Tropical Hotel Maraval

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>

... meal times, and the crazy Caribbean humidity.<br><br>The night was slow with turtles, and much of it was spent watching groups of tourists slowly appear in the darkness, stumble past with shoes and flip-flops in hand, laughing and drinking, sometimes seeing us and stopping to ask us strange drunken questions. The tourists were streaming all through Zone 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 to see the turtles that had been slow to arrive for the past several days. But Peter, Chris and ...

... into their vessels. <br><br>So like something out of a scene from Baywatch, Ronald and I went into action, blasting across the ocean, the gap between us and our floating teammates closing at warp speed. We arrived in time to see Lee, with the help of Richard, attempting to hoist herself back into her seat. But to no avail, the kayak danced to-and-fro, and she was flung back into the ocean. Ronald and I zoomed up on both sides, expertly grabbing the bobbing ...

... warmth of the equatorial sun, in the calm of a sweltering day on the terrace. As I enjoyed my chillin', Askim arrived on the terrace with a strange look on her face. She said that she had something really weird to tell me. A few minutes ago in the kitchen, she'd overheard one of the staff report to Suzan that two people had been shot and killed on Matura Beach today. The weirdest part of it was not that it had happened, but that later, when we were all gathered together with ...

... I had already come way too close to a few big girls while they were slapping around their front flippers, throwing sand into the air, and covering their nests. Mind you, these girls, even the smaller ones, weigh anywhere between 600-1,000 pounds. So it's like wrangling on a dark beach with something the size of 4-Oprahs tied together and with the power of...well, a wild animal that has the musculature to propel herself thousands of miles through the ...

Last night was difficult. Team Peter-Chris-Q somehow ended up with a hanger-on named Aaron who, we thought, was a Nature Seekers staff member. We had separated from the other half of our team, as we were now well-trained and able to be out in the world on our own. After some inter-team communication glitches, we located a beautiful leatherback girl who was barely visible in a sandy crater in the nether-regions of Matura Beach. Because leatherback nesting is marked by specific phases, the ...

... is weird.<br><br>Now regarding the Orozco River. We arrived and dropped our backpacks on the sandbar and surveyed a huge pooling of water that gradually lapped up against the sand. Beyond the pool, it narrowed only slightly where it began to wind into the jungle with stands of wild trees and vines and grasses on both banks. I stood at the edge of the water and surveyed the river banks...hmmm.....I looked around to see if anyone else was eagerly diving in ...

... is very unusual since this is usually the dry season! The title of this entry has some meaning...there are no screens whatsoever on the bungalow (and the mosquito net is an absolute must at night since everything is "open air")...Even the birds, bats and hummingbirds have all come into our little bungalow to escape the torrential rains! At first we scrambled to get them to fly out, now we just let them fly around ...

Im sorry, but that title ontly has one truth... the part about a cellebration. Why you ask, well because for one Sparrows brilliant new sound system given to us by Denis, Helen, and Chris is installed and blasting the nieghbours away, but most important is ...

... cap-fulls of rum. This made us hungry. Fortunately, Maracas Bay is the capital of the world when it comes to putting tastily-fried shark between two pieces of baked bread. This is fortunate unless your name is Jabberjaw. Speaking of getting no respect, I went for a "shark n' bake" with Fedora. My friend dictated once again to me her theory on how I'm really an extravagantly rich millionaire and I restrict myself to eating peanut butter nineteen meals a ...