at $650.

WHERE TO STAY: For travelers seeking luxury at any cost, Le Grand Courlan (868-639-9292, www.legrandcourlan-resort.com) is the spot. Rooms at this all-inclusive beachfront property are elegantly decorated and the amenities are first class, including tennis courts, a wonderful pool, Xgym and spa. Although the cuisine is okay, it rarely rises to the hotel's four-star rating. Winter rates start at $270 a night per person.

For those on a budget, the Blue Horizon (Jacamar Drive, Mount Irvine, 868-639-0432, www.blue-horizonresort.com) is a small guesthouse with great sea views and comfortable rooms. It's about a 10-minute walk to a lovely beach and the same distance to a golf course. Apartments suitable for two, including a kitchenette, start at $60 a night.

La Colline (868-639-0316, www.vacationresidences.com), a three-bedroom villa in the village of Bethel, is good for families or couples who want seclusion. It's furnished with wonderful locally made furniture and art. Amenities include cable TV, VCR and maid service. Rates are $400 a week.

WHERE TO EAT: The Kariwak Village, a holistic haven and hotel off Store Bay Local Road in Crown Point, offers a fabulous set menu of Caribbean and Creole cuisine for around $25 a person, including dessert. On weekends there's a live band with dancing. The Hilton Tobago, less than three miles from the airport, serves tasty buffet lunches and dinners in a stylish setting. The food usually includes at least a couple of local specialties, such as callaloo soup. At around $30 a person, it's a splurge, but a worthwhile one. The Toucan Inn and Bonkers (Store Bay Local Road, Crown Point ) is a good, fairly inexpensive place for chicken and chips. The atmosphere is festive and there's usually a good crowd of locals, especially on weekends. Dinner for two, with a couple of drinks, runs around $35.

WHAT TO DO: For offshore nature excursions, glass-bottom boats leave from Store Bay, a beach near the airport, every morning around 11. No reservations necessary. The rate for the three-hour trip is around $9 a person. Fitzroy Quamino (868-660-7836) conducts three-hour nature hikes through the Bloody Bay rain forest for $50 per person.

INFORMATION: Tobago Department of Tourism, 868-639-0509, www.visittobago.gov.tt.

-- Gary Lee

books.guardian.co.uk Saturday February 22, 2003 The Guardian

Terry Eagleton argues that fundamentalism is characterised by a dangerous reverence for words

There are two things desirable for fighting fundamentalists. The first is not to be one yourself. The US government's war on the movement is somewhat compromised by the fact that it is run by scripture-spouting fanatics for whom the sanctity of human life ends at the moment of birth. This is rather like using the British National party to run ex-Nazis to earth, or hiring Henry Kissinger to investigate mass murder, as George Bush recently did by nominating him to inquire into the background to September 11. Fundamentalists of the Texan stripe are not best placed to hunt down the Taliban variety.

The second desirable thing is to know what fundamentalism is. The answer to this is less obvious than it might seem. Fundamentalism doesn't just mean people with fundamental beliefs, since that covers everyone. Being a person means being constituted by certain basic convictions, even if they are largely unconscious. What you are, in the end, is what you cannot walk away from. These convictions do not need to be burning or eye-catching or even true; they just have to go all the way down, like believing that Caracas is in Venezuela or that torturing babies is wrong. They are the kind of beliefs that choose us more than we choose them. Sceptics who doubt you can know anything for sure have at least one fundamental conviction. "Fundamental" doesn't necessarily mean "worth dying for". You may be passionately convinced that the quality of life in San Francisco is superior to that in Strabane, but reluctant to go to the gallows for it.

Fundamentalists are not always the type who seize you by the throat with one fist while thumping the table with the other. There are plenty of soft-spoken, self-effacing examples of the species. It isn't a question of style. Nor is the opposite of fundamentalism lukewarmness, or the tiresome liberal prejudice that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. Tolerance and partisanship are not incompatible. Anti-fundamentalists are not people without passionate beliefs; they are people who number among their passionate beliefs the conviction that you have as much right to your opinion as they have. And for this, some of them are certainly prepared to die. The historian AJP Taylor was once asked at an interview for an Oxford fellowship whether it was true that he held extreme political beliefs, to which he replied that it was, but that he held them moderately. He may have been hinting that he was a secret sceptic, but he probably just meant that he did not agree with forcing his beliefs on others.

The word "fundamentalism" was first used in the early years of the last century by anti-liberal US Christians, who singled out seven supposed fundamentals of their faith. The word, then, is not one of those derogatory terms that only other people use about you, like "fatso". It began life as a proud self-description. The first of the seven fundamentals was a belief in the literal truth of the Bible; and this is probably the best definition of fundamentalism there is. It is basically a textual affair. Fundamentalists are those who believe that our linguistic currency is trustworthy only if it is backed by the gold standard of the Word of Words. They see God as copperfastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.

Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase "sacred text" is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade.

The New Testament author known as Luke is presumably aware that Jesus was actually born in Galilee. But he needs to have him born in Judea, since the Messiah is to spring from the Judea-based house of David. A Messiah born in bumpkinish Galilee would be like one born in Gary, Indiana. So Luke coolly invents a Roman census, for which there is no independent evidence, which requires everyone to return to their place of birth to be registered. Since Jesus's father Joseph comes from Bethlehem in Judea, he and his wife Mary obediently trudge off to the town, where Jesus is conveniently born.

It would be hard to think up a more ludicrous way of registering the population of the entire Roman empire than having them all return to their birthplaces. Why not just register them on the spot? The result of such a madcap scheme would have been total chaos. The traffic jams would have made Ken Livingstone's job look positively cushy. And we would almost certainly have heard about this international gridlocking from rather more disinterested witnesses than Luke. Yet fundamentalists must take Luke at his word.

Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death. Matthew's gospel, in a moment of carelessness, presents Jesus as riding into Jerusalem on both a colt and an ass - in which case, for the fundamentalist, the Son of God must indeed have had one leg thrown over each.

The fundamentalist is a more diseased version of the argument-from-the-floodgates type of conservative. Once you allow one motorist to throw up out of the car window without imposing a lengthy prison sentence, then before you know where you are, every motorist will be throwing up out of the window all the time, and the roads will become impassable. It is this kind of pathological anxiety, pressed to an extreme, which drove the religious police in Mecca early last year to send fleeing schoolgirls back into their burning school because they were not wearing their robes and head dresses, and which inspires family-loving US pro-lifers eager to incinerate Iraq to gun down doctors who terminate pregnancies. To read the world literally is a kind of insanity.