Adventures on the island

So on Nicholas's first trip to India....





Just kidding. But he did get to see his first Hindu temple. Today we went to see the temples by the sea.

it's a bird!.... it's a plane!..... it's an 85 foot tall monkey statue!.....

After the temples we went to a place called Pitch Lake(the worlds largest tar pit). There is one in Venezuela and in California as well. The one in Trinidad is actually connected to the one in Venezuela under the sea, according to our tour guide. As it is the dry season, there isn't much lake left--it was almost entirely dry except a few small streams. We will have to check it out again during the rainy season to compare.

Nicholas on Daddy's back in his backpack.

so we actually walked out to the middle of what would be the lake in the rainy season. We also saw sulfur fires. It was kind of smelly

By the end, Nicholas was tuckered out and ready for his nap.

We then went over to Petrotrin, Trinidad's oil company, to visit their Bird Sanctuary. The Petrotrin complex is huge with houses, the bird sanctuary, an oil history museum, tennis courts, and a golf course, along with all of the machinery and these smoke stacks spewing firey gas.

The bird sanctuary was small, but very pretty. It was a loop around a lake.

They also have a resident cayman-- glad he was behind bars.

the lotuses were really pretty. Apparently one can eat all parts of the plant.

bird house, made of old natural gas pipes

we took a bottle break in the shade

We saw our first Trinidadian waterfall. During the wetseason, there are a few different waterfall hikes that we plan to do, but right now they are all dried up. We did actually get rain today--we missed it where we were but we came home and there were some puddles on the roads in our neighborhood--first rain since January, so it was much needed. Hopefully that slows down some of the wild fires burning in the hills.

A rather ugley bird showing off his feathers, and a turtle sitting on the log.

A red ibus. There are other places on the island where we can go to see these beautiful birds in their natural habitat, which we look forward to doing.

All of the signs throughout the bird sanctuary were beautiful painted tile.

Now we are watching the Final Four games and going to get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow is Easter brunch at the Hyatt and Easter dinner at our friend's Rich and Maren's apartment.