Wednesday, January 31, 2018- Trinidad

Wednesday, January 31, 2018- Trinidad

The ship was creeping past channel markers when our alarm clock woke us up at 6:45AM.  Yes, we set an alarm because our ship excursion leaves at 8:00AM, so we needed to make sure we got breakfast in time.  We could see land far off in the distance to the west- probably the coast of Venezuela.  The weather wasn’t looking better this morning with threatening clouds, and a temperature of 82 degrees. 

We took a bus tour of Port of Spain with Cultural Show as our ship’s excursion, along with probably 200 other people.  We paraded around town in stretched minibuses that held 25 passengers.  We had 17 in our bus, which was the last bus.  We imagine they packed 25 in each of the earlier buses.  Ben hopped into the shotgun seat next to the driver, which requires climbing up and over the motor hump.  They drive on the left side of the road in Trinidad.  It didn’t take long for the rain to start pouring down on us hard.  Ben was able to get some pictures because he had a window that could slide open in the front.  The windows were otherwise covered with rain. Fortunately, they weren’t fogged up like they were in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Traffic in Trinidad was terrible, made worse by the torrential rain.  We drove by several landmark buildings, but it seemed like most of them were enshrouded with scaffolding or covered by steel frames and exterior roofing to protect them while in the process of remodeling.  Things looked a but run down.  There is a huge open park called the Savanah in Trinidad.  There are sports venues and there were hundreds of colorful vendor booths lining the periphery.  These were being set up for the upcoming Carnival, which Trinidad claims to have set the tradition for throughout the Caribbean and South America.  They celebrate Calypso dancing and steel drum music.  The locals say the steel drum is the only acoustic instrument invented in the 21st century, emerging toward the end of WWII.

We ended up at the Trinidad and Tobago botanical gardens.  The rain let up just long enough for us to walk through quickly to see some unusual plants.  One interesting thing is the “grass” throughout the park has lots of tiny “sensitive plants” whose leaves fold up when you touch them.  

Our final stop was to a theatre at City Hall, where they had rum and fruit punch in plastic cups, and a show put on by a local dance and music company with 3 female dancers, one male dancer, two old vocalists and a 4 piece marimba band.  They did several numbers to highlight the multicultural roots of modern day Caribbean life.  Their steel drum player was quite talented, and played music from classical to Frank Sinatra to contemporary caribbean dance music.  The highlight of the dancing was a demonstration of limbo.  The male dancer was able to wriggle under a 12” flaming bar.  I bet his shorts were made of Nomex fireproof material.  

After returning to the cruise terminal, we walked around the vendor booths, but were hungry and afraid the rains would open up again, so we returned to the ship a little after 1:30PM.  We had lunch and a short nap before doing afternoon trivia with Bob from New Jersey, Alan from BC, and Gary and Angela from Arizona.  We scored 13/20 while 3 teams tied for first with 15 points.  The tie breaker question was how long did the Apollo 11 mission last.  The answer was 8 days, 3hrs, 18min and 35sec. The prizes were Princess Notepads with light blue vinyl covers.  We are a bit surprised at the variety of items this ship has available for prizes- although we have yet to win one yet.  

They are showing Papillon in the Princess Theatre after the comedian’s shows tonight.  This was filmed on Devil’s Island, where we will arrive for a scenic cruise viewing in 2 days.  

We had dinner early, and then attended the early show of comedian Noodles Levenstein, who did an old school stand-up comedy routine with bits centered around cruise ship life and other bits around jewish humor.  Overall, it was an entertaining and quality show again.  

Next we wandered down to the Explorer’s Lounge for a Musical Trivia game, which turned out to be on Broadway Musicals.  We ended up sitting with Roger (Santa Clause) from Phoenix, Ed and Fran from Pennsylvania and a single gal from Fort Lauderdale.  They gave each team a pad of papers onto which you had to write the name of the musical and title of the song for each clip they played.  Teams then turned in answers for scoring while the clips played.  It turns out Roger is a Broadway Musical savant, knowing just about every musical and song, although we came up with 2 or 3 out of the 11 that he didn’t know before we got it down.  While he was brilliant, he was also a bit obnoxious, insisting on singing out of sync and very loudly on nearly every song.  This was our breakthrough night, as we were clear winners with 22/22, and got to split a bottle of champagne.  The wife of the couple from Pennsylvania was celebrating her birthday, so it was nice to do a toast with champagne to her.  

We then wandered down to the Princess Theater to see Papillon, a 70’s movie with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman about a French penal colony on Devil’s Island, our next destination. It was a pretty grueling movie about the abuses of the French penal system in the setting of a tropical paradise. The final scene at the end of the movie where Papillon jumps off a cliff was actually filmed in Jamaica, because the cliffs on the real Devil’s Island are not that impressive.