the flutter of beauty When the first rays of the sun hardly start to struggle through the dark clouds hanging over the sea, the nature seems magically quiet. Everything around comes to a standstill - only light noise of waves, accompanied by rustle of palm leaves, can slightly disturb this silence. All around plays in magic colours and one can't help but take notice of these magnificent views. I enjoy enormously finding myself on this isolated sandy sea shore, surrounded by disorderly coco trees, lines of beach beds and few empty bars. It's really marvellous to stay alone here, fee [View Full Entry]

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PORT OF SPAIN 27.9.-1.10.2009 Port of Spain - miten tarunhohtoinen nimi Trinidad & Tobagon pääkaupungilla, ja voi miten ruma se on. Mutta kaunista löytyy täältäkin. Koko kaupunki on täynnä voima- ja sähköjohtosyheröitä, joissa varoitetaan Danger! On haikeaa lähteä Karibialta pois. Tänään maanosa ja kieli vaihtuvat. Lennän iltapäivällä Quitoon, Ecuadoriin. Port of Spain on kuitenkin hyvin eläväinen ja inspiroiva kaupunki. Täältä on lähtöisin muun muassa calypso ja steel pan -musiikki. Jälkimmäinen sai alkunsa siitä, kun afrikkalaiset rummut kiellettiin. Nimensä mukaisesti musiikkia soite [View Full Entry]

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My dad would call it the scenic route. It definitely wasn't scenic. Chester to London was fine. I went first class. It was cheaper!? London to Heathrow was good, Rayna came and met me on route and hung out at the airport with me. I haven't photo documented this awesome last minute surprise because she'd been out the night before, hadn't had a shower and had a couple of big juicy zits on her face. Not that I minded, but she did. Heathrow to New York JFK was really good, I got a free upgrade to World Traveler Class which meant [View Full Entry]

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Preparing for my medical volunteering trip... [img=http://shop.advanceweb.com/images/products/2006/GI/Special_Gifts/misc/01673_HeartStethoscope_GI/01673_stethoscope_med.jpg] I have been planning to be a part of a medical missions trip a charity in New York have been organising for a number of months now. To be honest, I was so excited at the possibility of contibuting to such an awesome project and knew instantly when I saw it that I would be travelling with that team. My biggest hurdle was raising sufficient funds to be able able to travel out there, but as time has passed, [View Full Entry]

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Time for another blog spot. There are those whom have been badgering me for some time now to post more of my travels. Now that my last wave of papers and presentations has past, I have the time. I do study and work while I’m down here, but do you really want me to talk about that? And so I will start with Easter. Carlos, Abbie and I went down to the Wild Foul Trust to stay with my roommate, Isaiah, at his second home. We left Port of Spain for Point-a-Pierre, the bus cost about 65 cents and took us [View Full Entry]

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A TRINIDAD SANCTUARY The Caroni Bird Sanctuary comprises forty square miles, a depression in the terrain just south of Trinidad's northern range of mountains. We broach it in a soft-engine boat, along waterways bounded by mangrove trees sporting prodigious roots, some red, some white, all above the earth. The murky water, still and silty, bears oysters, and is inhabited by four-eyed fishes and miniature crabs. Barely a quarter mile in, two boa constrictor snakes catch our attention, intertwined among the leaves and low lying branches close overhead. Our escort calls them "tree boas"; [View Full Entry]

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March 16, 2009 Hello all, Thought it was about due time to update my blog. I’ve got three weekends of excitement comin right up. For starters, the weekend after Carnival a group of us set sail for Tobago, a small island off the north east coast of Trinidad. It’s part of the country of Trinidad. Very friendly. One of the girls on hall is from there and she used a hookup to secure a couple villas for us, real cheap, as in hostile prices. We had a couple small pools, a dog named Shiloh, and a peacock on the grounds. The [View Full Entry]

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So now that I am back in school (MBA) I get a "Spring Break", so this year for spring break Haley and I took a trip down to Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). T&T are a set of Caribbean islands just off the coast of Venezuela. Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the main islands; Tobago is much smaller, comprising about 6% of the total area and 4% of the population. I was very interested to check out this somewhat off-the-beaten-track tropical island. It was a little more difficult to gather information and plan this trip because T&T is not [View Full Entry]

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February 21, 2009 The other day I went up the mountain to make some reservations at the PAX guest house with another student for her grandparents. The owner is good friends with one of the professors at the UW – Madison. They’re both big ornithologists. Before we knew what was going on, he had invited us in for tea and cake and we were sitting on the back veranda. There are tons of birds, not quite hundreds, but a lot. Off in the distance various birds of prey are soaring the thermals. A little bit closer to us we saw a [View Full Entry]

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