Carnival!!

Carnival is a fantastic time to be in Trinidad. Everyone, locals and tourists alike, are awash in excitement and anticipation for the next event of a busy and colorful season. Once arriving at our anchorage, we sampled Carnival at the Kid's Carnival parade on Saturday, and spent time in Port of Spain shopping, eating doubles and roti, and exploring a city on the verge of its biggest day of the year.



Soca, or soul calypso, provides the soundtrack of the Carnival season, and blares from the flatbed of 18-wheeled trucks loaded with speakers so powerful you feel the soundwaves reverberate through your chest. The songs are frenetic, addicting like good pop music always is, and very uniquely Trinidadian.

Before we head into Carnival proper on Tuesday, we'll have already explored much of the island, from urban Port of Spain to the switchbacks of the mountains and down to the coastline. At the Asa Wright bird sanctuary we familiarized ourselves with the crested oropendola, green and red-legged honey creepers, and white-necked Jacobin hummingbirds, and sampled bake and shark sandwiches at the popular Maracas Bay beach. This afternoon we'll charge through the mangrove swamp to watch the magnificent scarlet ibis, which once provided much of the color in Carnival costumes, roost for the night after feeding all day in neighboring Venezuela.

All are well aboard and look forward to Carnival and our longest passage of the trip yet, bound for the Greater Antilles.

JP