Chaguaramas, Trinidad - Birds, Turtles and Monkeys

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July, 2008

On June 30th, the day before hurricane season started, we left early in the evening from Grenada with four other boats to sail to Trinidad. The overnight crossing put us in Chaguaramas bay early the next morning, but because it was almost a new moon, it ended up being a comfortable but very dark trip. Initially, we had good wind from the east and we sped along close to 8 knots. We here concerned that our speed would put us in Trinidad too early, but after midnight, the wind became light and variable while we picked up a fluky current that pushed us one way and then the other. Our speed now slowed down to less than four knots - timing problem solved.

About 8:30 in the morning, we arrived just outside of the marina of Crews Inn, our home for the summer. But instead of docking the boat, we had to wait for our turn on the small customs dock to check-in with immigration and customs. Most other islands we visited allowed us to dock or anchor before check-in with the authorities, but Trinidad requires you to tie on to their official dock before docking or anchoring first. When we arrived, the customs dock was already full and there were two other boats already waiting. Several other boats got in line behind us and now we had to tread water in line while the slow process of immigration and customs went forward. This was especially disconcerting since our slip was about 100 feet away and the immigration and custom offices were part of the Crews Inn marina. After about 45 minutes, the Crews Inn dock hand took pity on us and shouted for us to pull into our slip. A little less than an hour, we were officially in Trinidad.

Chaguaramas is an incredible boating area. From Kiva, we could see several hundred masts of boats that are "on-the-hard", that is, boats that have been pulled out of the water and are sitting on jack-stands for the summer (or even longer). The major boat yards provide marine services from cleaning your hull to building boats from scratch. Old-timers (i.e. cruisers who have been coming here for the last five years or more) complain that Trinidad is expensive at current prices and Chaguaramas is no longer a good deal. Obviously they have not had boat work done in the States recently. As we started to get bids for our rather long list of projects, we were happily surprised that most things are cheaper while the quality of the workers seemed to be excellent.

After two weeks of running around to get bids, we got a break when Terri's mother, Joanie, arrived from Houston to spend nine days with us. Unlike her last trip on the boat in the Bahamas, beaches, swimming and snorkeling are not part of the scene in Trinidad, but the country does offer exceptional varieties of birds and animals along with spectacular scenery. Along with Jesse James, Tour Guide and Maxi Taxi extrodenaire, we visited a number of areas around the island during the week she stayed with us.

Asa Wright Nature Center

At 5:30am on July 14, we boarded Jesse's minibus to visit Asa Wright, with its birds and rainforest, and the Caroni Swamp, home of the scarlet ibis, Trinidad's national bird. Traffic through Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital and main city, is normally very slow, but today was even worse with the rain. Finally, the traffic improved once we got through downtown as we sped to our first destination - a wonderful, delicious breakfast sandwich known as doubles. Jesse jumped out of the van into the pouring rain, returning a few minutes later with doubles for everyone. Although we had asked for spicy hot with our doubles, Jesse was smart enough to actually ask for medium-hot. The doubles were fantastic, and we were happy we didn't actually get full-hot - a Trinis idea of spicy can even make a good Texan sweat.

After a few miles, we started to climb into the rainforest and arrived at the Asa Wright Nature Center late in the morning. The 200 acre center is part of a former cocoa, coffee and citrus plantation and we were dropped off at the 100 year-old estate house to wait for our guide. It was still raining hard, so our guide through the forest was somewhat curtailed, but there was a fantastic, huge covered verandah that allowed us to view dozens of birds feeding in the garden below. After we had lunch at the center's dining room, we were able to spend an hour watching the beautiful birds feed below us while the hummingbirds flittered around our heads.

Caroni Swamp

The next stop was to drop back down to sea level for a boat ride through the Caroni Swamp. The 20 square mile swamp is on the west side of the island just south of Port of Spain. According to Jessie, the west coast of Trinidad used to be almost covered with mangrove swamps but most are gone, drained over the years for sugar cane, housing and industry. The swamp is a maze of mangrove channels filled with herons, mangrove crabs and caymans (related to the alligators and crocodiles) but our destination was to view Trinidad's national bird, the Scarlet Ibis. When the birds are not nesting, the trees along the lake are covered with Ibis. However, at this time of the year you can only see these beautiful, startling red birds late in the day as they fly towards their nesting sites deep in the swamp. As the birds flew above the water and entered the dense canopy of trees, their red color almost exploded against the green trees. We floated quietly on the water enjoying the spectacle until the sun started to set and the driver cranked up the outboard to get us back to the dock before dark.

Leatherback Turtles, Matura Beach

From March to August, huge leatherback turtles emerge from the sea every night to lay their eggs in the sand on the beach. The turtles are huge, almost six to seven feet long and weigh almost a ton. It takes them several hours to drag themselves up the beach, dig a deep hole to drop their eggs in and then carefully cover the hole with sand, removing their tracks to hide the nest.

Since most of the turtles lay their eggs at night, our trip started late in the afternoon. We drove through Port of Spain and stopped for dinner before we arrived at Matura Beach to be introduced to our tour guide. The guides are all volunteers of the Nature Seekers, a non-profit group that has been researching the turtles and also patrol the beach at night to discourage poachers or mischief makers. We set off on the beach and after about 20 minutes, we saw a huge turtle about 50 feet from the water. The turtle had already started to dig her nest as we approached her. While she was digging, we were not allowed to use flashlights, but we could stay quiet close behind her. Luckily, it was almost a full moon and we were able to see quite well as she used her back flipper to dig down into the soft sand. Finally, when she was satisfied with her nest, she slowly started to drop her eggs. Once a turtle starts laying eggs, she goes into a type of trace, that's the only time we are allowed to touch her or take flash pictures.

While we were waiting for "our" turtle to get ready to drop her eggs, I noticed another turtle was coming out of the water about 75 feet up the beach, working slowly up the sand. A little further down the beach we found another surprise. About a half dozen hatchlings started to emerge from the sand and head towards the sea, these were turtles born of mothers who had laid their eggs in April. In the middle of the season, almost 30 to 60 turtles per night land on the beach. The guide was expecting between 10 to 20 adult turtles that night while more and more hatchlings where starting to emerge.

Finally after several hours, our tired turtle was finished making her nest and she slowly slid down the beach. Her nest was well protected, she had covered it so that it was almost invisible. Now that her job was done, the eggs where now one their own.

The Saturday meat and vegetable market in downtown Port of Spain.

Large flower at Asa Wright.

Asa Wright Birds
Despite the rain, there were dozens of different types of birds perching in the trees near the verandah.

The hummingbirds were beautiful to look at they hovered near their watering stations, but they were very territorial and tried to chase any other humming birds from their post.