You Only Live Twice

View of Fleming's house on Goat Island

We were on our way out to sea just off the coast of Speyside, Tobago, buffeted by the wind, our boat rocking in unsteady seas.  Our guide, Tanja, was a Swiss master diver with a penchant for adventure; she had lived in Egypt the past four and a half years and was there during the revolution last spring.  She had only been doing her job, and now she was pointing out to us a private house on the island directly across from the hotel room where we spent the past two nights.  There was a legend that came with the large white mansion on Goat Island with its private access to some of the best coral in the world.  Supposedly, it had once been owned by none other than Ian Fleming, the famous British former intelligence agent who went on to write about, you know, that other famous British secret agent.  We would do our first training dive in the same waters Fleming used to snorkel for his daily exercise.

Ecstatic fails to describe our excitement on learning this tidbit.  Could our introduction to scuba diving take place in a more perfect location?  The house dominates the seascape off Speyside.  We had wondered if it had a story as we drove up in the dead of night a couple days before.  And even now, with the roof caving in and the dock falling to ruin, there was an allure to the place, as if there were secrets there lurking beneath the crumbled facade.

Author looking out toward Goat Island from Speyside Inn hotel room

Reality never measures up to the heights of fantasy.  It turns out (according to this website) there is no actual evidence Fleming ever owned Goat Island, but that the idea is more a local legend.  Fleming's more famous estate, Goldeneye, is located in Jamaica.  However, for as little as $3 million, you could own some of the legend that is Bond in Tobago.  The  house is apparently for sale (or at least was in 2006 according to this website).  Personally, I think I'll go with the local legend on this one.  The house looks straight out of a James Bond thriller.  I can picture Scaramanga running through the trees with his golden pistol or Honey Rider emerging from the surf in that famous bikini.  The underwater scuba fight from Thunderball could have taken place in the water just off the shore.

So if anybody asks; yeah, we went diving at Ian Fleming's house.  But don't tell anybody; that's top secret.  And I'll have that vodka martini shaken, not stirred.

The Spice Isle

Andy enjoys his private beachfront.

Grenada is known as the spice island, with many nutmeg and cinnamon plantations covering the hills.  Though after getting walloped by Hurricane Ivan much of the land has been switched to heartier cocoa plants, you simply can't beat the name "the Spice Isle."    We absolutely loved it there.  Andy has already covered our hiking adventure, and I've detailed our brush with running celebrity there, but there was much more to our trip.  Mainly, day after day of nearly empty beaches with soft sand, clear waters, and great snorkeling.  Some of our more memorable moments of the trip:

-  Andy saw an octopus while he was snorkeling, and learned that accidentally kicking a sea urchin really, really hurts.  The last spine finally came out of his foot 2 weeks later.

-  Conch is yummy to eat.  We had conch roti at a great little restaurant right on the harbor.  Yum.

-  Give up any hope of road signs (or at least, accurate road signs) while you're on this island.  We got lost for about an hour on our way home from St. George (usually 15 minutes to our hotel).   Two days later and after consulting several maps, we still have no idea exactly where we were during that hour.

 In fact, every moment that included views like this was memorable.  Can't wait to go back!

Heroes in their own town

Watching Olympics coverage from the vantage of another country is quite interesting.  We are spoiled here in Trinidad being so close to the US that we get many US channels and programs, including NBC.  Imagine our surprise when we sat down to watch the (tape-delayed) opening ceremony on NBC up popped a message, the gist of which was, "Flow cable usually can get away with providing you this pirated NBC feed, but the Olympics are so important that NBC has blocked us for the next 2 weeks and... sorry."  Thankfully, we did find a local Trini station that was carrying the Games, but that coverage came with issues of its own.  Most of the time, we believe they were giving us the BBC coverage, which had great commentating and covered a lot of events that NBC never bothers with.  However, they also only ran the coverage live - so anyone who actually works during the day was mainly out of luck.  And there were no recaps or repeated coverage of big events, so rather than, you know, maybe attracting viewers by showing a major marquee swim event, we had endless runs of track cycling, fencing trials, and other... less-than-scintillating events.  However, the coverage really became absurd when we moved into the second week of the Games and Track and Field was on.   The Trinis are nuts about sprinting, mainly because it's the only thing they've ever medaled in and is the only aspect of Track and Field that gets any prestige here.  If you think the US is bad in that regard, I invite you to come here.  So, whenever a big sprint event (100-400 only, and no hurdles) came up, the Trini broadcasters would take over the British feed and start commentating.  Not only was the commentary distracting and ill-informed, but heaven help us if any events happened to fall after the sprint event.  They apparently didn't have the tech ability to return the feed to the British, so they'd have to try and comment on events like the 1500, which was way out of their league. 

Anyway....  Imagine our delight when Trinidad came up big and won gold - in the javelin.  They had NO IDEA what was going on.  They were delighted to have won, but the headline in the major newspaper the next day announcing that Trinidad "had the best spear thrower in the world!" highlights how little anyone here knew about the event.  And they kept spelling it "javlin".   Anyway, this poor kid, Keshorn Walcott, is now a national hero, was given a road, lighthouse, mansion in downtown Port-of-Spain, a couple of million dollars etc....  They hoopla was insane.  To top it all off, the government declared on a Sunday evening to give us all the following day off, to celebrate his victory in an event 99.9% of Trinis had never heard of.   One of our friends noted that as Americans, we should conversely take another 40-odd days off to celebrate all of our gold medals.  It was just madness.

400m Gold medalist Kirani James

The scene was repeated in neighboring Grenada, where Kirani James upstaged the Trinis by winning a gold medal in the 400.  This also gave Grenada the best medal-to-population stat of the Games, with one gold medal for a country of 100,000 people.  Not too shabby.  We were highly amused when we arrived in Grenada a few weeks ago and were met with a huge sign at the airport announcing "Welcome to Kirani Country!'  and then when heading into town we were enjoying the views along the new Kirani James Highway.   To top it off, during a lazy Sunday in the capital city of St. George we ran into the great man himself having a photo op.  That, I have to admit, was pretty cool. 

I just hope that in 2 years, when the Winter Olympics in Sochi come up, that they'll even be shown here.  Do you think winter games get any viewership in a Caribbean country?  Jamaican bobsled team, anybody?

Chaguaramus

Chaguaramus (shah-ger-AH-muss) is a national park located quite close to Trinidad's capital of Port of Spain, and an easy 20 minute drive from our place.  That's good, because for all of the positives of this island, there is very little good space for outdoor recreation.  Roads, even the best roads, are really only wide enough for 1.5 cars, and don't even get me started on the lack of sidewalks.  So it's great to escape to Chaguaramus for some running, swimming, or hiking.  In fact, it was one of the very first places we were taken to when we arrived.  We've been doing a fair bit of running there - a favorite 10 mile mountain run in particular - and also probably about 5 trips already to Macqueripe Beach for snorkeling, but very little hiking.

Views of Venezuela out over Macqueripe.

The cathedral

We did get out for a small hike a few weeks ago, when in desperation after a day of just teeming rain, we took our car and a friend across a flooded road in the park and did a hike down what was that day a stream bed.  We did get some great views of Venezuela when the sun came out however, and swam in our hiking clothes at the end of the hike, which is always fun.  But for 3 months now we've been planning to do the poetically-named Bamboo Cathedral trail.  It's a favorite of both locals and the embassy community, and we were both pretty happy to finally get to it today, even though it was raining, again, of course.    The actual bamboo cathedral part was quite picturesque, and the rest of the "hike" (up a paved road) was pleasant if tame.  We got to the top of the trail to an old rusty US Army satellite dish, and couldn't believe we were at the end already.  We wandered around forlornly a bit, realized that we were in pretty good shape, and headed back down to go swimming.  Hopefully we'll get up to some adventures there yet.

I keep expecting a velociraptor to charge out of this foliage.  That would be an adventure.

World travelin'

When we went to Grenada last weekend, besides having a great time, I also managed to actually fulfill one of my New Year's resolutions - to visit 4 new countries this year.    Australia, Thailand, Trinidad, Grenada = success!   And we still have 4 months to go in the year.  I'm already plotting to possibly hit Barbados, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique by the end of the year, so stay tuned!  Of course, my other resolution was to write at least 3 blogs a month....  I better get writing.

Slog up Mt. Qua Qua

On the way up.  Mt. Qua Qua is just out of view.

Living in the Caribbean has been an adjustment for us.  I hate to admit it.  Feel a little guilty, even, because it often feels like we are actually on vacation.  But it’s true.  Beaches a short drive away; scrumptious seafood bursting with spice; warm temperatures every day.  Ever since we moved to Trinidad, I have yet to wear a pair of long pants unless a formal event dictates I do so.  Even in the evenings shorts are more comfortable.  Our winter coats and wool sweaters gather dust in the closet.  With life being so easy, you would think we have everything, yet we have done very little hiking since our arrival.  And we live to hike.  When we were in Mongolia, a stunning vista was a mere hillside scurry away.

Grande Anse Beach, one of many stunning beaches in Grenada

That brings us to Mt. Qua Qua, one of four “high peaks” in Grenada, three of which are named.  We visited Grenada over the long Labor Day weekend.  The beaches there were some of the most beautiful I have seen anywhere, but we felt the need to get away from the sand, at least for one morning.  So, on our first morning in Grenada, we took an early breakfast, loaded the rental jeep, a little beat up Mazda, and set off for Grand Etang National Park.  We had a paragraph in a guidebook and some unlabeled roads on a map for a guide.  Unfortunately, our guidebook failed us.  One of the signs we needed was in the wrong place.

We drove around a bit, but did manage to find the visitor’s center where a helpful guide pointed us in the direction of the trailhead.  You can’t miss it.  A few moments later he shouted at us from his position sitting on the porch of the center.  We needed to walk further.  In our exuberance to hit the trail, we had turned in to examine a small clearing in the woods.  The trail was further down the road.

The trail was well-marked, at least the beginning

The trail was deceptive, and not just where it began, which was actually well-labeled with a signpost.  It appeared well-groomed at the entrance, but we had walked only a short distance before running into our first and major obstacle on the hike.  Mud. Thick, gloppy, cement-like mud that encased your shoes and coated the lower legs of your pants.  The hike quickly turned into a slog.

By the end, our shoes and pants were encased in mud

There were fun happenings on the trail, as well.  We saw numerous geckos, the trail was framed  by large palm fronds, and there was the shocking sighting of two large, stray dogs that appeared around a corner on the way down inches from my face.  When we did finally haul ourselves to the top, a task that took just over an hour, we could see views of the ocean on both sides, as well as a lake formed by a volcanic crater.

There were some great views along the way and thick foliage.

Taking in the views at the top

There is always time to stop and smell the flowers

But we were tired, and when we slogged our way back through the mud slop and to our car, we happily drove to the beach.  It was something, though.  Mt. Qua Qua.

Trinidad by Google Queries

We've now been living in Trinidad for just over two months, and are settling in.  We're having a good time so far, particularly with the beaches and the local cuisine. Some things have been easier than expected, some harder, but it has all been different.  Neither of us has ever lived in a climate like this, and so we've been learning a lot.  I had a laugh reviewing the Google searches we've done since we moved here, and thought I'd share some.

 1.  How do you open a coconut?
I've gotten pretty good de-husking the ones that fall from our tree out back.

2.  What is the best way to cut up a pineapple?
I hate pineapple, but it's so good here I'm coming around to them.  Yum.

3.  What is the best way to cut a mango?
 Mango tree out back!

4.  (Shortly following question #3)  Mango allergy?
Turns out, mango sap is closely related to poison ivy.  Not fun.  :(

5.  How to make a pina colada?

6.  Giant African Snail???
Apparently, we have an infestation of them in our neighborhood.

7.  dark fish with bright blue spots?
We've been having lots of fun snorkeling at a local beach.  Turns out, the fish I saw was a Yellowtail Damselfish.

Looking forward to many more discoveries over the next 2 years!