Kaylie's First Guest Post!

In our three years together, David and I have travelled a good bit: We’ve taken trips to Phoenix, Chicago, Park City, the Bahamas, Mexico, and I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.  We’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to travel so much, and I’m so excited to add a few more countries to the list of places we’ve been together.  I plan to share my experiences of our time in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as my month-long trip to Guyana.  I hope that my blog posts will provide a distinctive but similarly entertaining perspective from David's.

Trinidad & Tobago

Disclaimer: We took pictures on David’s camera and forgot to transfer them to my computer before parting, so I don’t have pictures yet to go along with this post, I will make sure to post lots of pictures from both trips when I get back in January.

For those of you who don’t know, Trinidad & Tobago is one country with two islands—Trinidad is the more industrial island, and is the Caribbean hub for business.  Tobago, on the other hand, is for tourists and is the island on which we spent most of our time. 

David and I met up at the airport in Trinidad and proceeded to take a quick 20-minute flight to Tobago.  They run these flights many times per day, as a lot of people commute between Islands for work.  We stayed at a place called the “Hummingbird Tobago Hotel,” which was more of a hostel than a hotel, but had an air conditioning unit and hot water, so it was all we really needed.  It was also a 15-minute walk from the Buccoo Bay (a main tourist area), so it was really nice being so close to everything. 

Unlike most other trips we’ve taken, we had absolutely nothing planned ahead of time beyond flights and hotel accommodations for our vacation in Trinidad & Tobago.  We spent most of our first day walking around town and along the beach.  In the beginning, we were in the super touristy area, and we really couldn’t walk more than 20 feet without someone stopping us to ask if we wanted to go snorkeling or on rum punch tour on a glass bottom boat.  But once we got far enough away, we were able to take are shoes off and just walk along beautiful beach without any disturbances.

On day two went to check out Fort King George in Scarborough.  The fort was on the very top of a huge hill that overlooked the entire island—the views were absolutely breathtaking.  This area also included an old penitentiary, hospital, and graveyard.  Most of the buildings date back to the British occupation in the 1800s.  Pretty cool. 

Our third day was by far my favorite.  We decided to rent a car and drive around the island (the island is small enough that we were easily able to drive around the perimeter in a half-day.)  The people in Tobago drive on the left side of the road and the driver’s seat is on the right side of the car—this took a bit of getting used to, bit it was kind of fun.  We only had a couple of instances where I had to nicely (but quickly) remind David which lane in which he should be driving in order to avoid oncoming traffic.  Driving around the island was great—most of the trip we had the jungle directly to our left and the ocean directly to our right, so either way we looked, it was absolutely stunning. 

We didn’t stop too many times, but our main destination was the Argyle waterfall.   The area is not set up very well for tourists, and all visitors are required to have a guide to take them up so they don’t get lost.  Brian, our tour guide, took us on a hike that was awesome, but was much more intense than either of us had expected.  It was definitely not tourist-friendly; as we were using our hands to rock climb up the side of the waterfall a good bit of the time.  It is activities like this that make me grateful that I have the opportunity to travel while I’m still young enough to boulder up the side of a mountain.  After the waterfalls, we stopped by “Sunday School” which is basically a street fair with tents of people selling Caribbean BBQ, lots of music, and dancing.

All in all, our alternative Thanksgiving/Birthday/Hanukkah vacation was a great introduction to the Caribbean.  Now I’m hungry for more time there—fortunately, just two short weeks later, I’m on my way to Guyana (well, I will be after my 10 hour layover at JFK) J

I look forward to updating you all on our coming adventures in Guyana over the next month!