Trinidad & Tobago Part 3

Once at the airport we boarded a prop jet and made a very short flight (I’m not even sure they fold in the landing gear) across to Tobago.  After some confusion we ended up with a taxi driver who took us to Blue Waters Inn, on Tobago’s northeast coast.  

This was the view from our room:

  

On our second afternoon, these guys pulled up and dropped anchor:

This guy went to the kitchen and negotiated a price and then came back and brought out dinner, fresh-caught:

  

While the other guy had to stay back and hold the boat, even when it started to pour:

On T&T’s coat of arms, there is a second bird illustrated (the first being Scarlet Ibis).  It is this one, the Rufous-vented Chachalaca, which can only be found on Tobago. These guys came around the hotel each evening looking for scraps.  They’re about the size of a small chicken, and very noisy. 

Outside of our hotel room there was a tree covered with these caterpillars.  They were quite large, about four inches long.  At the rate they were working, the tree was leafless probably 2-3 days after we left, they were voracious.

Here’s the view from the beach at sunrise: 

Debbie on the hunt for shells:

She only found a few, a few pieces of coral and a several pieces of sea glass.  Almost all of it was green and looked suspiciously like it might have come from some bottles of Carib (a beer made in T&T and enjoyed by many at the hotel’s open air bar, including your humble author).

I pondered:

 

And Debbie hugged a palm tree:

 One afternoon and one morning I walked the Starwood Trail up above the hotel, had some really great birds there.  A lucky shot of a hummingbird:

The closest shot I’ve managed of a Magnificent Frigatebird.  Every morning at sunrise and evening at sunset we had several hundred of these birds pass overhead from and to a roost site.  They are flying extraordinaires, for hours on end they hang in the air with nary a flap of the wing. 

A Trinidad Motmot:

Looking down into the cove where Blue Waters sits.  The larger island in the distance is Little Tobago Island:

Today Little Tobago is uninhabited and has been set aside as a wildlife preserve.  We took this boat out there, and got to check out some coral reefs through the boat’s glass bottom too:

A museum is being built to highlight the island’s natural history.  It was also serving as a nesting site for this White-tailed Nightjar: 

 

These are related to both the Oilbirds in Dunston Cave as well as our Whip-poor-wills and nighthawks in the US.

On our first night there, the hotel put on a bar-be-que, while a calypso band performed live.  For me, the meal was excellent.  Debbie saw there was a bowl of salad and went back for some.  There was a bowl of red sauce sitting next to the salad, and she assumed it was salad dressing.  It was not.  We think it was a hot sauce made of Trinidad Moruga Scorpions.  To give some perspective, jalapenos run 2500-3500 Scoville units (a measure of hotness).  Pepper spray runs around 1.5 million Scovilles.  Trinidad Scorpions on the other hand run two to three million Scovilles.  The moment she got it in her mouth, Debbie was stopped dead in her tracks.  She couldn’t do anything for ten minutes, and nothing made it better!  We had no idea what it was at the time, but coincidently she kept saying it felt like scorpions were stinging her in the mouth. 

On the second night, they made up for it.  We had t-bones that were hands down the best steaks we have ever had.  No steak sauce required, it was perfect by itself.  Being in an open-air restaurant on a tropical island and being able to dine with waves crashing on the beach only made it better.

At the end of the driveway to Blue Waters Inn there are the ruins of a sugar mill.  I thought it would make a nice photographic subject, so I wandered down there a couple of mornings at sunrise to see what I could get.  The remains of a barrel vault:

Palm through the wall: 

The water wheel that powered the mill:

A close up of the engine, stamped Glasgow 1871 (Scotland): 

After three days of relaxing and enjoying the sand and surf, it was time for us to return to the States.  Thus began a day of travel hell.  We started out with a two hour taxi ride to the airport in Tobago, then a two hour wait for our flight back over to Trinidad.  Then a four hour wait for our international flight back to Miami, we landed there at 7 pm.  Clearing customs was fairly painless this time around.  Our flight back to Atlanta was not scheduled to depart until 10 pm.  We got on board about 9:30, right about when it started to rain.  The captain came on and said the ramp was closed and we would have to wait a few minutes for the rain to subside.  Yeah.  We were supposed to land in Atlanta at midnight.  At 12:20 am, we finally backed away from the terminal and landed in Atlanta just after 2 am.  Having started out at 8 that morning, we crawled into bed some 20 hours later at 4 am!  Good thing we had both scheduled to have the next day off!

 

We hope you have enjoyed reading about our adventure and seeing the accompanying photos.  As I like to do every time, I will close with a sunset shot.  This time it is from when we were driving back from Brasso Seco with Peter.  We stopped on top of a ridge looking out over the Northern Range, and I was able to get this shot.

Prosit!

Brandon & Debbie