A day with Mr. Dean
Trip Start
Oct 21, 2007
1
Trip End
Oct 28, 2007
La Brea,
Trinidad and Tobago
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Today we were awaken by the sound of steelpans playing. It not a bad alarm clock. Mr. Dean also works as a tour guide so i have already found out more about this country in the last 12hrs then i have known about all of the other countries I have been to. Mr. Dean picked us up at our hotel about lunch time. He surprised us with a local bottle of rum (Fernandes Black Label Rum) and the "local man's beer" (Stag). Even though I hadn't eaten yet and it was before noon, I wasn't going to be rude and turn down a good rum and coke! After two glasses of it, he luckily took us to this little shop on the side of the road for some "cakes". I had a potato cake, eggplant cake and a double. The cakes have one main ingredient like potatoes (or whatever) and spices mixed into a dough then fried. I find I like almost anything fried. And apparently so do the locals, the walk up store was so popular that parking was a problem near it. And there was a huge line to get them. I really enjoyed them! A double is like two potato pancakes with chic-peas in the middle. Sounds bad but make for a good snack. We grabbed our food and got in the car for a personal tour.
History of Trinidad-
Trinidad was originally settled by Amerindians from South American. Christopher Columbus first discoverd Trinidad on his third voyage in 1498. Spain then claimed the island and had it until 1797 when the British took over. Even though the British had claimed the island mainly the french and their African Slaves lived here. 1889 the British government made Trinidad and Tobago a single crowned colony. In 1962 it claimed its independence from Britain and then in 1976 became a republic. On a side note-is it just me or did the Brits own the whole world at one point?!
Current Trinidad is the birthplace of Calypso Music, Steelpan, and the Limbo.
During our driving tour we stopped in La Brea. This we where Pitch Lake is. In March of 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh discovered a lake made of pitch, and that the pitch was good for fixing his leaking ships. Pitch it a black tar like substance that makes asphalt. Pitch officially becomes asphalt once its boiled. This lake covers 100 acres and is 250 feet deep at the center, it holds approximately 10 tons of pitch. They believe this is a renewable reserve, which should last for the next 400 years. It is the world's second largest natural deposit of pitch. The asphalt from Trinidad's Pitch Lake is mined and exported to countries all over the world. Legend has it from the Amerindian folk tale that the pitch lake was punishment from the Gods. This vengeance was dealt to the Chaima Indians who cooked and ate Humming Birds (which were considered sacred) while celebrating a victory over another tribe. This angered the Gods who caused the earth to open up and swallow the entire village, leaving in its place molten pitch. As if to prove the legend true, Amerindian pottery has been recovered from the lake over the years.
Most of the lake is firm enough to walk on except for an area in the middle of the lake known as the "mother of the lake". This part is where the most pitch rises up from the ground. During the raining season (Now) many people come to bathe in the warm sulphur pools that are formed on top of the pitch after it rains. Many say sulphur heals skin conditions and joint pains and is believed to be "the fountain of youth". Even though you can walk on it you do sort of sink into it-think of a very firm mud. You can leave footprints in the ground and very very slowly see them go away. The tar just keeps rising from the ground. The local area has a problem with the pitch bubbling to the surface because it ruins houses/streets/etc because it just sprots up from the ground making things uneven. The pitch mainly comes up in the lake but it randomly comes up for miles around the lake also.
