Independence Day

August 31, 2008 - Today Trinidad and Tobago are celebrating 46 years of independence. To recognize that I thought I would tell you a little bit about the two islands. (Information taken from the T&T Boaters' Directory for 2007 - 2008)


The first settlers that came to the islands were the Arawak and Carib indians that came across from Venezuela. They all but vanished during the Spanish domination. Spain, France and England all battled over ownership of the islands with the Brits finally winning in 1797. The Spanish and French imported slaves from Africa to work the cocoa and sugar cane plantations. After emancipation of the slaves the British brought in indentured servants from India to do the same. In 1898 the two islands were joined politically and in 1962 they gained their independence from Britain and finally became a republic in 1976. They are now a democracy under a parliamentary system.

Trinidad covers 1,864 square miles and Tobago covers 116 square miles. There are approximately 1.3 million people living on the two islands. Although English is the national language when you listen to two Trinidadians speaking together you would be hard pressed to recognize or understand anything they are saying. They speak quite quickly and in a patois.

The flag is a red background with a diagonal stripe of black on white running from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. The red colour represents the vitality of the land and its people. The white is the sea by which the islands are bound and also represents the equality of all men. The black is the colour of strength, unity, purpose and the wealth of the land. The three colours also represent the elements of Earth, Water and Fire.

The national flower is the Chaconia or wild poinsettia. It blossoms during August and is seen as a flaming red flower in the verdant green rainforest. Its name is in honour of the last Spanish Governor of the islands - Don Jose Maria Chacon. It is an indigenous flower and has been present throughout the entire history of the islands.

The two islands each have a national bird. For Trinidad it is the Scarlet Ibis which nests in the Caroni Swamp, 15,000 acres of marshland, tidal lagoons and mangrove trees set aside as a bird sanctuary. These birds also display two of the official colours - the young are black/brown and the adults are a brilliant vermillion. The official bird of Tobago is the Cocrico. A bird found in Tobago and Venezuela. It is also known as the Tobago Pheasant. Compared to the Ibis it is a drab looking bird about the size of a common chicken.

For the past week red, white and black bunting has been appearing on buildings and walls along the road. There is a big celebration with fireworks in Port of Spain this afternoon.

Still in Trinidad

Well. it is a bit later than it was - of course it always is isn't it? So, time for a bit more news from Trinidad. As we said last time, we changed the timing for our trip back to Grenada. We had decided to travel with a couple of other boats up the Macareo River, which begins in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela and eventually meets up with some other rivers and becomes the Amazon. There are two possibilities in the Delta for river trips that yachts have done. One is the Manamo river, which ends up the same place, and the other is the Macareo. The first one is more civilized and more populated, which means if something goes wrong i.e. with the boat or illness etc, there are more facilities to handle it. The downside of course is that it is more"civilized" and more populated so there is more danger of bad guys and more hustling.

The Macareo, on the other hand, has a population that still uses paddles rather than outboards, has only one village big enough for a school in the 60 miles you travel upstream and the people want to trade rather than beg for handouts. We had been asked to do this trip before but weren't terribly interested because we didn't have all the facts. We then talked, however, to people who had just returned and they made it sound well worth doing so we committed to it.

HOLD IT - bureaucracy reigns again. Monday we were informed that customs had ordered the only fuel dispensers on the island not to sell subsidized fuel to foreign-flagged vessels. I went to customs to investigate and was informed that there had always been a law in place that forbade selling subsidized goods to outsiders. Up to this point it was one of those laws that no one paid much attention to but for some reason customs had chosen now to enforce. There is a rumour going around that a foreign-flagged fishing vessel took on 5000 gals of fuel last week and a local complained - that apparently happens quite often with the big fishsing trawlers and cargo ships and the problem is that when these vessels do that, this is the only money they spend here. Yachties also take the fuel but the yachting facilities here take in about $30,000,000 from the sailing community each year so of course an uproar has been raised.

Customs assured me that they have no problem with outlets selling us unsubsidized fuel but were not able to tell us where these outlets might be. All outlets sell subsidized!!

What does this have to do with the river trip - the trip upriver is 60 miles against a 4 knot current and it must be motored not sailed due to the width of the river and the lack of wind inland. This means that we all needed to be fully fuelled to go. To further complicate matters, one of the boats only carries 37 gallons and they would have had to borrow fuel from us and from Southern Cross in order to get back.

The matter is still being discussed at meetings attended by the Trinidad and Tobago Sailing Association, our champions in matters such as these. They are Trinidadians who do all they can to facilitate our needs because of course they want us to keep coming back. To this point nothing has changed and Cheryl and I made the decision that if by Friday morning, our proposed leaving date, we still couldn't get fuel, we would not be going. The boat with the small tanks had already filled up and the other boat is prepared to pay a local to circumvent the laws and use jerry cans to buy diesel fuel at service stations and transport it to their boat. Cheryl and I are not comfortable with this. The way we look at it is the law exists, whether is makes sense or not. Before you say - well, it wouldn't hurt anyone - imagine if there were a group of tourists who came to Canada from wherever and decided they didn't like some of our laws. How would we feel or what would we think if we discovered that they were ignoring our laws because they thought they were unfair and were in fact circumventing them. What if that cost us money??

Anyway, whether you agree with our stand or not, unless we get fuel by Friday we won't be going. We can still sail wherever we want and have lots of fuel to get to another country that will sell us fuel. We are going to Grenada to meet the Perrys anyway so - there you go!

What have we been doing, you ask.

We are no longer tightly tied to the boat so last Sunday we went for a hike with about 22 other people from the various boats. We were supposed to cross the golf course and end up at a beach after walking a bit of the coast line but because of all the rain and flooding, all the access points to the golf course were closed so we ended up hiking about 5 miles up a hill, coming back down and then walking to a small beach area for an hour or so. The hike began by going through the bamboo cathedral, a stretch of road through a whole forest of bamboo (remember bamboo is grass, not a tree). The bamboo was leaning over the road from both sides in huge arches. Very majestic. We were at the back of the group and they were soon out of sight. Whenever we came to a fork in the road they left us a marker being very ingenious in their choice of materials.

At the top of the hill we came on a satellite tracking and communication station that was no longer in use but was nevertheless very impressive. We found out when we went to the museum on Monday (more later) that this particular station transmitted and received the first VHF radio signal ever bounced off a satellite. The communication was to New York city.

Although the trip down the hill was faster, we found out the next day that is was much harder on the muscles, particularly in the shins!!

After coming down the hill we went to a small bay that has a beach. There are very few developed beaches in Trinidad and this one fit the norm. Apparently the small bay it is on used to have US submarines come in and anchor when the Naval station that the USA built during the war was still open. The base opened in 1941 and closed in 1976. More about that too when we talk about the museum.

Monday - museum and potluck day

There is a military museum just down the road from the marina so 6 of us decided to walk over and then attend the cruisers' potluck at TTSA (Trinidad and Tobago Sailing Association). The museum was a surprise. From the outside it looked like a typical small town museum.

Some old military vehicles in various stages of repair/disrepair and the building from the outside looked small. We figured we would probably spend an hour and then head back to the potluck in plenty of time. Once inside we were pleasantly surprised. The first display we saw were four showcases filled with swords that had been confiscated by customs and then donated to the museum. In Trinidad you may import swords, but only if you are a member of a karate club. There were gold ceremonial swords from Japan and India and others from China. Some of them had very intricately carved handles. From there you went into the museum proper. They had a history of war on display starting with the Grecco/Persian wars in BC and right up to the Vietnam war and other Cold War actions and the most recent Gulf wars. They had articles written at every display as well as artifacts. There was a section on pirates and the colonization of the Caribbean islands. Rather than having the displays in rooms they were set up along a 'path' that wound back and forth. At one point we could see each other, but it took a good 10 minutes before we were together and that was with one person standing still. The one display we both found intriguing was one set up as a trench from WWI. It was dark and they had sound effects of shooting and shells exploding. As you walked along you came upon dioramas of what life was like in the trenches. Very remarkable. We were in the museum for about 2 hours and felt we could easily have spent another 2 hours there and not seen everything - especially if you wanted to read most of the articles. Finally at 6PM we left as the museum was closing and the curator wanted to lock up and feed the dogs that had been running over the corrugated tin roof of the museum all the while we were in there. Added to the sound effects of the trenches!!

We headed over to TTSA for the potluck. TTSA is a marina in the next bay over from were we are and our friends D and Don on Southern Cross are anchored there. They have a cruisers' potluck every Monday evening. We had left our contribution for the potluck on Southern Cross on our way to the museum so D went out and brought it back. There were a lot of cruisers there from Chaguaramas bay as well as TTSA so we knew some people and met some new people. We had a lot of fun and as usual the food was delicious. We walked back to our marina with Leona and Bill on Voyageur C (fellow Canadians) about 8PM and called it a night.