An Adventure

Today was my 18th Birthday so as a birthday present Simon offered to be my tour guide for the afternoon. We had a great time.

We took one of the local forms of taxis into Port of Spain with another current resident cruiser from Chaguaramas. I have never been so scared in a vehicle in my life! Barreling down small, windy, wet road. Zipping in an out of oncoming traffic with no functioning seat belts in the back, all at 100 km. I was glad to just make it to Port of Spain alive!

As this is my first time in a country outside of North America Simon took we through one of the local market places. It was amazing. At least for me anyway. Streets packed with people with cars trying to maneuver in between them. Kids no more than 14 or 15 hocking a myriad of goods. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

After that we went for a walk through the botanical gardens, which was also quite amazing. The range of the different types of foliage was quite astounding. One minute you are surrounded by what looks like giant ferns, and the next your by the tree that for the life of me looks like a giant arbutis with stripes of aqua green and orange spiraling around it.

Once we've had our fill of the gardens we went on over to the zoo. This was a real treat as I've never been to a zoo before. There were all sorts of animals but what was most interesting was that some of the wildest and bizarrest were native to only South America and Trinidad. Which means these animals could potentiality be found rate around where I'm sitting. Amazing.

We didn't get any work on the boat today other than for the fact that we re-launched her today after being on the hard for our allotted time of 24hrs. All went uneventfully well and we were back on our hook by 1030.

Tomorrow we are planning to finish up the last of the minor odd jobs that remain to be done. Then on Monday the plan is to re-provision, and then on Tuesday (weather permitting) be on our way to Monserat.

Up up and away as they,
John