& Tobago -- "The Junior Partner"

My most relaxing phase of this incredible journey.  Whereas Trinidad and its capital Port of Spain are larger and industrialized to a certain extent, Tobago as the junior partner is laid back, pastoral, has good quality but impossible roads that never meet at right angles, and beautiful beaches.  The island is about 50 miles from Trinidad.  It is green and lush and just what you would imagine for a colonial British outpost.  Population of the island is about 54,000 spread over approximately 320 square kilometers.

I think today is Sunday.  Swear that I can’t say for certain.  This has hurt me in getting airline tickets (not all carriers fly to all their destinations every day).  Took the three-hour fast ferry (catamaran) over from Trinidad on Friday.  It only cost $10 US.  Spent the time at first just walking, getting acclimated to the island around Pigeon Point and scouting for good seafood.  I have once again poached off Steve’s previous booking of a two-bed hotel room and split the cost with him.  This quiet but naturally friendly Brit has made for an excellent travel companion. My first extended travel partnership/connection since Jon & Charlotte way back in Buenos Aires. Have eaten most meals with him, and for the last two days gone scuba diving together – the primary reason for being on Tobago.

The waters here are legendary for their clarity.  At least during sunny weather.  Visibility of 150 feet underwater is not uncommon.  But it has rained here for the most part these last three days, so our diving arena has been a bit murky.  This has been fine.  Our divemaster, Richie, has entertained us with his easy Caribbean manner and quick humor.  Also his generosity.  Most dives end with a rum and coke session on the beach afterward.  Our first dive yesterday, was primarily a check-plunge to make sure Steve and I were competent as scuba divers. We averaged about 80 feet in depth, and stayed down approximately 50 minutes. We had intended a second dive, but Richie needed to fix his compressor (fills the scuba tanks with clean air), so we made up for  it up today with a three-tank day.  Started with a wreck descent.  Due to the overcast we did not get the sunlit shafts of light which penetrate the hold of the sunken vessel and often make it a visual cornucopia.  Nevertheless, there were still those frozen moments, when we saw fish swim the line between shadow from the recesses of the ship’s hold, and sunbeams coming in from holes cut in the sides of the craft.  During these brief interludes, you get both silhouette, and stunning living color from the various fish drifting and then darting through the hull.  The fish are of all sizes.  Large gray groupers.  Tuna size silver school fish.  Small, colorful striped darters.  Tiny minnow sized electric blue fish, which are clearly just waiting to be swept up by larger prey.  And even smaller krill sized fish, which were so numerous they clouded the water.  Each group stays together by some impossible to fathom navigation mystery, so that if one turns, they all turn – on a dime and without a single collision.  It is like watching a flock of wrens as they darken the sky, and change direction en masse simultaneously.  Only this takes place underwater, with each group occupying a different level based on size and how they vector themselves. The situation can be compared to a Metro underground station junction, where subways from every direction cross at a junction, people depart, redeploy, and take off again in a different set of cars.  The colors mix in a fantastic kaleidoscope as they pass each other, and the dim sunlight plays off their scales.  Only wish my video camera worked underwater so I could capture this magic.

Our second dive was a deep drift dive.  Forget being intentional.  You go straight to the bottom, and then with the flow.  Literally.  If one tries to fight the current, you merely exhaust yourself, and burn up your oxygen unnecessarily.  When things are right – which means you are at neutral buoyancy, neither ascending nor descending but suspended like a hot air balloon which has found its airborne equilibrium – the sensation of being pulled along silently is utterly tranquil.  You are weightless, motionless, hardly breathing, there is no sound, and you are just a part of the surroundings.  The visual element then takes on added sensitivity.  This is the same sensation felt by a blind man, whose hearing is elevated due to his lack of sight.  Our third dive was a drift dive also, but at shallower depth, due to the previous dives we’d done already and the need to keep from getting too much nitrogen embedded in our blood.  During both dives, we saw 7-foot nurse sharks, a lemon shark, several sea turtles, sting rays (skates), too many huge lobster to count, mustard yellow tube coral, coral formations shaped and colored like strawberries the size of basketballs, pitch black palm coral waving in the current like flexible giant flyswatters, and of course fish of every stripe and color.  The reef itself was colorful but muted by much silt.  Especially prominent were elongated “pipe fish” with oversized eyes facing in different directions.  My favorite viewing was a flexible and almost jelly-like living coral, with long wavy tendrils, shaped like a huge latticed butterfly.  It is snow white and ankle thick at its base where it anchors itself to the reef.  From there it branches out in ever more delicate veins, until at its tips it is nearly deep gentian purple and as thin as angel hair pasta.  Absolutely mesmerizing.  Could not help but stroke these beauties as I drifted by, to ascertain their liveliness and confirm they were not put together by some Hollywood Special Effects department.

Otherwise Tobago is comprised of warm, generous, engaging and humorous people.  Very laid back people.  People who keep their little island clean and tidy and take pride in their largely English Colonial style habitations.  People whose English is better than ours except for the inescapable “Mon” thrown onto the beginning and end of each sentence.  People who don’t worry an awful lot about time, or being on time.  People who readily make deals and want you to stay.   People who may be wearing Rastafarian hair, Caribbean casual dress (basically just pants), look like they have a dirt patch to make a living on, and then turn around and drive their BMW away from you after picking up their take-out chicken.  Odd contrasts like that abound here.  One sign we were quite amused by on a mini-market door: “No barebacking allowed.”  This has a whole different (sexual) context in the US.  In Tobago, it simply means “no shoes, no shirt, no service.”

And now I have come to another fork in the road.  Am running out of both time and money on my way to Colombia to finish up the journey.  Had intended to visit “The Three Dwarfs” (French Guiana, not really a country unto itself, but a department of France, plus Suriname and then Guyana) all along to complete the 13 political divisions embedded in South America.  Had no idea it would be so difficult or expensive to get into or out of these three when doing my prior planning for the trip.  May not be able to make it.  Have to get to Colombia, and going to The Three Dwarfs just takes me further away and then left with even more expense yet to return.  So, it appears I’ll be doing the following in order to get west, where the family of my brother’s wife awaits me: fly from Tobago to Grenada, Grenada to Curacao, and then Curacao to Barranquilla in Colombia.  I could go through Venezuela again, at great expense and with no advantage, and thrashed this option in about three nanoseconds.  This is one of the necessities of freestylin’ – adapting.  All the grand design and master plan intention in the world, doesn’t work when you find places like Cayenne where “you can’t get there from here” or the entire western side of Guyana is cut off by wetlands or Suriname demands a visa which is too expensive for intending to spend only 24 to 48 hours there at most.  So, despite being an accomplishment junkie and a list completer, I am sadly going to have to leave that little list finalization incomplete.  Reality has caught up with me.  I will just have to learn to enjoy Grenada and Curacao in the coming days.  The adjustment is good for me.  To be flexible and let go of an old plan despite the attraction of being able to “check off the whole continent” is a good thing.   In the final analysis there are no major attractions in the Three Dwarfs and no strategic reason for needing to be there.  Been told this a number of times from home via e-mail, and now it is settling in to roost.  I have listened.

Next: Grenada