Trinidad!
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Mon 20 Feb 2006 02:18
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Trinidad, Chagaramus
Harbour 17th February 2006
We had a good overnight
sail from Grenada, with only a few brief squalls near dawn. Making
landfall as the light filled the sky was beautiful. We sailed into the
Golfo de Paria, through the Dragon's mouth, a narrow channel between Trinidad
and Venezuela, crammed with islands, where a strong tidal current with
standing waves and swirling sea rips through. Once you have gone through
between the 'teeth', high jungle covered cliffs on either side, you leave
the crashing Atlantic sea behind, and it is like another world, with flat calm
sea and trailing groups of pelicans. The sea changes instantly and
dramatically from Atlantic blue to browny green, and you can actually see a
sharp dividing line. The smell of the jungle fills the air. We think
this is because we are very close to the Orinoco estuary, which drains out of a
huge area of South America.
Trinidad coming up at
dawn.
Coming upto the cliffs by
the Dragon's Mouth.
We arrived here at ten
o'clock yesterday morning, and have been in 'How to try and not melt into a
puddle' mode since. Is is boiling here. From the moment we
arrived we have been boiling.
We rowed ashore and took a
bus to Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. It is a big, modern city,
full of life and colour. We spent two hours watching the children's
carnival display competition in the Savannah park, and it was completely
amazing. My mind is buzzing with colours and music. It is such a
community social event, which people work and plan for all year. The
results are truly spectacular, and I have never seen anything remotely like it,
ever.
In our first day here we
have tried 'cookup'. In a small local chop-house you ask for the menu, and
get told that you can have 'cookup'. This turns out interestingly to be a
plate of rice, kidney beans and beef, with salad, all for little over a
pound. We then tried 'mango-chow'. This was bought from a
street vendor, and is a gustatory explosion of bits of fresh green mango in
garlic and cumin. Definately worth trying if you want to be woken up
with a jolt, and do not care who you breath garlic all over. Next on
the list was mauby drink/tea. Our advice is to avoid this. It is
purple and really disgusting in a liquorice cream soda kind of way.
Gunga beans, which are otherwise known as pigeon peas, are great. You
could live off gunga beans and rice here for very little indeed.
Chris even had a Caribbean breakfast, made of dried fish curry this morning, and
seemed to like it.
We have also been visited
by Curtis Sealy, my dentist friend from university days. It was really
great to see him again with his lovely daughter. I will be visiting what
sounds like a state of the art practice later on in the week.
Chris's friend, Gerad,
picked us up in his air-conditioned BMW today, and we went for lunch in his
riverside house. It was magical, with palm trees and ferns all through his
garden, and pelicans, egrets, hummingbirds, and bananaquits all zooming
around. We were looking out for scarlet ibis, who return from
fishing in Venezuela every evening, but didn't see them.
Otti says: 'We have been
visiting Gerad, Dad's doctor friend. He has a big house that is so
cool. He has one pool, and a jacuzzi, and a cute little fluffy dog called
Bandit who is really shy. We went there for lunch, and had roast pork, and
I am very, very tired, as I slept on the roof last night. It was cold in
the night, so I didn't get much sleep.(NB. Mum says: Night time
temperatures
drop to about 28'C,
this does not bode well for a return to the artic north of the planet, later
this year....)
Mimi says: 'I slept
on the roof last night. Otti woke me up in the morning, and we had a fun
game of 'I spy'. I feel a bit sorry for Mum and Dad because we woke them
up. From Mimi'.
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