Finlay Family Visit

On November 21st, Bob and El arrived in T&T for a visit, followed by Jenn on the 26th. It was great to see them and share our new life with them. Their visit included some touring around Port of Spain, a couple of games of golf for Bob, a (rather loud!) Parang party, lots of chats, nice dinners and another visit (for Katie) to Tobago.

Here is Kate and El at the lookout by Maracas Beach - the closest beach to POS and arguably the most popular beach in Trinidad. Although they went during the week, so it wasn't too busy. But it was still a beautiful day on the beach!

Enjoying a nice dinner at our house:

The Finlay foursome at our favourite restaurant, Paprika:

The Finlay's went to Tobago on Thursday and Stu joined them on Friday night. This was the Villa we rented for the weekend. There were a couple more nice meals out on that nice big patio.

That's Jenny and Katie in the blue waters of Tobago. They had lots of time to catch up and it was nice for Kate (and Stu) to catch up on the pregnany and to meet Lilly. Although she was only the size of a spagetti squash, it was nice to get to know her!

The Finlay ladies on the way to Englishmen's Bay..... Eleanor, I know that this picture must seem a world away now that you're under a couple of feet of snow. You're welcome back anytime!!

Kate and I both really enjoyed having you guys down here. Thanks for coming and hopefully we'll see you again down in the warm climate of Trinidad!

Visitors and Tobago

Tobago has been a common theme lately - Kate was there with her friends Nat and Tara, we were there with the Finlay family (another post to come shortly), and we're getting ready to spend Christmas over there with the Dickson clan.

Nat and Tara were down from November 10th to the 18th and we had a great time with them. There was lots of nice dinners, some partying (we had to check out the clubs here in Port of Spain!) and general exploring of both Trinidad and Tobago.

Here we were enjoying some wine and appy's at a nice wine bar here in Port of Spain called More Vino:

Here are the ladies enjoying the Nylon Pool near the world famous Bucco Reef in Tobago:

Another beach the girls enjoyed in Tobago:

We also did a tour of the Caroni swamp. I know what you're thinking, this isn't the kind've place that Kate, Nat and TP would hang out in, but it was quite impressive. Any ornithologists out there would really enjoy this place.

We saw hundreds, if not thousands of birds. They all spend the day over in Venezula and then come back to this swamp to sleep. There were primarily two types of birds that we saw, the Scarlet Ibis and the Egrett. The Scarlett Ibis is the national bird of T&T and is a stunning colour of red.

I'm not sure if you're going to be able to see it over the net, but it was absolutely amazing how many birds are nesting in the trees on the island. In the 30 minutes we were waiting and watching, there were at least 500 birds that came to nest.

On the last weekend that the girls were here we also went to a Pan Yard to see some Parang and steel pan music. Parang is a type of music that is performed here around Christmas time by a small group consisting of voices and very basic instruments (like the bass box!).

Below is the steel band that we saw:

It was great to have Natty and TP down for the week as our first visitors all the way from Canada. Thanks for coming, guys. Sorry you had to go back to the cold weather! In case you're wondering, it's still about 28 degrees here - everyday!!

St.Lucia

Since it started getting cold back home in Canada, we've had a few visitors down, so I haven't been able to get to our blog as regularly as I'd like. My apologies.

Back at the end of October we went up to the beautiful island of St. Lucia for a weekend. We had heard really great things about the island so we wanted to go. We'd also heard about a fun festival that was being organized by a friend of ours from here in T&T - The Second Annual Food and Rum Festival. So we decided to go over that weekend seeing as we like food and we like Rum!

St. Lucia is a really beautiful island. It is the second island we've been to (the first being Grenada) and we enjoyed it much more. Not sure if the weather played a part (we were in Grenada for Tropical Storm Felix!) or the festival, but it was really very nice.

There is a lot of development going on there - and a lot of high end developments - and it's clear to see why!

I'm going to let the pictures tell most of the story, but quickly our weekend consisted of:

• An afternoon boat cruise sponsored by Appleton's rum which included lots of Jamaican rum, a great lunch at a nice resort and a viewing of the Piton's - two large spikey peaks - the island was formed from volcanic activity.


• A wonderful dinner at a very fancy resort, cooked by Art Smith (Oprah's ex personal chef)
• An afternoon tasting rums from all over the world and a nice dinner with friends from here on T&T that were also in St Lucia


• A day on the beach


• A hike up a hill to an old fort


• Exploring the capital city, Castries (not very exciting, actually!)

And now for some pics....

The Pitons:

Rodney Bay:

This was where we waited for our flight, after checking in!

New Office.....and a 7.3 Quake!

I think I told you earlier that we were moving our office to one of the newest, tallest buildings in Port of Spain. Well my group moved about a month or so ago. Although we don't yet have cubicles, proper desks or telephones with an outside line, it is a big improvement. The telephone line is supposed to come any day and proper desks and cubicle furniture should be here early in the new year.

Check out my old office (that I shared with Raul) ....

And now the new one......

Quite an improvement, wouldn't you say?! This is the view from my "desk".

We are on the 20th floor of the building so we have a great view of the entire city of Port of Spain. Of course, this also made for an interesting experience last Thursday when we experienced the largest earthquake ever recorded in the eastern caribbean. It was a 7.3 on the Richter scale and was centered deep below the French island of Martinique. This island is quite a way north of us, so it was pretty widespread being felt on most of the islands.

There was no significant damage here in Trinidad, but it was quite a traumatic experience being 20 floors up. The entire building was shaking for about a minute or so, and then it went for a big enough sway to open up the doors of the filing cabinet near my desk! That's when I followed the structural engineers out into the core of the building!

Like I said, there wasn't any major damage here in Trinidad and Tobago, so we're all OK.

Carnival

As we have reported in earlier posts, Trini's love to party. And the biggest party of the year for them is Carnival. It happens every year on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday and the start of lent. It is the culmination of a whole year's worth of planning and parties (you know, to get ready!).

The festival has deep roots and is a long standing tradition which goes back to the times when there were slaves here in Trinidad. They were permitted to party for these two days and they started dressing up in costumes and parading in the streets. The costumes became very ornate and usually made fun of the 'masters' in some form.

It has evolved with the times, but many of the old traditions still exist. The different groups which parade through the streets are called bands. There are still some bands which are very ornate and serious about the costume aspect. They have themes and compete for the best band award every year. Other bands have evolved into more fun themes, like the HARTS Band which we have joined. Their theme this year is Tribute to Hollywood and the costumes are named after various movies, we are part of the The Last Samurai group.

Here is a link to their site you can see ours and other costumes:

http://www.hartscarnival.com/

We've been told that this band is much less serious and many of the people (especially the guys) don't wear the entire costume (which is good because I'm not sure I'm interested in the big hat!). The ladies don't have a lot of costume to leave off!

If you go to the site you can see that this band is more about the party. Check out the pictures from last year. Did we mention that the basic premise of the carnival is to parade through the streets of Port of Spain for two days - Monday and Tuesday. There is lots of music, dancing, drinking and wining (trust me boys, you will like wining!).

According to all of our friends, Carnival is the party of the year here in Trinidad. If anyone would like to join us, you are more than welcome to head south, we'd love to share it with you.

Where has September Gone?

I just looked back and saw that I hadn't done a post for a LONG time. You should consider that a good thing, really. It means we're out doing cool stuff and not sitting around our apartment on the internet! Actually I've been surfing the net quite a bit this week as Katie is back in Toronto visiting friends and family and so it's a little lonely here at night. She will be returning next Monday morning and I can't wait for her to return.

I just hope we still have some readers!

So what have we been up to for the month of September?

Just after my last post we went off to Grenada for the long weekend. Aug 31 was Independance Day here in Trinidad so we took advantage and went to the next island north from here to check it out. It was a really nice island, unfortunately the weather wasn't very good - Tropical Storm Felix was just getting going actually! Despite that we had one day to explore St George's (the capital) and the rest of the island in our rented 4x4.

Us with St. George's behind us....

The island was heavily damaged a few years ago by Hurricane Ivan and it was nice to see that they have recovered well. Although not all buildings were salvageable I suppose....

We had a couple of nice dinners and relaxed with a couple of days on Grand Anse Beach. The last day we went on a catamaran sailing / snorkeling trip. It was fun but we got some rain which made the water very dark.

The weekend after that was spent here in Port of Spain. We actually went to another concert - it was headlined by Deloris O'Reardan. Not only is she the most Irish named person, but she used to be the lead singer of the Cranberries. The concert wasn't the greatest, but we were hanging out with some new friends so that was why we went.

We have been continuing to meet lots of new people here, both local and expats and we are having a good time with them. It's nice to have people outside of work to hang out with - particularly for Kate. Kate has now been gone over two weekends leaving me to fend for myself. And I've done pretty well for the weekends, if I do say so myself.

Two weekends ago I went "Down D Islands" again with Evran, my local buddy from work. His good friend was hosting a large party for his 30th birthday at his parents VERY nice house. It was a great afternoon and I ended up staying over for the night. That lead to an afternoon of relaxing in the pool and ocean on the Sunday after.

This weekend just past was another long weekend (Yes, Trinidad has a lot of holidays!). This Monday we celebrated Republic Day - I celebrated by playing golf on both Sunday and Monday. It was another course which I hadn't played yet, so it was nice to play somewhere else.

So, that's not a very exciting update but that's what we've been up to. Looking ahead we are excited to be hosting our first Canadian Guests in the beginning of November when Nat and Tara are coming down. Now that the Canadian summer is over and the days are getting shorter, perhaps some more of you may be thinking about a trip? Anyone is welcome anytime....

We miss you all very much but be assured we are really enjoying things down here.

We will talk to you soon. I will make sure it's sooner than a month from now!

Stu

It's been a while...

....and quite a bit has happened done here in Trinidad.

Hurricane Dean past well north of us without much impact other than a bit more rain and some rougher seas. It certainly was the major story that everyone was talking about that week. Trinidad is so close to South America, that it is south of the "normal" hurricane belt, and has never had a hurricane hit it, although Tobago was hit by Flora in 1963.

Two weekends ago we went to a party on Saturday night, which required Kate to go shopping for a new "Trini" outfit (of course!). The party was a lot of fun and lasted into the early morning hours - which is the usual for down here and something we're starting to get used to.

Then on Sunday we were invited to an area they call "Down D Islands" (serious about the 'D' - we got in trouble for using 'the'!!). It's a group of small islands off the north-western tip of Trinidad and it reminded me a lot of Muskoka. A lot of cottages which appear to probably belong to mostly wealthy Trinidadians. We were there with our friends Ryan and Tiff who we met through Martha and Diane Gartley (thanks, Marth!). It turned into quite a scene with a lot of their friends showing up, with a lot of kids in tow. It was a lot of fun and we were both very sunburnt when we got home.

This past week Kate had a bit of a "job" helping out the lady who runs the Yoga studio she goes to. Karen was away for the week and needed some help driving Yoga instructors to classes and manning her Yoga clothing store she runs out of her house. It wasn't the most stimulating work Kate's ever done, but the gig came with the use of Karen's car for the week.

This weekend just past was a busy one for us. We went on a beautiful hike on Saturday to a beach that a few people have said is the nicest beach in Trinidad. It is on the north coast where there is no road, therefore you have to rent a boat or hike the 7 kms into it.

Our plan was originally to hire a boat to take us to the beach, hang out for a while and then hike out. Unfortunately The Great Race was on Saturday and the people with the boats wanted to watch the race.

The Great Race is a powerboat race that goes from Trindad to Tobago, past the Islands we were talking about above. Seemed to be a pretty big deal with a lot of people talking about it, and as per Trini fashion, there's a huge party all night over on Tobago after the race. The newspaper story is below in case you're interested....

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_sports?id=161194758

So back to our hike..... We had to hike both ways in and out from the beach, which was about 2 hours each way with a couple of pretty big hills which made it somewhat tough. It was worth it though, as the beach was beautiful and very secluded. Apparantly there is a really nice waterfall, but it was 3/4 of the way down the beach and then a 30 minute walk up the mountain. We'll be back to see it another time.

We had to get back in reasonable time on Saturday so we'd have enough time to have a sleep and get ready for our Saturday night plans. We went to a Regae show which included some local bands and was headlined by Damian "Junior Gong" Marley with an appearance by his brother Stephen Marley - both sons of Bob (Mom's, you remember Bob Marley, right?).

The concert was great - very much all about the music, and although we couldn't hear/understand all the lyrics, there were a few Bob tunes that we could sing along with. It was very much all about the music and the Rasta/Regae "movement". It was really cool to be at a Regae show in Trinidad - and almost hard to believe. It's cool local events like that, that is what makes our experience here so cool!

Here's the article from the paper on Monday ....

http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161195115

Our VIP tickets included secured parking, the first half of the floor area fenced off from the "general admission", free drinks and free food. And the tickets only cost us the equivalent of about $50! A great deal to go along with the great times.

This week is a short one for us as Friday is Independance Day and is a national holiday. We are off to Grenada tomorrow night and come back Sunday night. We've heard it's a beautiful island and we're looking forward to exploring it.

We hope you all enjoy your Labour Day holiday (for those in Toronto). For all of you elsewhere in the world, enjoy the weekend and we'll talk again soon.

Stu and Kate

Tobago

Tobago is the smaller of the two islands here in T&T, with a population of approximately 54,000 people and a total area of 300 square kilometres. It is north and east of Trinidad and is only a 20 minute flight or a two and a half hour "fast" ferry ride away. Tobago is the island with the much nicer beaches and therefore a much more extensive tourism industry. There are many beaches with hotel resorts alongside them, however the resorts are much smaller and older than those that might be found in Mexico or Cuba.

We decided to take the ferry over so that we could take our car with us and explore more of the island than we might otherwise have been able to. Plus Stu had conveniently organized some meetings with the Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) on Monday so had to get to their offices.

We arrived around noon on Saturday and just as we were driving off the ferry the rain started to come down. It rained off and on all day on Saturday, however that gave us a chance to drive around a good portion of the island without missing out on any valuable beach time.

We had been generously offerred a friend's place to stay at for the weekend and we accepted his offer. Although he had mentioned that the place was pretty small and really close to the airport, we were a little surprised at just how small, rustic and REALLY close to the runway of the airport it was. Luckily it is a pretty small airport with only small planes coming in regularly from Trinidad. After our initial shock was over and the weather got better on Sunday we were feeling a bit better about the cabin - unfortunately the mosquitos were pretty bad and drove us into a hotel for our last night there.

I know this is painting a pretty bleak picture of what is supposed to be a beautiful island, but the weather did clear on Sunday afternoon and all seemed a lot better once we were able to get to the beach. We went on a glass bottom boat tour which included looking through the glass at the second largest coral reef in the world (according to our Tobagonian guide!) , a stop to do some snorkling, and a stop in "The Nylon Pool" (an area of waste deep water which has coral sand on the bottom).

Monday turned out to be the best day of the weekend and this suited Kate just fine. She dropped me off at my meetings and then went to the beach for the day! That night we checked into one of the hotels so we could get away from the bugs and have a nice relaxing evening watching the sunset over the Carribbean Sea.

We will definitely be back to Tobago, hopefully many times. We will certainly take our guests their when they come to stay!

Talk to you again soon.

Stu and Kate

Manzanilla Beach and Everyday Life

So we had a pretty relaxed couple of days last weekend. We did go for a drive to the east coast of Trinidad. We hung out at a beach called Manzanilla Beach and then drove south through a forest of coconut trees towards another town called Mayaro. We turned around before we got there as it was starting to get dark, but we'll go back. The beach and drive were pretty as it was a seemingly endless beach, with lots of palm trees, but the swimming wasn't all that great, more like a warm bath.

Since we don't have any exciting adventures to share, we thought we'd show you some pictures of everyday life for us here. As you can see Kate is keeping busy......

...seriously though, she has organized slip covers for the chairs and futon. We just couldn't live with the ugly orange fabric for a year!! She also has recovered the dining room chairs with some "monkey" fabrics we brought down with us. Thanks Mom and Sis, they look great!

Here is our car - a Chevy Optra. Nothing special, that's for sure, but we're certainly not going to complain about a free car! It's been giving us some trouble lately (it didn't start on Tuesday), but the leasing company comes and brings us another car as soon as we call, while ours is being fixed, so we're not really inconvenienced.

This is my office building - the smaller one with the mirror windows on the front. It's also nothing very special. We are totally full and there is not a spare desk or table to work at. I share an "office" with another engineer who is originally from Columbia. We both sit at tables and we don't have a phone extension in the room as the phone system is at it's maximum capacity. Don't fear though, we're moving by the end of the year to a much nicer place, the Nicolas Tower (picture on the right). It's the highest and newest office tower in Port of Spain and we're going to be taking the top three floors - GENIVAR has stepped it up, that's for sure! It will be a huge improvement as we will have three times as much space, parking in the building (which is a problem right now) as well as a coffee house, travel agent and other shops right in the lobby of the building. It's right along Brian Lara Promenade - Brian Lara was one of the best cricket players of all time (I'd bet that Matt is the only one of you that knew that!) and he is from just outside of Port of Spain.

We'll share some more photos of everyday stuff later, but this post is getting long and it's time to end it.

We're off to Tobago this weekend. We've heard it's really beautiful over there - white sand beaches, clear Caribbean waters, and an even more relaxed attitude. So look for some sweet pics next week. We're also hoping to find a nice place for the Dickson family to have Christmas.

We miss everyone back home and we hope you are all enjoying your summers.

Cheers,

Stu and Kate

The Lime - or Liming

Or perhaps I should say Limin' (with an island accent!) is a true Trini past time and a large part of who they are. It seems to be a very versatile word as it can be used a noun - Are you going to the Lime tonight? - or as a verb - Who were you liming with last night?


Essentially liming is hanging out with your friends, having some drinks, sharing some laughs and generally having a good time. A Lime is not a party, though - there needs to be an element of spontaneity and lack of organization. If you have invited a bunch of friends to your house in advance, that's a party - if a bunch of people just meet up on the street and have some beers around someone's car, that's a Lime.


Our guidebook notes that Liming is "T&T's favourite pastime" and a paper I found on the net says that liming is a social institution and a cultural state of mind. Although nowhere can I find out where the word came from, or why it's called Liming. I guess it's just always been a part of life here in T&T!

One of the regular Limes (I know I said it had to be random and unplanned - the definition is illusive...) occurs at the office every Friday afternoon! Yup, around 4:00pm, people stop work, some rum, coke, ice, snacks and beers appear out from the corner and we have a Lime. Now not every Friday does the entire office partake, but it seems that almost everyone comes out to the last Lime of the month. This is when there is plenty of food, lots of drinks and birthday cake - it's when they celebrate the people's birthday's that were in that month as well as any other significant events (births, people leaving, etc.).

Sorry there's not any exciting pictures today, but in addition to sharing our photos and adventures, we want to try and share what we're learning about Trinidad and Tobago and it's people (Trinbagonians is the politically correct way to describe the people from the entire country). Trini is really what people use.

Hope you all had a Lime or two over the long weekend.

Stu and Kate

Rincon Falls

Yesterday (Saturday) we hiked to Trinidad's second highest waterfall, Rincon falls. According to one of the guys with us it was 180 feet tall. It was beautiful. We were with a group of people from the office who regularly go for hikes like this and who know where thy're going.

It wasn't a very long hike distance wise (approximately 2.5 km), but there was quite a bit of climbing on the way. The heat and humidity are something we're still getting used to - even though we started the hike at approximately 8:30 in the morning. The start of the hike was about a one hour drive north of Port of Spain, just past the main beach- Maracus, so it was an early morning for us!

We hiked through the rainforest and although we were pretty tired from the heat and the Friday afternoon "Lime" at the office ("Liming" deserves a post unto it's own) it was beautiful to experience the 'flora and fauna' of a tropical island. When we got to the falls, the forest opened up and there was a pond where we all took a nice refreshing swim and explored the smaller falls below the pond. We were sure to explain to the Trinis along with us that the water was far from cold - try Georgian Bay in June!

After the hike we drove further east along the road to a small town called Blanchisseuse. There was a culinary festival going on where they were providing several different local cuisines which you could choose from. It was a really neat setting as it felt along way from the tourist scene - not that there really is much of a tourist scene here in Trinidad.

The food was provided from locals and included several traditional Trini foods such as callaloo, jerk chicken, creole chicken, breadfruit, indian flavours and yummy seafood. It was delicious. There was also a local musical group playing to entertain the crowd. you will see the picture below. And finally before heading home we had to go down to the beach for a quick swim in the ocean.

The pictures really tell the story, so I'll stop typing and let you take a look.....