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Published: October 13th 2012
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Although I realize that the term "mashup" is used mostly to refer to blended songs, I feel that it also perfectly fits the strange, but wonderful mix of experiences that made up my week in Trinidad and Tobago. Just put a bit of steel pan or reggae music on in the background...
After probably the best layover ever - 6 hours spent on the beach on Margarita Island - we arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the capital of the former British colony. Being once British means that they drive on the other side of the road, which made me quite happy, though slightly disoriented after a day of "travel" (laying on the beach does not really qualify as travel). After a nice and much needed dinner at the hotel, we crashed for the night. We were extremely lazy on Saturday but managed to make it out of the hotel to do a little walking around the downtown area and go for dinner. It was at dinner that the power ballads first came into play. We ate in a mall that had nice, real restaurants - not just a food court - where I had some great jerk
chicken alfredo, and we saw them setting up for what looked like live music. Interested, we stuck around, and stuck around, and stuck around. After almost giving up, the music started. Some of the singers were very talented, especially a young girl who had to be only thirteen or fourteen, but the song selection was power ballad, after power ballad, after power ballad. One well sung ballad is great, but fifteen in a row is a bit much. We then continued to hear power ballads everywhere we went. The mashup begins...
On Sunday, we actually started sightseeing and took a walk that in length might have rivaled Carrie and my walk around Belfast a few years ago, though it was much warmer. We wandered past a huge park - Queen's Savannah - found ourselves by the President's house, walked through the Botanical Gardens - this is where they buried the former governors of Trinidad and Tobago, and we saw some cool trees, like the Eucalyptus - and we finally ended up at our original destination, the Zoo. Of course, it immediately started to rain. This did not deter our animal viewing, and we saw some great animals
- my favorite being the ocelot. Looking at all the animals in their almost natural habitat, and knowing that we were actually in a tropical location made me think of the computer game Amazon Trail 3... The highlight of the zoo was watching the chimpanzee receive, open, pour into glasses, and drink a bottle of Pepsi - it was pretty fun to watch. On the walk back, we passed 7 colonial style mansions, one of which, Stollmeyer's Castle, I want to live in. After resting our feet, we went out for some great Indian food - I haven't had such good Indian food since living in England.
Monday morning saw us return to a beach - Maracas Beach - a short drive away from Port of Spain. The beach was lovely, except for the horrid biting ants that attacked our legs and their bites are officially worse than mosquito bites. We chilled and swam and tried some of the local food - shark and bake, which was like a shark burger/sandwich and was really good. Shark kind of reminded me of alligator, but not chicken. When we asked what kind of shark it was, we were told
"young shark" - not quite what we meant... While at the beach, we learned a new term - "liming", which means to hang around, talk to friends, and have a drink or two. That evening, we returned to the same mall we had eaten at before to do some shopping, watch a movie, and try a different restaurant. Ironically, the movie we went to see, "Won't Back Down", was a teacher movie. Still, it was really good.
On Tuesday, the feeling of living Amazon Trail 3 returned as we took a tour in the Caroni Bird Sanctuary. This feeling was joined by the sense of playing "exotic bird bingo" - a game that Cronk plays in the Disney movie, "The Emperor's New Groove". We rode down the Blue River in a flat bottomed motorized boat just before sunset. The rain which had threatened all afternoon started just before we were going to start our ride and ended in plenty of time for us to get our tour in. As we rode, we snapped pictures of birds, snakes, four-eyed fish, termite nests, and different kinds of trees (just like in Amazon Trail 3, for those of you who
have not played the game). Just as the sun was setting, we stopped in a "clearing" - that is not the right word, but it was an open expanse of water that was still part of the river - just as the Scarlet Ibis' - the national bird - were returning in their hundreds to an island where they nest nightly. They were joined by some white egrets, but the predominate color was red. It was amazing watching the flocks of bright red birds wing their way over the water, and our boat, to join the innumerable others, adding their voices to the cacophony of calls echoing up and down the river, all backed by the mountainous clouds and brilliant colors of the tropical sunset. Words don't do it justice.
Noon on Wednesday found us on the ferry bound for the smaller island, Tobago. Having taken ferry rides before, I was not prepared for the roughness of this one and spent most of the ride cursing the ferry's choice of Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked as the onboard movie and wondering if I was going to be sick. The rain began as we disembarked, so we quickly
caught a cab and found our hotel, the Banana Quit - named after a type of bird. As the rain let up, we walked down to the nearest beach - Store Bay - to check out some local artisans and watch the sunset over the water. After only about 3 hours, we were pretty much in love with Tobago.
Our love for Tobago was cemented on our snorkeling tour the next day, when the last part of the mashup came into play. Odell Down Under is another old school computer game in which you are a fish that lives in a coral reef and you go around eating different fish and learning the names of different fish and so on. I certainly saw several of the fish that I had first learned about on that game and the water was perfect. We had a grill out lunch and partied a bit at an island pool as the sun set. A couple of the tour guide came over and made us a local dish - crab and dumplings - which took a really long time but was really good. I hate fighting for my food, however, so I
don't think I will be eating any crab dishes again any time soon. We were up early Friday morning to begin the trek back to Anaco, which was extended by an hour and a half delay in our last flight - not cool. We arrived back sometime after midnight and school starts again on Monday!
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