Tobago people

Saturday 17th January 2009, day 181. 10° 40’.81 N, 061° 38’.16 W. Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad.

A few more snapshots from Tobago:

Curtis James, the island’s ice cream man, who we met when we went to Buccoo Reef for an evening’s steel band music. We’d just finished our supper of spinach soup, sweet potato and spiced fish, and there was Curtis, perched on top of his chiller box, in the back of his open pickup. “Ice cream!” he shouts. “Which one do you want, I got peanut, pina colada, or chocolate?” “You must be yachties”, he goes on. “How do you know?” He roars with laughter and points at Anthony. “Look at him, man! Look at de colour of him! He just de same colour as me.” He has a point. We had a chance to try different flavours a few days later when we were driving along the northern road – he doesn’t need a van with a tinkly tune, he just pulls his truck into a convenient turning, waits for a passing car, then stands up and bellows “Ice cream!” at the top of his voice.

The best dancer at the steel band evening was a little old Tobagan man, with thick black-rimmed glasses and a benevolent wrinkled face. He guided his partners into discreetly flamboyant steps, his hips never quite still, knees never quite straight, every accurate movement softened by a gentle swaying. His neat black trousers and brightly patterned shirt were topped off by a hummingbird-blue crocheted hat with a narrow brim, under which he smiled in a slightly solemn way. Dancing is too much fun not to be taken seriously.

Ayo is a tall, calm Rastafari, with his hair piled high in a large black and white kerchief. He has a shop in Man of War Bay which sells car parts, a few kitchen utensils, beer and fishing tackle. The door is normally open, but he’s not there, as he’s cooking in his café twenty yards down the road. And if you go in and out of the shop in an enquiring way, and poke about a bit in the stores, and generally look as if you might be thinking of buying something, he’ll send a messenger over to summon you to discuss your wants as he stirs his pots. Then he calls out to one of his friends down the street, who helps you find what you need on the shelves to attract local fish (pink, yellow and blue sparkly lures, like Barbie’s vision of an octopus, and Tooth-Proof brand wire for the traces). And then a third friend, putting down his Bible which he was reading in front of his 10 square foot shop, will show you how to tie the whole lot together, throw in some good advice, and remind you with a twinkle that if your luck isn’t in, he can always get hold of some nice fresh fish for you himself.

Trinidad

Tuesday 13th January 2009, day 178. 10° 40’.81 N, 061° 38’.16 W. Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad.

So much to catch up on since the last proper blog … all the Cape Verdes, Barbados, Tobago. I’ll pick up where we are right now, and then see about filling in the gaps later.

It is pouring at the minute. A real tropical downpour. Water is gushing down off the sun awning, blowing across the cockpit and in through the ports. All around, people are scurrying to close hatches and vents, workers are sheltering under hulls, tools and partially varnished wood is being rushed under cover. The temperature has dropped suddenly; it is almost cool. And five minutes later, it is all over, steam is rising from the forests behind the bay, and we are getting back to a nice muggy normality, at 30°C.

Chaguaramas is a little yachting community, which has grown in 10 years from a few men repairing fishing boats to a full-blown set up with five or six different yards, and any number of contractors offering everything from sail repairs to painting to electrical work. Trinidad is just outside the hurricane belt, so lots of boats lay up here in the summer, their crews fleeing from the heat back to more temperate climates. Building on the constant level of work this provides, the bay has become both a second home for people who use their boats like fixed, if floating, cottages, and a centre for all sorts of work. We arrived here planning to spend a few days seeing the country, before setting off for the beauties of the Grenadines, but here we are a week later, with our cruising chute repaired and a new snuffer for it ordered, electricians working on the battery charging system, quotes coming in for work on parts of the teak decking, steps made to get into the forward berths, fans installed to dissipate some of the heat, loos dismantled and re-assembled, prices investigated for satellite phones, the water-maker re-wired, an appointment booked with a hairdresser, oil changes on the main engine and the generator, a thorough spring clean for Tomia, comparing the merits of the different local data phones …also there is a wifi connection which works at least some of the time, hence the re-start of communcations.

We’ve now been living on Tomia for seven months, and have covered nearly 6,000 miles; in a normal season we might achieve a tenth of that, and then have the whole winter to bring her back up to scratch. So maintenance is an ongoing task, a little bit here, a minor upgrade there, to ensure that she continues to look after us as well as she has done so far.

In addition to all this boaty stuff, we’ve rented a car and explored the island a bit, going down to the La Brea tar pits in the south, and a wonderful nature reserve in the north, with an amazing array of bird life presenting itself. 4” long iridescent humming-birds, the bearded bell bird which does indeed make a noise just like the clinking of a rather tinny bell, and any number of brightly coloured tanagers and honey creepers. We also saw 2 ft long lizards, with black and gold stripes, marching along licking their lips as they looked for crumbs that had fallen off the birds’ table – and a tree porcupine, fast asleep, but looking rather precariously balanced, on the branch of a tree (of course).

The pitch lake was fascinating, but not exactly beautiful – Noel Coward called it a bunch of tennis courts in need of re-surfacing, and that is not unfair. In fact, it looks a bit of a mess, to be honest. I’d expected a vast cauldron of liquid tar, with the odd bubble breaking the surface every now and then with a great “gloop”, but it’s just a large surface of rough tarmac. The bitumen is not spooned out with giant ladles as one might have imagined, but dug up in chunks. We walked out over the surface, a bit gingerly at first, noting a slight give underfoot, but no more than a sprung ball-room floor. Even hopping on the spot couldn’t make more than a small impression in the surface. There is a lovely clean smell though in the tarry bits, and, oddly, a pond of pink and green lotus flowers just at the edge of the tar which give off a strong smell of an over-sweet air-freshener, so the nose is more stimulated than the eyes.

We then managed to get our hire car thoroughly lost as we went down to the south coast in search of mud volcanoes (which we didn’t find, and probably just as well). I have never known any where like Trinidad for not having road signs. Even the junction of the two dual carriageways on the island doesn’t have one. Do the taxi drivers and tour guides come out at night and steal them, to discourage tourists from driving themselves around? We had three maps, which disagreed with each other, even about the location of the roads … names on the map which weren’t where they should be, places on the ground that weren’t on the map … of course, being sailors, we can, and did, navigate by the sun, and ended up bumping our way to the end of the track, through dense thickets of wild bananas and palms, with the local vultures circling overhead. There was a tiny beach, three Trinidadians, and a brown, almost salt-free sea, in which we swam. “Why is the sea so brown and the water so fresh?” we asked. “It is the River” they replied – the great outpouring from the Orinoco, only ninety miles to our south.

Christmas in Barbados

How do you celebrate Christmas if you’re a yachtie, far from home? We had loosely planned something involving a swim, a large tin of confit’d duck thighs, Christmas pudding and champagne, rounded off with rum punches in a very relaxed beach-side shack. But no, we were thwarted … in the best possible way.

Two days earlier, two slightly scruffy yachties had scrubbed up the best they could and presented themselves at the extremely colonial Barbados Yacht Club. Along with four Christmas cards we picked up … a lunch invitation for the 25th, all formally written on stiff card. The writing was familiar, if a little hard to read – was it a joke, to make us realise what we were missing? We looked at the invitation again – there was a Barbados address in the bottom left hand corner. We hardly dared believe it, but the truth suddenly dawned – two much-loved friends had decided to take their winter holiday in Barbados, to join us. I don’t expect the staff of the BYC are used to their guests getting all emotional when they collect their post, it’s not that sort of place – anyway, I sniffed, blew my nose, and rushed off to the phone to accept.

What a lovely day we had. We started off with stockings in the cockpit, with all the things that our resourceful friends and family had managed to have delivered to us, from new books to waterproof mascara. We put on our smartest shorts for the service at the Episcopalian cathedral, feeling very under-dressed compared to the Bajans in their sparkly ball gowns, and sharpest suits. Then to the Queen’s Park to hear the police band play, and to admire the state of the cricket pitch wicket. We found a taxi to take us up to our friends’ apartment to a wonderfully warm welcome, hot showers – and a washing machine at our disposal!

They had scoured the shops to find the components of a proper English Christmas, with everything from sprouts to crackers, gravy to brandy butter. And even a large collection of Braeburns, which we had been longing for ever since eating the last piece of fresh fruit, a few days out from Cape Verde. And, which we devoured almost as ravenously, English papers, not seen since La Gomera, in mid November.

Thank you both for a wonderful, totally unexpected treat, and for making our Christmas unforgettable.

Tobago II

Saturday 3rd January 2009, day 168. 11° 18’.01 N, 060° 39’.09 W. Parlatuvier Bay, Tobago

Welcome to Paradise.

What does your vision of a tropical island include? Empty white sandy beaches and palm trees, of course. Waterfalls, lush rain forests, brightly coloured birds flickering across the road, pausing just long enough for you to admire the iridescent colouring? Tick. Butterflies like gaudy handkerchiefs flapping in the breeze, turquoise and orange hummingbirds hovering over a scarlet-flowered bush, and, for a little spice, six-foot long snakes that slide into the undergrowth as you approach, the head appearing on the far side of a stand of bamboo before the tail has disappeared into it, like a goods train going through a tunnel? Yup. Tiny villages where the fish shop is a shelf where each fisherman contributes his latest catch before heading off again? Sure.

The crystal-clear blue waters are failing us a bit, as the tail end of the rainy season is still washing sand down into every bay, but in every other way, Tobago is a gorgeous place to be.