Blogs from Trinidad, Trinidad & Tobago, Central America Caribbean - page 9

And those birding people take that pretty literally. I can't remember the last time I woke up after 8. But after a very uneventful week I decided I would do anything there was to do on Saturday. So I was up at 4:30 to go birdwatching. The last time I was up at 4:30 was before I had slept, not after. Anyways, you may laugh about my birding...but apparently I was in the presence of greatness without even knowing it. My guide for the day was Roger Neckles, one of the leading wildlife photographers in the world. Apparently he's a National Geographic regular and all the pictures in the airport...along with most anywhere else are his. It was just me and Roger, which luckily didn't end up being as weird as it sounds. Although when I ... read more

If only all those things went together. So within two days I was at a convent and a monestary and made new monk and nun friends. Except I decided that I didn't really want my monk friends, because they were old, boring, smelled funny, had no sense of humor and lots of nose hair. So I'll start somewhat back at the beginning... a guy at the university who works at the library and helped me with some research, Sham, was really intent on taking me to the monestary. Normally, I wouldn't really be that keen on the idea, but Mount St. Benedict, the monestary was highly recommended by my handy little guide book, so I decided to take him up on the offer. Sham however, was determined to have me have long meetings with all the ... read more

Saturday I discovered a new way to crash weddings- just stand by the photographers the entire time and pretend like I'm one of them. Since the Catholic church has lots of rules about where and when you can take pictures, someone suggested I just follow the lead of the photographers. They then offered to take me to the reception, which I was pretty excited about, since before I was just planning on going to the ceremony. The 2:00 wedding got rolling somewhere after 2:30, very typical of Trini time. In an effort to overcome Trini time, the churches have started charging about $150-200 if you start more than 15 minutes late...but instead the brides just consider that to be a donation to the church and come whenever they like. Since I was suddenly part of the ... read more

The group of international students I had met before were going to a Hindu wedding on Sunday, which inconveniently fell in the middle of our time in Tobago. I couldn't turn down this chance...especially since I suppose I am here to study, but we wanted to stay Sunday night in Buccoo. After much plotting Kerry and I decided we would both go back to Trinidad just for the day to go to the wedding and get a flight back in the evening. Basically, to accomplish everything we needed to in one day would require some serious luck. We broke our day into 12 steps, mainly to amuse ourselves and also to make it seem like we weren't doing something completely ridiculous. Our ride to the airport came early, which was a good start. Our cab driver, ... read more

So this morning I was jolted back to the reality that I don't actually get to spend all 7 weeks here on the beach. But, the one I did was incredible. I would say that I would just give you all the highlights, but really, I don't have much else to do right now, so you may end up getting it all whether you like it or not. So I met Kerry at the airport Monday and we got on another plane to Tobago. Tobago is the little sister island to Trinidad to the east, and is about a 20 minute plane ride, so by the time you take off, you are also landing. Luckily the plane was slightly larger than your average picture of a puddle jumper, because it would have been bad if Kerry ... read more