Hosanna Hotel 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. <br><br> <br>

... 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 ...

... like the movie "Weekend at Bernie's" and she was Bernie. Dressed in sandals, shorts, a lovely little red life vest, giant sunglasses, and a floppy wide-brimmed hat. The brim of the hat played around on the surface of the water, much like an octopus, but, for reasons unknown, Lee was still floating face down. I reached in to grab her vest, and at that moment, she regained her composure, became upright in the water and looked in my direction through wet sunglasses ...

... who come at night to view the turtles. A bunch of us were milling around at the Rustic Shack, turning in our radios and gear, swatting mosquitoes, and jawing with the young Trini guys who guided the tours. Now it was late....actually very early in morning, about 1:00 a.m....when four local guys in a souped-up Honda appeared out of the darkness and parked alongside the Rustic Shack. My cop-ometer immediately sent me into high alert, as the four houligans pitched open their ...

... underwear, as well, and one of them started to sludge toward me with a gallon-sized vodka bottle in his mitts. More men appeared on the river bank and waved bottles and yelled some more. I put my little red kayak into high gear and aimed it toward the jungle river ahead.<br><br>The river quickly gave way to dense banks of jungle and silence. The water beneath my kayak was clear, cool, and green with a layer of rocks and jungle leaves on the bottom. We ...

... to sand at Matura Beach where we'd be spending our nights recording sea turtle nestings. Five minutes after marching the deep, churned up sand, I saw my first Leatherback turtle. She was a dead carcass lying near the water's edge in smooth wet sand being washed by the sea and nibbled by turkey vultures. It was clear that she'd died from a gillnet entanglement. Remnants of net mixed with remnants of flesh and the tide continued to wash her away.<br><br>love,Q<br><br>

... all types of steel pans from high pitched lead soprano pans to the lowest 9-drum bass pans. It was interesting to see how the bands ran their rehearsal. It felt alot like some of the marching band rehearsals I've been a part of. The director seemed very cool and the music was absolutely awesome. If you have some time to search online look up the annual PANORAMA festival on google. it's the steel pan orchestra competition held every year in Trinidad and Tobago. It Starts in mid ...

... it's easier and about the same price to fly (they make you by a return ticket and then you get 75% of the single back as a refund in Trinidad). The ferry is owned by the minister of tourism as a nice little private sideline. We were stuck on the boat for another hour whilst we waited to go through the immigration procedures. The immigration woman was very fierce so we were on our best behavior. Then we were off the boat and in Venezuela, finally!! (Photos to follow)

... at Trinidad &amp; Tobago Sailing Association (TTSA) we had met up with an old friend from SA, and aggreed to join him in the mad rush to finnish a rigging job and in turn learn a little more about the rigging game in the month that we could legally work for him with out the hastle of a work permit. Whilst mingling arround at TTSA, I noticed a boat that was out on the hard and was looking very weather beaten, and also ...

... be more like that. He happened to be very vocally a christian. During the beautiful, wet large-leafed rainforest, mountain-crossing, sea-view-below ride to Maracas, he sang out the window. Before we got to Maracas, Tony found himself in his second bitter argument of the early day. He'd been singing, "Praise God! Thank you, God!" to a soca song, which had drawn the ire of a necklace-vending rastafarian (a member of a popular Caribbean religion that worships Haile ...