A Farewell To Palms

Even outside of Carnival Trinidad is an interesting place. One of our favourite locals, who went by the strange but appropriate name of Gerbsy, described it as a cultural gangbang and perhaps that's not so far from the truth. Certainly the language there reflects a variety of influences and whilst the English is less impenetrable than elsewhere in the Caribbean it does make use of various colloquialisms which can trap the unwary visitor. For example if you're lucky enough to do any brushing during your time there, chances are you'll end up braking and be in need of a herecloth. But if someone has been macoing on your business they may push baskets so as to cause bacanal, which may ultimately cause one or more parties to enter a tabanca. All very strange.

They've even taken to finding alternative names for vegetables, a case in point being aubergines which they refer to as bhaygans. Ever keen to defend the Queen's English I considered remonstrating with them on this one by pointing out that if you need a different name for said vegetable it's eggplant. Ultimately, however, I decided not to do so for fear of inflaming colonial tensions, at the end of the day sometimes it's best just to let bhaygans be bhaygans.

We did do our bit for Queen and country by joining the Barmy Army on the Trinidad leg of its march across the Caribbean and spent three days forlornly hoping that England might produce a decent performance. The first two were great days out despite the lacklustre nature of the cricket, helped in large part by a huge cooler of beer and free doubles all day. On the third day we attempted to stay sober, I don't advise it. Cricket without beer is like a broken pencil: pointless.

Also crammed into our hectic schedule was a trip to Tobago where we met a Templeton prize nominee and spent a few hours discussing his unified theory of everything. We had to go over it a few times as bits of it are hard to get your head round and some the concepts hard to visualise, but I think we've put him on the right track now.

Other than that, a few trips to the beach, some jaunts on boats and extensive limin' there's not much more to report except that we did eventually manage to tear ourselves away and caught the ferry to Venezuela a couple of days ago. Since then we have been mostly sitting on buses and consequently are now out of sight of the Caribbean for the first time in two months. I miss the palms and the beaches, but you can't have you cake and eat it and you can't visit Angel Falls and be by the sea, so something had to give. I'll let you know if the sacrifice was worthwhile on my return.

Hasta Luego

Don Simon.

Carnival!

We little knew what to expect when we arrived in Trinidad, the Carnival was much hyped and would surely disappoint, accommodation was all booked up months in advance and everyone we spoke to warned us how dodgy it was. It did take us a couple of days to find a place to stay but when we did it was locationally superb, right in the heart of the action, with a lovely landlady and friendly neighbours.

The first inkling that Trinidad might deliver on its hype came when we attended a Miss Carnival beauty pageant at a Port of Spain nightclub and were asked to be judges for the swimwear section. Although this was a job of sorts, and therefore not in keeping with the mission statement of our trip, the duties were not too onerous and it's good to help people out when you can.

Six bikini-clad beauties paraded in front of us working hard to catch the judges' eyes. Keen to avoid any allegations of partiality we declined to look them in the face and cast our gazes elsewhere. It turned out to be a close fought contest, but our robust, four-category points system eventually decreed that contestant number one be crowned Miss Tropikini 2009, in the process winning a photoshoot and a weekend away in a plush hotel. The only downside to the whole experience was that by picking a winner we had made five beautiful ladies hate us which, whilst far from a record on a night out, was still an unwelcome stat.

Our evening of work behind us all thoughts turned to Carnival and we spent the next couple of days working out how all the different parties fitted together, securing costumes, getting in some warm-up drinking and touring the panyards where steel bands practice for the main event: Panarama. The final was on Saturday night and we went along to support our favourites, Silver Stars, whose panyard was in our 'hood. This time we could only watch and hope the judges were as discerning as those at the beauty pageant and, as luck would have it, they were and our boys walked away with the title. Carnival was getting better and better.

Next on the agenda was J'Ouvert (pronounced dew vay). Finishing drinking at 3am on a Monday morning is not normally a good idea, but somehow starting at that time really works. In fact it's hard to imagine a better start to the week than getting daubed in paint and mud, drinking heavily and parading through the streets until dawn, all to the accompaniment of, you guessed it, Silver Stars. Maybe Carnival could live up to the hype after all.

J'Ouvert finishes about 8am which gave us just enough time to go home and scrape the worst of the mud from our bodies before going out to play Monday Mas at 11 o'clock. This time the musical accompaniment was of the lorries loaded with speakers variety and the dress code: undress to impress, which a lot of the ladies there certainly achieved. Entering into the spirit of things I was soon topless and covered in gold glitter which seemed to go down well, the only problem being I didn't get a picture in the Hitchin t-shirt first. Schoolboy.


As darkness fell we could feel proud of our efforts for the day, but there was not yet time to rest on our laurels as the main event still remained. The 6am start time was again somewhat ambitious for an all dayer and the dress code... well take a look at the pictures, but bear in mind that to play Mas you have to wear a costume.
Carnival Tuesday truly is the stuff of legends. It's fourteen hours of chip chipping through the streets, wining with the gorgeous ladies, climbing walls and drinking rum, all whilst dressed as a member of the Persian Empire. But that hardly begins to desrcibe the experience. If an alien race were making a documentary on the human race they would send the ET David Attenborough to Carnival to document the behaviour there, it's that bizarre and amazing.

If Glastonbury is to retain its top festival crown it had best be good, the bar is very high this year.

Photos at: http://don-simon.smugmug.com/Travel/720011

Tune of the moment: Faye-Ann Lyons-Alvarez - Heavy T bumper. But you probably had to be there to like it.

Grenada

It takes a few weeks of getting used to, but once you get into it island hopping isn't too bad. Obviously the endless palm-fringed beaches can get a bit wearing, and lugging your stuff from one paradise to the next kind of gets you down a bit, especially if, like me, you've made the rookie error of thinking you needed to bring a jumper with you. Needlessly carrying that around everyday was just starting to get me down when we got to Grenada and even that burden was lifted from my shoulders for a while.

Having spent a day in Carriacou seeing the sight we arrived in Grenada island and made what can only be described as a speculative phonecall to my friend's uncle's wife's sister who proceeded to put us up for a week in her stunning house overlooking a beautiful bay, feed us, show us the island and even organise our social engagements. Hospitality personified, thanks again Kathy.

Also whilst in Grenada we took a tour of an old plantation which, until hurricane Ivan, produced vast quantities of nutmeg, but is now most remarkable for its waterfalls. Zorba was keen to spend some time in the secluded pool of Honeymoon falls, but I persuaded him instead to jump off the highest of the Seven Sisters. I didn't quite nail the landing, but scored plenty of points for artistic merit.

Hard as it was to tear ourselves away from the lap of luxury, we had heard there was some kind of carnival in the offing in Trinidad and thought it would be remiss not to take a look. Our carefully worded ad at the yacht club quickly brought a response and we went to meet our prospective skipper. Captain Tim was somewhat perturbed to discover we had perhaps exaggerated our sailing experience a little; we were perturbed that he was shitfaced and suffering from extreme short-term memory loss and that he was shitfaced and suffering from extreme short-term memory loss. But we all still needed to get to Trinidad so, soon after the conclusion of happy hour, we were on our way.

When next you find yourself in a similar situation I recommend blagging that you know what you're doing and volunteering for one of the night watches. Then, while the others sleep, sit back, put your ipod on and look at the stars. Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence is particularly apt, but almost any tune will be improved by the situation.

Perhaps fortunately given our lack of seamanship the only close encounters we had on the voyage were with a couple of dolphins and a pleasantly incident free twenty hours later we arrived in Trinidad, but that's another story.

Photos at: http://don-simon.smugmug.com/Travel/720011