On The Road Again...

Travel Day! We rise early and eat the last bits of food in the refrigerator, a yogurt, two slices of cold meat and some lettuce. Everything else gets tossed, the last of the margarine and a partial jar of miracle whip. We arrive at the airport, turn in the rental car and are informed that due to impending bad weather , they would like us to take an earlier flight to Trinidad. We agree. Of course, that’s means a longer wait at the Port Of Spain airport. All in all, the trip was great. I must say, however, the best time to go to Tobago is at the end of the rainy season so the waterfalls and rivers will be full. I don’t think there is a “cool” time to go. But, going or not going is not an option. It’s a wonderfully friendly island with a wide ethnic diversity. It shows in the type of foods available, the way people dress, the amount of churches and schools and even in the way their businesses are conducted. We talked with many people who took advantage of the marvelous diving available all around the island and I think it’s safe to say that we definitely missed a beautiful part of the island, beneath the waves. Would we go back? There are so many places I want to see before I’m no longer able to travel so time may not allow it. Upon reflection, Yes, we can go back. There’s still the whole middle of the island to discover.

A Long Dangerous Drive

This is it, the day I decide we will drive along the Atlantic coast the entire length of the island. Tobago is on 26 miles long and from Crown Point were we’re staying to Charlottesville should only take about an hour. That’s a laugh. The roads twist and turn, are narrow, rutted and non existent in a couple of places. They climb up steeply and plunge down the other side just as fast. In a couple of places, they were one lane wide around a blind curve. All in all, it was quite an adventure. I had to watch both sides of the road, look for photo opportunities and give Carl enough warning for him to safely pull over. There were many instances where I would see something to photograph after we were way by it so I tried to make note of the area for the trip back. We traveled through Scarborough along the ocean’s edge where the road was protected from the pounding by a sturdy concrete wall. When we arrived in Speyside, the Atlantic ocean was free to run wild through the streets and I could see erosive evidence of just such an instance. The big draw in Speyside was a restaurant called Jemma’s but we missed it on the way up. Come to think of it, we missed it on the way back, too so we stopped at a place called the Birdwatchers. The food was good, the breeze was refreshing and the cost was more than reasonable. Among our stops was a gray sand beach and an old sugar mill. We had a great day. Our “last meal” was free rum punch and a BBQ at Poolside. We returned to our villa to pack and it was suddenly pouring out. It rained hard for most of the night. The locals will be happy to have it.

Local Cuisine

The weather is beginning to change, so the locals say. The skies today are mostly cloudy and the breeze has freshened from the north. We can see rain off in the distance but it never seems to come close to shore. The air is so thick I think you can actually see it. Anyway, I’m feeling lazy and just satisfy myself with taking a couple of photos at the resort and doing some laundry. That’s another way of saying I stayed in the air conditioned 4 bedroom villa we have here. We decided to eat lunch at the resort today and Roti is on the menu, a misnomer because there is only every one main plate offered. Your choice usually comes in as the protein. Most places offer their plates with either chicken, fish, or goat. So we have the Roti at the resort restaurant. It comes disassembled. The soft “bake” is warm in a towel covered basket while on the plate is my chicken, a chickpea blend, some cubed and boiled potatoes, and something called amkhar which I never did find out what it was. It was hard, fibrous and I didn’t particularly care for the flavor. I chose the chicken while Carl had the goat and again there were bones but at least this time we could pick them out and then put together our Roti.

Definitely Out Of Shape

Today we took a 4 x 4 jeep safari around the island.The driver, Fabio, used old plantation roads to get us to a high overlook where we could see Pigeon Point and The Sisters, a large outcropping of volcanic rocks jutting from the ocean. From there, we went further into the interior where the driving got even more rough and stopped in a shady spot to prepare for what the lady at the orientation described as a leisurely walk into a lovely waterfall. The walk took about 30 minutes, wandered along the Courland River and finally came to the falls. Fabio apologized for the lack of water, this being the dry season. The Highland Falls were pretty enough but the effort I had to expel for that walk was almost too much for me. By the time we returned to the jeep, I was pretty sore. We had a light lunch of coconut bread with cheese and a freshly picked ripe mango Fabio had gathered along the way. He also served us a fruit juice mixture which didn’t set well on my stomach. Back in the jeep, the roads smoothed out for a bit and we traveled through tiny hamlets with names like Arnos Vale, Golden Lane and Black Rock. These villages are perched on the sides of steep hills and are a mixture of well manicured homes and one room shanties. From time to time we would drive through light rain showers, just enough to dampen everything and raise the humidity. As we traveled, there were large numbers of chickens and dogs wandering about. We even came across a few cattle and goats wandering the roads. Back onto the old plantation roads, we headed towards the Hillsborough Dam for a short walk into the reservoir. The walk was no more than 10 minutes along the southern edge of the Tobago Forest Reserve but I chose to stay in the jeep. Carl came back with a photo or two of some of the local cayman that hang out there but the waterfall at the Hillsborough Dam was dry. The last stop on our bumpy tour was an old sugar mill. Although the sugar industry relied heavily upon slavery, the history of the trade was interesting none the less. Fabio gave a pretty good demonstration of the process and then took his machete and hacked into a fallen rubber tree. The liquid white latex was used to seal the barrels before they were loaded on the ships headed for England or Europe. Then it was a twenty minute ride back to Sandy Point where both Carl and I noticed a pretty good sunburn acquired through the haze of the day as well as more than a few aching muscles.

Eco Dollars At Work

Last night , we did something extraordinary. Sadly, because of the nature of the event, I have but one picture to show for the experience. We went, with a nature guide to the beach where the Leatherback Turtles come out of the ocean and lay their eggs almost every night between April and June. We were instructed to keep all flash off when taking photos because the lights would disorient them. It was amazing to see this huge animal dig a 3 foot deep hole in the sand with it’s flippers. I wish they had given us all infrared headlamps like the biologist was wearing so we could have seen more clearly how she deposited anywhere from 80 to 200 eggs into this hole and then spent a huge amount of energy to fill it back in and disguise the site. She will repeat this 2 to 2 ½ hour ordeal every 10 days for two months and then will head back out to sea. It was amazing to discover the turtle knows just how much pressure to put on the sand, enough to break the bones of a grown man’s hand, to maintain the proper incubation temperature inside the nest. The guide told us if the eggs hatch during the day, the half dollar sized youngsters will be all males while the females will hatch out at night. I do have to comment on the driving skills of these island maniacs. They are on par with the cabbies of Cairo, all crazed maniacs controlling a ton of steel, beeping their horns to let people know they were passing, shifting, talking on the cell and explaining bits of information to his passengers at the same time. The only difference is these guys did use their headlights whereas the drivers in Cairo do not.

Arrival In Paradise

After more than 12 hours of travel yesterday, we awoke to a virtual paradise but even in paradise, there are “snakes”. You can find them in any number of places. For instance, everything in paradise comes with a cost. Your “knowledgeable guides can direct you for ONLY ### or you can enjoy our sumptuous buffet for ONLY ### and then there is my personal favorite, the heat. Yes, I know I’m only 11 degrees above the equator and it’s supposed to be hot so what am I doing in Paradise? And after the hustle and bustle of “got to check in no later than and get through security without any alarms and make sure you make this flight or arrive at the gate in plenty of time, then you arrive in the island which definitely runs on it’s own time. The case in point was made at the orientation breakfast this morning. Elvira, the activities director, tells us of African Drummers who will be here tonight at 7:00 but to come down at 8:30 and they will be ready to play then. Another example is the sauna. If you want to use it at 7:00 call the desk and allow time for them to turn it on and then allow 15 more minutes for the sauna to heat up. SO, I ask you, if the temperature is 95 and you are sweating by just opening your front door, why would you want to sweat some more in the sauna? Our unit is lovely and we have two outside patios to dine on. The main patio over looks a courtyard where beautiful flowering trees abound even though the management tell us that Tobago hasn’t had rain in three months and are in a “drought condition”. We have a garden villa but, if you stand in the triangular shaped dormer in the master bedroom, you can see the ocean from there.