Log Entry:
February 16
Since we have been in
Trinidad, we haven't made it out of the marina.
We
finally took the boat out away
from the dock on Friday Jan. 19th - Sunday
Jan.
20th to put hours on our
re-built engine. We put about 20 hours on the
engine
traveling toward Venezuela,
but staying both nights in
Chacachacare.
Thirty years
ago this island was a leper colony. It had a major community
with
a good sized village and a
road running all around, busy enough to have a
traffic
light! This village
was abandoned as soon as a cure was found for the disease.
There are many substantial
buildings still intact including the nurses and doctors
houses, and smaller houses in the
village. There is also a manned lighthouse.
At our marina, they are
having four Carnival Seminars for cruisers
experiencing
their first Carnival
in Trinidad. The first one told the history of the evolution of
the
Carnival itself.
As they showed the costumes, they explained the reasons for
them
and how they
evolved. Then they had a Pan Band (aka Steel Drum) and of
course
drinks, doubles, shark and
bake and corn soup.. (Doubles = sort of crepe
with
curried chick peas in them.
Shark and Bake = quick deep fried shark with
many
different sauces and
trimmings. Corn soup=corn soup Trini style.)
The other night we ate on a
friend s boat. We had a Six Pack with
Bustupshut.
(Translation.. six
pack is six buckets of food, bustupshut=pastry like bread
which
you pull apart)
It was delicious!! That same night we read in the newspapers
that
a woman was PLAINASSED by her
husband. It was a good thing he didn't use
the
sharp edge on the knife.
(Plainassed= hitting someone with the broad side of
a
knife)
Tonight we are going
to practice doing MOKO JUMBIES for the
Carnival
Seminar on Feb. 14th.
(MOKO JUMBIES are people dressed in costumes,
walking on stilts up to ten feet
off the ground) Rudy and I went three days in
a
row, progressing up to three
foot stilts. It is a lot of hard work and great fun
and
exercise!!!