Ambassador Trinidad

I decided to take advantage of my paid vacation and spend two weeks in Trinidad and Tobago. My good friend Kevin Fortune, who I met in college, is from Trinidad and was a phenomenal tour guide. I stayed away from computers, cell phones and any reading materials related to the economy and/or the environment.

... that hosts the heaviest tourist traffic. We found her in the dark, at the end of the obvious path where she'd dragged herself from the sea, across the sand, to where she now had begun to dig a hole with her rear flippers. The flippers are the craziest things, and something about them was....I'm at a loss for descriptors....something about them was dear. Like the way a dog twitches his leg when you rub his stomach. Something about the flippers reminded me of dear little dog legs ...

... Lee were also plucked out of the water and back to safety. Whew! I offloaded my pile of paddles and other goodies and determined that I, along with Richard, would paddle myself into shore. So as the speedboat motored off, Richard and I cruised on the crests of the waves.....wahoo!!!! And as we came within 20 feet of the shore, my smug self and my smug kayak were suddenly hit out of nowhere by a rogue wave.

And I capsized. Everyone else already had, and I was ...

... ing *****." And then they fell back inside the Honda and went away into the jungle.

Last night, again while chillin' at the Rustic Shack around 1:00 a.m., yet another Honda rolled into the parking lot, but this one parked at a distance and sat running with its headlights on for several minutes. Finally, a lone male slowly exited the vehicle (I felt myself lurching into cop-mode again, my instincts again flaring up). Although there were at least ten of us ...

... of humidity that instantly envelopes you and makes you feel like you desperately need to take a nap. A first group of teammates had left the airport while we were waiting for Chris to arrive, which left us to smoosh into Baptiste's weird little pseudo-hot rod. A lot of the cars here are little Hondas and Toyotas that are souped up with big exhaust, big bass, undercarriage lights and decals across the windshields. Baptiste's hot rod had a decal across the ...

... please... But enough about that, let's talk about Trinidad! :D And the lack of a water supply! YAY! I was taking a shower yesterday when the water went off, and thankfully I got all the shampoo before it was totally - but that was a few mintues of panic going 'Ah! Water! I need you! Suds still in hair!' I'd say that the water does not function about 1/5th of the time in my building, and the electricity has gone out once this ...

... they accidently put the pipeline right through the future swimming pool at the new plantations hotel. oops. Guess they can't buy the land that they wanted, so they're going to have to change the direction at which the pipeline exits the shoreline as to not disturb the swimming pool! This is like, a fundamental thing that you want to do BEFORE investing millions on a geophysical survey. Anyway, so we're back at square one. Our new survey area even LARGER than our original survey. I can ...

... that perhaps there should be support groups for the likes of us - maybe BA (Boats anonymous)? You know, something like, 'good evening group, this is Ian, and he hasn't started building another boat for three whole months' - this announcement greeted by a heartfelt round of applause from the assembly of would-be reformed boat nuts." Not a bad suggestion if you ask me! how bout you?

We caught the 12 noon flight out of Crown Point to the Port of Spain in Trinidad, a bumpy 20 minute jaunt to Tobago´s much bigger brother island. We had been warned by lots of people that Trinidad was crime ridden, and that kidnappings were a particular flavour of the month (although targetted at local businessmen, rather than tourists - at least so far...) so we were fairly cautious in our approach. I had ...

... on the guy. We moved on. Tony bade me to wait outside as he turned into a narrow hallway amidst the dirty block of continuous building to our left. His home was in there somewhere. He came out with shorts on, bananas, bread, and oranges in his hand, and a towel. We were going to the beach! The place to catch the "maxi-taxi" shuttle to Maracas was nearby. Tony said one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Trinidad was only one street over, and a drug-dealer had been ...