T&T Home of Eco Tourism


April 19, 2008
Has it been 2 days in Trinidad already?
Category: Trinidad & Tobago — chrissipe @ 8:22 pm

Hey ya’ll. I made it, I’m just starting to feel like I’m on vacation… well… except that my Blackberry data and email works, but not my phone. (ironic huh?) Which means I can stay obsessed with checking email, and before dinner I got a flood of emails that there’s a power outage at work. *cry* I know before the end of the trip I’m going to make like that Corona commercial and end up skipping the blackberry across the water like a rock.

SO! Trinidad - Port of Spain! Crazy ass place!

When I got dropped off at my first choice of guest houses (which I didn’t make a reservation) they were full. It was a bit disorienting at night, cause it kind of looked like we were in a sketchy neighborhood of Miami or something. There were like 8 people hanging out in the street, 3 of which were like shadowboxing for exercise, including this little 5 foot tall Latin chick with cornrows, drenched in sweat, who looked like she could have beat me sideways. I was like… whoah, where the F am I?

He took me to my second choice just 2 blocks away, and it was great. Funny enough this “sketchy” neighborhood called Woodbrook is just a block away from where all the upscale bars are, so that’s kinda cool and unexpected. Also disorienting about Port of Spain is just the crazy mix of old and new side by side… New high rise hotels, next to old run down industrial factories, next to fenced yards that - like I said - kinda look like Florida with ramshackle houses only a few blocks away from really nice houses, all gated. But after 2 days you realize Port of Spain isn’t SO big and daunting, and it’s the biggest city in the country.

Right off the bat in the morning, I made a couple of friends at the guest house. So what better way to get right into things than to tag along with wherever they were going that day! This virtual Bennetton ad of cute British med students (and 1 of their boyfriends) had plans to visit one of the little islands between here and Venezuela, and there was a mention of caves and swimming, but I didn’t realize the two activities were going to be together!

I do have this habit of doing things I’ve NEVER done before on my first day of arrival. I guess it’s such a great way to dive in and force yourself into vacation mode.

After boating to the island we have a little hike to the cave. Our tour guide started talking about the concrete canon holder, and I got shy and took a step back, lost my footing since it was all uneven, and fell down about 3 feet to the ground in between these concrete walls. It didn’t hurt that bad, I was more embarrassed, but then there was a fair amount of blood. It could have been MUCH worse as the concrete had tips of rusty rebar coming out parts of it. Ugh.

So back to cave swimming… never done it before. It was pretty damn amazing. The cave had two holes in the roof letting streams of light in and lighting the clear, blue water. The water is from the sea and goes up and down with the tide, but much cooler. It was just us, our tour guide, and the bats! No one else! It was so rad. You could jump off the rocks, you could float on your back and just stare up at this giant hole in the top of the cave with trees growing around it. One of the guys brought goggles. Occasionally a couple of bats would chase each other for a minute. So rad.

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