Blogs from Trinidad & Tobago, Central America Caribbean - page 2

23-11-17 Trinidad and Tobago were discovered in 1498 by Christopher Columbus, who claimed the islands for Spain. Three hundred years later, in 1798, the British seized the territory and immediately abolished slavery. To make up for the resulting labour shortage, the British encouraged immigration from Portugal, France, Germany, China and India, and in the early 1900s, the country invited thousands of immigrants from the Caribbean, Venezuela and Colombia. Today Trinidad is the most developed nation in the Caribbean and the island is a cultural melting pot renowned for its steel drums and calypso music. We arrived in Port of Spain early morning and started our sightseeing tour, first stop was for morning tea which consisted of excellent cocoa tea and chocolate tasting. We then drove over the mountain range to a popular beach at Maracas Bay ... read more

Yeah Man, welcome to Tobago! Can you put Tobago on the map...probably not for most of you. And it has nothing to do with Tobago Cays in Grenadine! Tobago is one of the two island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, the most Southern nation of the Caribbean. Venezuela is actually just next door! Trinidad is home to some 1.2 millions inhabitants....while the smaller Tobago has just 50,000 inhabitants. Trinidad is full of oil and gaz just offshore of the island...Tobago is way more relax and...Caribbean! My British Airways flight did Gatwick, little stop in St Lucia, and finally Port-of-Spain on Trinidad. We arrived 50 minutes late and I missed my short connection on Caribbean Airlines to Tobago. No problem Sir, next flight is only one hour later, here is your boarding pass. Welcome to an island ... read more

I realize its been far too long since I've written anything, mostly due to the chaos of carnival and being busy with my research. I've done so much in the past few weeks hat I'll no doubt forget to write about a lot of things, but I'll do my best to remember! So carnival started with J'ouvet, which is from 2am until at least midday (given that this was the night after insomina fete, our sleeping patterns were really suffering)! We played J'ouvet with a band, which provide a DJ truck, you get unlimited free drinks and follow them round for the night. The idea is that you throw paint/mud/chococlate basically everything around at each other while walking round the roads of Port of Spain. There are THOUSANDS of people doing this and the city is ... read more

The past two weeks have really been getting properly started with my research and, of course, getting ready for carnival. Most week days we spend working - either going out and doing interviews or phoning around and sorting ourselves out. Thats another thng I love about Trinidad - everything is done by phone, no emails/texts. Its refreshing to actually talk to people and get to know them. Last weekend we went out again (standard) and ended up drinking at the main junction by our house at 4am with a guy who works in a shop which is basically a cage and our taxi driver. In hindsight, probably not the safest idea weve ever had, but being drunk and with two pretty big men, it seemed like a great idea! The next day we went to the ... read more

Trinidad: Fueling Up and Carnival, 7 Miles Off Venezuela Well, we’re moving onto island time and its 10am before we even head to coffee in the International Café. There are big windows in this area and we are shocked to see a huge tanker ship just feet away from us. We are 7 stories up and we are looking directly at the deck hands on the “Panda”. Yikes! What is going on? Cope wanders outside to the top deck to take photos and see what’s going on. Meantime on our own ship there is a crew emergency training drill, so crewmembers are donning life vests, clearing staterooms and cordoning off some areas of the ship. Cope returns and tells me that the tanker next to us is refueling the Ruby Princess. The Panda ties up to ... read more