Barbados - not cricket

Last month, I had a work trip to Barbados and our very nice boss said that if she had a work trip to Barbados she'd want to bring her husband and gave Dan the time off. We had a really nice time - Barbados is very pretty and clearly designed for tourists. There was lots to see and we only saw half of what we wanted to (given the time commitment required for cricket). The pretty yellow house above MAY have been the house that George Washington stayed in when he came to Barbados - his only overseas trip. He and his brother came to help his brother's TB. If the movie at the museum is to be believed George Washington would not have amounted to anything had he not learned about agriculture, commerce and culture during his short stay in Barbados. The house was cute though.


Barbados is much smaller than Trinidad (and that is saying something) we were able to circle the island in a day AND see the George Washington exhibit. On the north coast the beach was impregnable cliffs and here on the east (Atlantic) side it was rocky with large boulders.
Our favorite stop was St. Nicholas Abbey - a 17th century Jacobian plantation house that has been renovated and now has a pretty cafe, gardens and a rum distillery. We had a fun talk with the owner's son who was incredulous that we hadn't yet been kidnapped since we live in Trinidad. Nothing we could say about Trinidad would dissuade him of the notion that we should plan on being kidnapped soon.
Cliffs on the north side....

Cricket in Barbados

I admittedly go through hobby-phases - obsessing over learning how to make puff pastry; teaching myself book binding which doesn't come in handy as much as you'd think; and I have cross-stitch projects that can last a decade. Finally Dan and I have a hobby together - trying to figure out cricket. We expect that it will take us the entire time we are in Trinidad and may necessitate tours in other cricket-playing countries (yes this includes England but also includes Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan - thanks to the greatness of empire).

My work trip to Barbados (yes it sounds funny) coincided with the 20/20 World Cup. I think it is safe to say that when you can buy World Cup tickets that weekend that either there is a recession OR 20/20 cricket has not entirely caught on.

As a reminder 20/20 cricket is a type of cricket where each team plays 20 overs each (baseball translation: an over is kind of like a mini-inning although cricket has their own innings - always in the plural)



Our seats for the World Cup were in fact in the party area which featured stiltwalkers. All-you-can-drink Bajan Banks beer and a lot of sun. I never remember to pack hats which is why I purchased this - one of the ugliest hats ever.





The event was held at Barabados' Kensington Oval. Here is me buying tickets on a day with less sun (and no Chester Cheetah). The event was England vs. Australia - England won handily. Earlier in the tournament the Windies had actually beaten England but they won because of the dratted Duckworth Lewis scoring system that determines a winner in the event of rain. No one believes that the Windies are better than England.

We also decided to test our cricket attention span by moving from 20/20 cricket (a 3.5 hour game) on to One Day International (ODI) which is essentially 50/50. We only made it through half so we saw the Windies batting their 50 overs atrociously and we skipped the South Africans batting but heard that South Africa won. The next day at the airport I saw many Windies heading home to Barbados and they seemed a little too jovial given their loss.

Hanuman Murti Hindu Temple

Heading south from Port of Spain, you'll find Chaguanas ("sha-GOH-niss") the de facto capital of East Indian Trinidad. East Indians make up 40% of the country's population, first arriving in 1845 when colonial sugar plantation owners sought labor following the abolition of slavery. Though they initially came as indentured servants, many elected to stay after their indentures had elapsed. Indian Arrival Day is celebrated here every May 30th.



This is the gloriously detailed Dattatreya Yoga Center and Ashram in Chaguanas, which is home to the Hanuman murti, an eight-story tall statue of the Hindu monkey deity.





Prayer flags like these adorn the yards of many Hindu homes. These are near the Waterloo Temple.

April tourist destination - Macqueripe and Tobago

My parents also visited in April. We tried to show off Trinidad including a trip to one of our favorite beaches at Macqueripe. My parents saw monkeys on Trinidad before we had seen them on one of their drives around the island. They showed us the spot so we can now show off red howler monkeys to any new visitors.

Macqueripe....






Monkeys....

Dad on Tobago...

April tourist destinations - tar pit and wildfowl refuge

It may be that all nations believe that they have within their borders "one of the seven wonders of the world." Jordan certainly believed that Petra was worthy of that honor. We think that Trinidad's wonder may be among the more modest. It is the La Brea tar pit. I think brea must be spanish for "tar" because California has one too. Trinidad's tar pit is still being used commercially with equipment harvesting the high-quality pitch - but it is also a tourist site. We joined a group of 20 Trinis for an explanation of the greatness of pitch. You can walk on the surface and most of it feels like the sponge-y surface they have under fancy playgrounds. In some spots the liquid pitch is closer to the surface. Here is our guide showing how liquid it is.Still liquid-y...
People marveling. The guide praised the restorative qualities of the water that is also in the pitch lake.

We continued our tour of "industry as tourism" that day with a trip to the water foul refuge housed within the nation's petroleum processing plant. You need a reservation and you drive past many scary plants spewing gas flares and then you enter a stunningly beautiful park with ducks...

And birds who like showing off for the turtles...

April tourist destinations - Caroni Swamp

Caroni swamp is one of our new favorite places in Trinidad (we also like the beaches and have a favorite sushi restaurant). Caroni is a mangrove swamp with channels that were originally cut for irrigating sugar cane fields. The wetlands are now protected and are the nesting place for that national bird - the scarlet ibis - these pictures do not do these beautiful red birds justice.



The tour leaves at 4:00 and goes an hour into the swamp. The birds seem to fly like clockwork and around 5:30 each day the return to a nesting spot for the night after a day of eating. The birds landed in a couple of trees - fight for spots with black cormorants. What was weird was that while these trees were covered with birds, other trees were absolutely empty.




The birds flew in from every direction to the nesting spot.


On the boat ride we also spotted snakes ...


... and crabs (which the birds eat).

April tourist destination - Mount St. Benedict Monastary

On Good Friday, we dragged our newly arrived guest Ben to a hike up Mount St. Benedict to the Caribbean's oldest monastery. Re-enactors acted out the stations of the cross on the way up and people carried candles and sang. The walk started at 4:00 am and when we drove to the foot of the hill there was the mingling of club-goers who were ending their evening and church-goers who were starting this walk up to the monastery. The church-going crowd grew throughout the two hour procession and probably was up to 1,000 by the time we reached the top.

Here you can see the crowd and mini-marts that opened early to sell snacks and candles.


Here are some roman soldiers...


Two guys snapped large whips on the walk up...

April - lots of tourist destinations - the zoo & savannah

In April, we had our friend Ben and Duffy's parents visit us. As always, houseguests are the perfect impetus to go see places that we hadn't visited before - thus our blog entries with all of our April photos represent quite a tour of Trinidad and Tobago.

The first stop was the Port of Spain zoo. It is admittedly a small zoo but it has several capybaras - which we think are very cute and which we have never seen in the wild. The zoo also had lots of monkeys, parrots and snow cones.


The zoo is located on the top of the savannah which is a really large park in Port of Spain. The Savannah is often called the world's largest roundabout - and indeed it is a one-way circle. As we walked to the zoo we came across this cricket pitch but we had no bats with us. You can also see in this photo that it is the dry season - thankfully it has rained since then and the park is starting to look greener.