The land of the humming bird

After a 19 hour long sail we arrived to Trinidad two weeks ago. The two first weeks in the land of the humming bird has passed and I’m still alive and well in a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world.

So how in this new place…………wet, lush, fruity, mixed, friendly

Wet, lush, and fruity– well yes very wet as we arrived just in time for the rain season, which has brought greenness and lushness with it. So on one hand I am right now in the middle of a typical bad Danish summer, just one that’s slightly warmer 28 – 32 degrees, but on the other hand I get to see a rich green landscape with blooming trees and avoid sun burns. And with the return of the rain and the lush nature comes the food to be picked from the trees – the fruitiness. Going to an estate on the country side makes you wonder whether you have arrived to the Garden of Eden. This particular estate was in the middle of the rain forest, thus water comes in a constantly stream and feed the life there. I was stroke by the variety, the amount, the colours, the smell and the taste of the fruit, herbs and vegetables growing there. I had no idea before coming here, just how great a food source the rain forest is.

Mixed, you find an incredible diversity of ‘races’ – some in Trinidad would claim that you are not a real Trinidadian before four different ‘races’ runs in your blood. You can roughly say that the population can be split in five here. Descendants from Europe, Africa, India, ‘Syria’ (referred to as Syrians, but sure whether they actually only come from there?) and descendants from the native Indians living here – whom largely were killed by the Spain’s when the first arrived here – so natives are more likely to refer to native Indians coming from South America. Welcome to the melting pot.

You see the fusion in people’s faces, their skin, their hair and their culture. I went to an incredible concert the other day where I experienced the cultural fusion up front.  The band playing had brought together a wide range of instrument the sounds of the Indian sitar, were mixed with the ones of a steel pan drum, a sax, a Spanish guitar, bongo drums, a bass, and electronic beat box, a unlikely combination but with an capturing and hypnotizing result.

According to ‘Vision of Humanity’ Trinidad is the 94th most peaceful place out of a 149 countries, as a comparison Denmark in the top ten! Guess we can all agree upon that Trinidad isn’t safe. So you must be careful with whom you chose to socialize with. What one does is when coming here is to use the one contact you might have down here, to recommend who to hang out with, whom again will introduce you to more people. So in that way you build up a safe network. And so far the people introduced to me by my Swiss friend Ricarda have been amazingly friendly to me and have taken good care of me. The friendliness shown to new comers is truly remarkable. So far I have been on a fishing trip, an engagement party, to a country estate, football afternoon in the town and a French music festival and every single time I have been picked up where I live and brought back home again, and perhaps I should add – just for the record - that I don’t live in the town but well outside. And for the girls back home – here women very seldom pay for their own drinks they appear out of the blue in some magical way – and NO nothing is expected in return ONLY that you have a good time.

The little house on the sea

Above The Outlier dressed in a tent

Below scenes from my neighbourhood

The security guards' post

The bar

As you can see this is NOT an actioned packed place to hang out

Blow, blow thou summer wind

To avoid the situation above we have decided to press south for Trinidad and Tobago for the 'hurricane season'. Trinidad is suppose to be outside the ‘hurricane zone’, which mean we should be safe. Now I should explain here the concepts of ‘hurricane zone’ and ‘hurricane season’. The hurricane zone is generally considered to cover the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast of the U.S. Most hurricanes tend to bypass the "ABC islands" -- Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao -- as well as Trinidad and Tobago since they're so far south. But these islands aren't necessarily immune as all three ABC islands were under storm warnings in 2004 before Hurricane Ivan changed course and slammed into Grenada instead. Grenada, just south of the Grenadines, used to be regard as out of the zone until 2004 when it was devastated by the hurricane Ivan, and then hit again the following year by the less destructive Emily. The “hurricane season” is officially 1^st June through to the 30^th November. This simply means that you are more likely to have a hurricane at that time of year. The hurricane season normally peaks between mid-August and the end of October.

The picture below shows a Church in Granada's capital St George, which has been short of its roof since Ivan's visit in 2004.

Unlike Grenada, both Trinidad and Tobago have frequently escaped the wrath of major devastating hurricanes including the above mentioned hurricane Ivan. So fingers crossed that Trinidad and Tobago once again escape the hurricanes, especially as I would be clueless about what to do.

Welcome to Warm and Sunny Trinidad

Good that I brought my knitted sweater along

Another sunny day in Trinidad

Hallelujah and The Irish Luck

At first this title might sound a bit absurd, but it goes nice for capturing the last couple of days here in Carriacou. After leaving Clifton Friday morning we arrived just after lunchtime in Carriacou – Tyrrel Bay. Just before arriving I received a phone call on sea. The combination of not looking on the screen on the phone, hence not spotting the number, loud noises from the engine and the caller having a male voice with an accent lead me to believe that it was a Peter (a friend who is currently living in the UK but is a Slovakian) who had called me. So I started to ask him how the weather was in Brighton, how work was and if the English girls who he was serving were behaving in their best English manner and so on. I surely must have sounded like a radio and I am sure that the conversation must have made very little sense to the person whom I spoke with; as it turned out that it was not Peter but Toni an Indonesian. So why, you might ask, did Toni never correct me and said ‘Brighton why the heck are you talking about Brighton’? Despite being the best of the Indonesians on the Flying Buzzard, when it comes to talk English, Toni's English is not too developed to be fair . I can not help wonder how much he actually picked up of that conversation, but anyway it is sort of like eating a black olive and think that it is a very dark grape. It leaves you wondering, how you could mistake an Indonesian accent with a Slovakian?! Perhaps the two languages have more in common that I realized and hence ends up with a somehow similar accent.
Returning to the story. We arrived safely in the lovely bay of Tyrrel to finish up the remaining work on our report. After an event-less weekend, we sat out Monday afternoon to check out Hallelujah. Despite its name this is not a church, or its like, but a floating bar. Arriving in time for happy hour, we came to realize that this was the spot where everybody and his brother came. Cheap beer and good company, who could wish for more. Leaving behind whatever shyness I might have brought with from Denmark, I made myself familiar with the sailors on the floating bar, here in particular Jerald from North Carolina and Catherine and Pat from Dublin. And the first thing I remember speaking with Catherin about was the Eurovision, and how bad (sorry Catherine) the Irish had preformed, which of cause lead us into a lovely conversation about Johnny Logan, Abba and so on. Eventually we got around to the subject of food (As most time on a boat goes with either reading or eating, the conversation is just bound to cross these two subjects at one point or another.) and baking (one of my favorites). And I told her about my experiments with baking in a pressure cooker, and before I knew of it I was telling her that I would come around to their boat the day after and show her how it worked. Being slightly drunk I did come up with the idea that I could just swim to their boat……………..no problemo!

At the top Happy Hour at the Hallelujah
Below Saying goodbye to Irish and the infamous Hallelujah bar

Not sure what I had been thinking of, but one thing was for sure it wasn’t thought through, which I realized the day after. After all I had no intentions of standing baking in a boat wearing little more than a mermaid, so I abandoned that idea. Instead went in the dinghy and arrived dry shoed to a baking session that resulted in a lovely Irish soda bread, and a foccia that was left to rise for 3 hours so that we would not miss the Hallelujah happyhour.

The morning after (yesterday) the baking session I was rather interested in how the bread had turned out. And with the knowledge of their Irish background and a general European pride in our dairy products, I duck deep down in our fridge and located one of our many packages of Irish butter. The butter spread joy, and to my luck and in this case not Irish luck, I got to share a lovely morning on their boat Aragon, stuffing myself with good bread, tea and fun stories from Ireland and their life. And I have to agree with Pat and Catherine, Irish butter is just so much better.