I'm really here walking 100% on faith from one email saying I could crew! Yikes. The boat is not here yet, it is making the crossing. I'm a little anxious but have gotten a bunch of emails from OceansWatch, org. and I have a meeting tomorrow with someone local!
Trinidad and it's sister island, Tobago are 21 miles apart and only 7 miles from the Venezuelan coast! Trinidad's size is 1,800 sq. miles with a population of 1.2 million. The largest population group is Indian, followed closely by African. Note: between 1845 and 1917, 144,000 indentured labourers were imported from India.
Columbus is to blame for the discovery of Trinidad in 1498 naming it after the Trinity. I feel like I've been on the Christopher Columbus Tour starting at Granada, Spain where in the Alhambra Palace, he pleaded with Fernidad and Isabella to finance his hair-brained idea of India being closer if you sailed West. Then we went on to the Cape Verde Islands where he stopped to re-supply, just like we did. And now, here I am in Trinidad where he thought it was India...therefore, this region is called the West Indies.
The money here is called "TT's" (for Trinidad and Tabago) and the exchange is $1 US to $6.3 TT's. So a cappucinno costs about $18. Driving is on the left, as it was in Barbados, Bequia and St. Vincent (see my post on 10/7/10: Confession of a Left side driver). Tax is 15% on goods and services! ...almost as bad as Barbados at 18.5%. On top of that there is a hotel tax of 10% more...hello Daytona Beach, you'll get there soon enough!
ELECTRICITY IS 115w! with the American plug. Yipee. And boy, my hotel room had every plug occupied with something charging: Video camera, camera battery, computer, I-pod, Swimp3, Ogg...
The marina here is decent, but they think it's awesome and are pretty snobby about it but they obviously have not seen Lanzorate's Marina Rubican in the Canary Islands or Zea Marina near Athens! But I won't tell them, I just chuckle at it all.
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