SATURDAY NIGHT

SATURDAY NIGHT

In the middle of the recap we take a day of to go to the beach and dry out our feet to avoid fungus. It is also an important mental break to keep us motivated. This time we all piled into the truck and went to Toco on the North East tip of the island. We stayed with Auntie Patsy, an older Trinidadian woman who wore relatively see through moo moos and sported a decent beard. She was a strong lady and an entrepreneur, juggling a number a businesses including providing all the sea moss to nestle for a popular drink and running this boarding house/hostel. She cooked all our meals for us with the main (read as only) ingredient being homemade BBQ sauce and would read us random disjointed snippets from the morning paper as we ate.

The beach was beautiful! Whats new… white sand beaches, coral reefs, coconut trees you know the drill by now. But we did meet some locals on the beach who were celebrating a graduation from the masters program at UWI (University of the West Indies). They were mostly biologists too and it was interesting to hear more about the research they were doing on the island. They invited us over for a poolside BBQ. We were excited to get to lime with some locals and soon found out it was even more than we had hoped for. They were staying at an estate owned by the biggest Soca star of Trinidad.

We arrived to find a huge house with a deck equipped with many loud speakers blastin music and an infinity pool over looking the valley. There was a large grill filled with chicken and ribs being cooked by the house chef who danced along to the tunes as he re-applied BBQ sauce. There was another building with a pool table on the bottom story and an open porch on top with a kitchen, hammocks and a bar. There was yet another building with another deck with a hot tub. It was the spot! You can try and imagine the 8 of us rolling into this place a little worst for wear from the recap and the beach and thinking we had fallen into a music video. But without all the nasty stuff that comes along with the nice house. Everyone was really well educated and interested in what we were doing there and our future plans as biologists. It was a very different crowd from the regulars in Arima and a refreshing look at a different side of Trinidad.

Even more exciting, one of the guys there lived in Brasil for 4 years so I got to practice my blossoming Portuguese with him! He had even been to my town, Mossoro, and gave me a few local words from that area. It was very exciting.

And don’t worry, we made it home before Auntie Pasty got too worried.