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Published: June 24th 2006
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Me by the big cacti
why? i have no idea, but my guide insisted that i wanted a picture with them. So I decided the time had come for me to head down de islands. Everyone refers to the Bocas...a group of about 11 different islands of the northwest coast as simply going down de islands. It's right off the coast of Chagaraumas, an area that used to be the US military base during WWII. So now it consists mainly of a national park, lots of expats, and yahties who bring their boats up here to get them out of the hurricane path. One of the islands, Gasparee, is most known for its cave so that's where I was heading.
The elementary school tour that I crashed never ended up showing up...but luckily the tour guide still agreed to take me out. It was about a 15 minute boat ride past some of the other islands and you could see Venezuela just beyond the last island...I'm going to get closer to South America than that though!
The cave was really eery at first. The only time I can remember going in a cave was a long time ago in Colorado and don't remember it being quite so odd. So it was just me, the guide, a little island dog and
the bats. And from what I hear I'm not the only person who has been hanging around bats lately. I was really lucky that the kids didn't show up because I ended up getting to climb all over different parts of it and swim. But, pulling a classic Erin move, as I was trying to climb up one of the formations I wiped out on the combination of algae and bat poop and had a excellent slow motion, feet in the air over my head fall. Luckily the only thing damaged were my now filthy shorts. My guide, who I could never understand his name, was eager to be my personal photographer and to point out all the different limestone formations. It was kind of like watching clouds...I think you can find whatever you want to see in them. But there was a lion, a couple of heads and a buddha among others. The water was crystal clear and supposedly more than 30 feet deep in some places. But since I like my spinal cord, I decided just to jump in instead of diving at the guides urging since it didn't look anywhere near that deep. Since the ocean feeds
up on one of the big formations
watch out there are a lot of pictures of me awkwardly posed by different pieces of rock. the water from underneath, it rises and falls with the tides, so maybe it was just low tide. I have to say it was pretty cool and Goonies-esque to swim around in a cave. There were some fish that I never saw, but they are all blind because of the lack of light, so they didn't see me either. I thankfully had a pair of jeans with me so I didn't have to travel back in shame...but I'm still finding bat poop on my shirt. ewww.
I had made it until yesterday without really shopping at all...save for looking in a few tacky souvenir shops, but now all hope is lost. On my way back into town I stopped in West Mall...a fancy American style mall. It was incredibly nice, and once I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror with my matted cave water hair and chacos, I realized I had no place there. All the really nice suberbs of Port of Spain are off to the west...big gated communites, armed security guards, the works. I met a man a while back who just so happened to have lived in Charlotte before he moved here, and he
was telling me about how his rent is over $7,000 a month. So anyways, those are the people shopping there. But it was really nice, and everyone was polite enough to at least pretend I wasn't disgusting.
I made a pit stop in Port of Spain before catching my maxi back to see a little Tobago festival they were putting on. The highlight was an amazing steel pan player and the old man who danced as if he was the only person around. It was amazing. I think everyong was cheering for him, not the pan player. I also took another stab at street coconuts. They cut open the coconuts and if you are man enough you just throw back the coconut water. But they seem to sense I am not man enough, and give me a straw. Then they cut a little scoop out of the coconut and open it for you to scrape out all the coconut jelly which is weird and slimy. The real fun though is watching the guy hack at the coconuts with his huge knife and wondering if he is going to keep all his fingers.
My main accomplishment of the week
was making a pack of Biskrem, cookies that I love, last over a week. In Tobago we were on a two pack a day diet of them so this was quite the challenge. Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to go to the festivities welcoming the soccer team back home. It's mildly satisfying to know that they did no worse than the US. They are revealing what the government is giving all the members of the team tomorrow. There is talk of them all getting land or cars. Just think if they had actually won. Or scored a goal. Then I'm off on a little adventure until sometime Tuesday!
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