January 6, 2004 to April 28, 2004
Trinidad, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, CARNIVAL in Trinidad,
USA, Tobago, Chacachacare - Trinidad's old leper colony
January 6, 2004 to April 28, 2004
Trinidad, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, CARNIVAL in Trinidad,
USA, Tobago, Chacachacare - Trinidad's old leper colony
N 10° 11.9'
W64° 40.5'
Greetings Earthlings
Some 2,000 years before the birth of Christ, the first Amerindians arrived
on the shores of Trinidad from Venezuela. They made the crossing in dugout
canoes and Trinidad became the first island of the Caribbean to be
populated. They called the island Irie, Land of the Hummingbird, and, over
the following centuries, their descendants went on to settle the island chain up
through the Bahamas. By the late 1400’s, what is today the country of
Trinidad and Tobago was home to 35,000 souls.
On July 31, 1498, Trinidad was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus on his
third trip to the New World. He named the island La Trinite, after the Holy
Trinity, as he apparently looked up at the end of a prayer to see the hills of
Trinidad approaching from over the horizon. Never setting foot on the island,
Columbus went on to sail by Tobago, which he named Assumpcion, and Grenada,
which he named Concepcion. Shortly thereafter, Spanish slavers arrived and,
when the local population declined to willingly provide the labor for this
venture, they were decimated in an act of genocide that might well have given
the Holy Trinity some cause for concern. Almost certainly, the irony of this
was lost on Columbus.
Today, all that remains of these first inhabitants are a few names of various
places, rivers and mountains. The little hummingbird, after which they named
their island, has survived in significant numbers and continues to delight all
who see them. The current 1.3 million citizens of Trinidad and Tobago are
split almost evenly between the descendants of African slaves, first
introduced by the French in the mid 1700’s, and the descendants of
immigrants from India who, after the abolition of slavery in 1834, were
brought into the country by the British to work on the sugar plantations.
Although the Spanish settled the country, and the French, the Dutch and the
English subsequently ruled it, British culture was the dominant colonial
influence. Today, the language remains English and cricket is the country’s
sporting passion.
Located at the northwestern tip of Trinidad, the port of Chaguaramas (Shog-
a-ramas) is comprised of several marinas serving the sailing community and a
small fishing village. It is also home to a comprehensive marine services
industry that can do anything you need, yes anything, for a very reasonable
price, if only you have time. It is the logical regrouping point for sailors
arriving in the Caribbean from the Cape of Good Hope as we did, or from
Europe via the Cape Verde islands and Brazil. Trinidad is also the end of the
road for island hoppers who make their way down south from the States and it
is also the first Island south of the 12th parallel that, for marine insurance
purposes, is outside the North Atlantic hurricane zone. Consequently, the
port is home to a happy melee of cruisers from all over the world enjoying a
brief respite and letting off some steam.
For four months, our home base was the Crew’s Inn Marina in Chaguaramas.
The marina itself was part of a larger complex that included a hotel, swimming
pool, restaurants, shops, a boat yard and marine services stores. For the first
time since we started out, we were among a number of cruising families with
children of all ages. Andrew, Richard and Lauren had the time of their lives
as members of a large group of kids and young adults that became close
friends. They spent most afternoons at the pool, either in the water or
playing games on the adjacent lawn, or just hanging out in the breezeway
between the hotel and the pool. Parents would get together at the pool for
happy hour, which started at 4:30pm and often went on until we all hopped
into our dinghies and went off to dinner at a local restaurant. After our
exciting dash across the ocean, we enjoyed the more relaxed lifestyle at the
marina. No longer were we faced with the challenges of stepping off into the
unknown. Life took on the pleasant routine of school, maintenance and moving
to da riddim of da islands.
Shortly after arriving in Trinidad, we were joined by a friend we had met at
Cape St. Francis while waiting for Safari to be launched. Doug Wills, a young
70-something, has a holiday home on the Kromme River adjacent to the village
where we stayed at Cape St. Francis. One day, as we were exploring the
river in our dinghy, we came across Doug at low tide pumping the shallows for
pink shrimp, which make excellent bait. The process requires a stainless steel
tubular pump that you hold over a breather hole in the sand. You then quickly
suck the sand up the tube and pump it out into the shallows. As the sand sinks,
the pink shrimp you have sucked up with the sand is exposed and easily
captured. Well, not so easily. They swim furiously for the sand where they
quickly disappear and they have a single large pincer that can give you quite a
bite if you are not careful. It was great fun for all of us, and Doug, an
architect who had lost his wife a year earlier, was happy to take us under his
wing. In the time before we left, Doug did his best to teach Andrew, Richard
and me to fish and we had some wonderful times on the river together.
With Doug aboard in Trinidad, we headed out for the Grenadines, a sprinkling
of islands between St. Vincent and Grenada. We sailed north for a night and
a day to reach Bequia, where we checked in before spending the next two
weeks island hopping down the chain back to Trinidad. One of our favorites
was Mustique, where the whole island is owned and run by a private company
and where the rich and famous (Mick Jagger, Mario Andretti, Celine Dion,
Tommy Hilfigger, the Ferrari family, et al) build their homes. We took in the
rhythm and blues festival at the local waterfront restaurant/bar, snorkeled
the reef and took a tour of the island with a cheerful taxi driver. Another
favorite was the Tobago Cays (unrelated to Trinidad & Tobago) where we
spent a few days, including a day at “Johnny Depp Island” (really Petit
Tabac) – the beautiful scrap of land where they filmed Depp and Kiera
Knightly being marooned in the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”. We picked
coconuts and played with the land bound hermit crabs, one of which was the
size of a fist – we had not known that they could grow so large.
Everywhere we went in the islands, local fishermen sold us huge crayfish that
we steamed and ate with large doses of garlic butter and salad. We had
hooked a couple of big fish in the first part of the trip, but lost them,
including one large Mahi Mahi that jumped again and again and which I could
almost taste before the line broke as he reached the transom of the boat.
Then, somewhere between Carriacou and Grenada we hooked 3 large Blackfin
Tuna, magnificent eating fish. Being an avid fisherman, this must have been a
highlight of the trip for Doug. We pulled into a bay in Grenada to have
them cooked for us at the local waterfront restaurant. In exchange for one
of the fish they prepared the other two in three different ways - a cream
sauce, garlic butter and a dark pepper sauce. We ate like kings. We were
able to raise Mike Hyland from Windsong on the VHF and he also joined us
for dinner. We had met Windsong of Ocean City, NJ, in Cape Town and had
stayed in email contact as we crossed the Atlantic within a week of each
other.
The next day, as we arrived back in Trinidad, I realized that we had
forgotten to check out of the Grenadines and had not bothered to either
check into or out of Grenada. Too much time in the sun, I suppose. Luckily,
the Trinidad immigration and customs officials gave us no more than a moment’
s reprimand before checking us back in. The next morning, Doug headed back
to South Africa, leaving us richer and happier for our shared experiences.
We look forward to him joining us again sometime or to seeing him back on the
Kromme River when we complete our circumnavigation.
Back in Trinidad, the whole Island was gearing up for the climax of Carnival -
10 days of uninhibited fun, parties and parades. A mixture of French and
African celebrations, Carnival season actually starts the day after Christmas
and ends on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The parades are
participatory events with little or no spectators. People join “Bands” - groups
of people with the same costume, generally quite skimpy, and dance through
the streets behind 18-wheelers decked out in speakers with enough wattage to
cause the empty chambers of your heart to vibrate and resonate with the
music, a sensation that takes some time to get used to. The event where we all
had the most fun was J’Ouvet (You-vay), a parade beginning at about 2:00am
and ending after daybreak. The kicker is, everybody paints one another.
With a few other families from the marina, we headed downtown closer to
5:00am armed with squeegee bottles filled with water paint. Instead of
joining a band we stayed on a street corner painting mainly each other and
enjoying all the bands as they passed. It was a crazy night and the kids,
especially, had the time of their lives.
During World War II, the British provided the US with a base in Trinidad
and when the Yanks pulled out, they left behind an overwhelming number of
55-gallon oil drums. Some enterprising Trini decided to hammer one of these
into a musical instrument and the steel drum or pan, as it is locally known, was
born. Today, Steel Drums and their sounds are widely known and associated
with the islands of the Caribbean and pan music, combined with Calypso, is the
music of Carnival. While it’s great stuff, there were times I really needed
some old time rock ’n roll, the music that soothes my soul…
The thing that impressed me most about Carnival was how considerate and
courteous everybody was to one another. Never once did I see anyone
stupidly drunk or drugged, or aggressive in any way. While the revelers let
off as much steam as possible, everyone seemed simply happy to be dancin to
da riddims, mon. Although crime is well reported in the newspapers and
Trinidad has a per capita murder rate about 4 times that of NY City, in our
experience Trinis were wonderful, caring people living in a laid back, inclusive
culture.
After Carnival, we headed back to the US for 3 weeks. First we spent 5
days in Florida with my sister Anne and her family, who were there on
vacation, before moving on to Mountain Lakes, NJ. It was great to be back in
our hometown again and to see all our friends and family for the first time in
about 8 months. Everyone made us feel special in such a whirlwind series of
events that I am sure they were quite relieved when we headed back to the
boat.
Back in Trinidad, our cruising friends gave us a rousing welcome and we were
all happy to be back on Safari. A couple of days later, we took off for a
week in Tobago with two other families from the marina. There were days
where the weather reached perfection and the beaches were as beautiful as
one can imagine on a tropical island paradise. The crystal clear water was so
close to body temperature that you could spend the whole day in the water
without getting cold, while the sun and the sea breeze kept us in a state of
physical euphoria beyond words. OK, we had a lot of rum punches that may
well have impacted on this impression.
Together with another boat from the marina, we spent a weekend at
Chacachacare, the westernmost island off the main island of Trinidad. Over
the years, I had read about this island and its unusual circumstances in the
cruising journals and we were happy to be experiencing it first hand. Named
after the native cotton plants still found on the island, it is comprised of 900
acres of mountainous, wooded ground roughly in the shape of a horseshoe.
Christopher Columbus anchored in the bay on August 12, 1498 and named it
Puertu de Gato for the wild cats he heard on shore. Actually, they were
howler monkeys that can still be heard in many of the isolated coves on the
rain-forested shores of Trinidad. Initially a spa and retreat for Trinis in the
1800’s, in 1880 the Dominican nuns built a convent on land willed to the
Church and in 1920 the British governing power turned the island into a leper
colony where Trini lepers were forcibly separated from the general
population. The colony was finally abandoned in 1984 and today the islands
only inhabitant is the lighthouse keeper. The buildings of the leper colony
were abandoned intact, with patient records in their file cabinets and all
other furniture and effects left where they stood, including an X-Ray machine
and the film on the lights for reading. Apparently the market for used leper
colony fixtures was weak at the time. We anchored off the old nurses
quarters in beautifully clear waters and in view of the abandoned convent on
the opposite side of the bay. It was quite eerie at first, but the beauty of
the place quickly overcomes one’s ill feelings, so to speak. The bay provided
perfect waters for tubing and waterskiing and we loved being at anchor again,
where you can jump off the boat any time the urge for a swim grabs you.
A local cruising guide claims that the lighthouse on Chacachacare was once the
highest in the world and today is ranked second behind a lighthouse somewhere
in Russia. After a late start (surprise, surprise) we all hiked up the long and
winding road to the lighthouse, no easy climb in the heat of noon. Lauren,
having inherited an A-type personality and competitive spirit from, well,
Carol, I guess, has taken to leading our hikes and set a blistering pace. The
views of Trinidad to the east and Venezuela to the west were stunning, but the
lighthouse grounds and residence were a sorry sight. The lighthouse didn’t
look that tall to me, so I must assume its height distinction comes from the
size of the mountain on which it sits. However, the exercise justified, in my
mind at least, large helpings from the BBQ off the back of the boat that night.
Shortly before the end of our stay in Trinidad, Carol and the kids, while
driving near the marina, spied two stray puppies on the side of the road.
Fearing for their safety they stopped to pick them up, but the pups took off
into the bush. After trying to coax them out for 15 minutes, they drove back
to Safari to pick up some meat to help the process along. By the time they
returned, a passing car had killed one pup, but they were able to save the
other. The poor mutt was only a few months old, thin as a rake and covered in
ticks and fleas. Two of Lauren’s friends, Dani and Pippa helped Carol and
Lauren bathe and medicate the pup. Carol spent hours removing over 100
small ticks with a pair of tweezers, while I shook my head in wonder at the
insanity of all this. Lauren, Dani and Pippa named the waif “Skipper” and he
soon won over all our hearts. As we were leaving fairly soon, we were
desperate to find a home for him and the girls drove him around the port in
the dinghy trying to talk people into taking him on. Suddenly, three different
people wanted him and, luckily, Carol and Andrew rescued another pup from
the side of the road, so we were able to keep two out of the three happy. We
all felt good.
A wonderful experience we had before leaving Trinidad was to spend a night
on a beach where leatherback turtles were nesting. To watch these huge 800
to 1,200 lb creatures pull themselves out of the surf, dig with immaculate
care a hole as deep as their hind flippers could reach, lay their eggs, fill and
camouflage the hole, and lumber back to the surf, was a primal experience.
So intent are they on achieving their objective that they ignore your
presence, even as you stand right next to them. Flash photography is not
allowed until the creature actually begins to deposit the eggs into the nest,
during which time they enter a trance-like state where even a flash does not
bother them.
We had initially planned on spending just a few weeks in Trinidad, but by the
time we left it had been 4 months. Among the cruisers in Trinidad, this is a
familiar theme and we met many others who had had their plans extended by
the strong magnetic quality of the island. When we eventually left Trinidad,
we left behind a number of wonderful friends who we can only hope to see
again. It is difficult to always be leaving friends behind. Currently we are en
route to the Panama Canal via Venezuela and who knows where else. Also, we
are talking of adding a third year to our cruise.
To access a full set of pictures for this Travel Report, click here
