Blogs from Trinidad & Tobago, Central America Caribbean - page 8

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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 soitetaan öljytynnyreistä kehitetyillä soittimilla. Se on aivan uskomatonta. Eilen kuulin yhden bändin harjoittelevan Bachia, ja toisen Michael Jacksonia. Port of Spain on ainoa Karibian kaupunki, jossa olen tuntenut olevani alipukeutunut. Kaksi kuukautta olen käyttänyt samoja vaatteita, jotka ovat ke... read more
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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 I had a much bigger chair with more recline, extra leg room and a big foot rest. Battling against jet lag i stayed awake for the entire flight which took me to 1am my time, ... read more
North Coast
Stanton (left) and Marcus (right)
Maracas Beach


We arrived in Tobago during the evening and we were met by Cecilia’s dad’s cousin and his wife. Courteous and kind, they invited us to stay with them for our duration in Tobago. We spent our first day looking around Golden Lane village and seeing the land that Cecilia’s family owned. The village was situated on a hilltop, which gave good views of the surrounding countryside. We also visited the village’s beach down below. It was small and mainly used by fishermen. The village is set in tropical forest, complete with an ancient tree where tails of local legend are as common as the plant life growing from this giant. We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting the scenic St George fort perched on a cliff edge in the island’s capital Scarborough and finding a ... read more


We arrived in Port of Spain (Trinidad) in the late evening. By the time we had gotten into the town centre and found a hotel we knew that our planned week-long trip here could be expensive compared with what we had been used to. We had pencilled in a few days here and the rest in Tobago, where Cecilia’s father was born. We left the hotel to get something to eat and have a first look at Trinidad. We had our first KFC (really quite bad) and ended up getting a cab to the lively quarter of St James. Being no stranger to Caribbean English in the UK, I was quite surprised on how different Caribbean English is in the Caribbean. ‘Ya wa'n gwa limin'?’ After Cecilia translated I realised the driver was asking if we ... read more


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, I've found that I have received mixed reactions to my plans, and that has been the biggest challenge so far. A large proportion of the people I have shared my plans with have been supportive, but as with all things in life, there were a select few who responded in ... read more


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 all but 2 blocks from the place, it's a good drive too. We stayed in a nice little duplex on a lake with cayman and tons of birds. His home and the preserve are located ... read more
Isaiah's Backyard
White Egrets
Dangerous Walkway!


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"; they live in trees and feast on birds in the evening; but they are mercifully asleep above us in daytime as we anxiously paddle by. This is the nesting season for the bird colonies that inhabit these parts and we spend peaceful ... read more


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 beaches on Tobago were amazing. Small waves lapping the shores, big waves breaking on the reef a few 100 metres out, locals giving ‘deals’ on glass bottom boat tours and jet ski rentals, and the ... read more
The Ferry
Safety First
Up Stream


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 a typical tourist destination…which excited Haley and me even more! We were also looking forward to finding a little culture down there, T & T’s demographics lean heavily towards "Indo-Trinidadians" followed closely by "Afro-Trinidadians". I ... read more
Charlotteville
Seascape
Maracas Bay Beach


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 variety of humming birds, one of them the smallest in Trinidad, the Tufted Coquette. Brittany and I also saw a pregnant Black-throated Mango hummingbird. But the most amazing thing we did up there was feed ... read more
Rain at UWI Splash
Destra Garcia
Carlos and Destra




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