A Day in Paradise...: True Trini Camping

Things work differently here. Time and efficiency does not work in quite the same way. This has been clear to me from the start, but it is never so apparent as when I am with the university’s hiking club. I enjoy this club thoroughly, the people are nice, the places we visit are beautiful and adventure is always to be had. My trips with the hiking club always end up, when all is finally said and done, positive, yet they are always tinted with frustration and annoyance. Over this Easter Holiday, the hiking club took on a new venture...camping. We were to travel all way to the little village of Matelot, which you get to by travelling all the way up the east coast and then along the north coast for a total 3-hour drive (in this country, a 3 hour drive is so long they have to stop twice to stretch haha!). We were supposed to do an evening hike to get to be able to hang out at a waterfall under the stars, camp on the beach and feast on wonderful food we cooked by the fire. I’ll leave you in suspense to figure out what actually happened.

Let’s begin, well at the beginning. We are scheduled to leave at 7am. Now from my past experience with the club, I know that leaving at 7am means leaving at 8:30am, but this was a special kind of trip so I thought maybe today would be the day we were nearly on time. The bus pulled onto the road at 9:05, so much for that thought. Now here is one of my social commentaries...one thing I love about this is that Trinidadians wait for all. In the States, if you show up for a bus an hour and a half late, you’d be quite lucky to speed and still catch that bus because it left without you! Trinidadians wait as if it were a public policy: No Late Comer Left Behind. It is a very kind, patient thing about the culture, but here is the downside...in the States if you are 10-15 min late, you will have six people calling you trying to figure out where you are, what is going on and how much longer you will be. An hour and a half late here still does not warrant an inquisitive phone call, text or missing persons report. So the rest of us wait, wait without knowledge of when you might arrive, wait without understanding as to why you have been so delayed, wait wanting to bang our heads against the wall in boredom. When you do finally arrive, we leave without so much as an apology, an excuse or a punch to the stomach for making us sit in the sun for an eternity. And since that is how it is in Trinidad, that is how it happened that morning. Our leader was an hour and half late and then it took 30 minutes to load up and ship out. Three and half hours later my van pulls into the village of Matelot, but our van doesn’t know where the campsite is, in fact the van that had made an extra stop and is 15 minutes behind us is the only one that knew where we were supposed to camp. Oh and it was advertised that food would be provided so we brought pretty limited snacks and it is past lunch and we are starving. Note to reader: starvation becomes a reoccurring theme in this story.

We got the camp site set up and hung out in the water/on the beach. Some cooking finally began and at maybe 4:00 we finally got to eat fish stew (included potatoes, regular and sweet, and other root veggies that I can't spell and then of course fish). Wondering if all we had to eat was fish stew? Let me reassure you...we had juice too! Anyway we started a fire that of course needed to rival the neighbors fire, so the macho boys got to work building it way higher than could've been considered safe for this insane dry season! Oh right, that night hike we were going to be on, well our guide just didn't show up, so that was replaced with sitting around the campfire. We did roast marshmallows, but very few of the Trinis knew what smores were!

Around 11pm we found out a boat was coming in with a fresh catch of fish and went to intersect it to have a fish fry. When we got there the fishing boat was pulling fish and sharks (little hammer heads, so cool!) out of their nets so we excitedly waited...45 minutes later the excitement had worn off. We did have a jetty dog to entertain us. He was hanging out with us looking over a ledge down to some pretty serious rocks and waves when all the sudden he jumped up on the ledge and looked over the edge in a really tense way. Rachelle (Canadian exchange student) and I both immediately started trying to talk the dog down, telling him that he had a whole to live and people who loved him. In the end we convinced him and he climbed back down...we thought it was hysterical, but sorry if it is a location joke! The fishermen finally came in and dumped 3 buckets of fish on the ground, we picked ours (3 really big, fat ones and a whole bag of little, skinny ones) and they cleaned and gutted them right there, so cool. We took them back and started up the fryer...some of the little ones without many scales we fried whole, eyes starting up at you and everything, but the big ones we cut up, and that kind was really good. It was probably 2am when we went to bed and I woke up in the morning to, guess what for breakfast...fried fish! Three little pieces of fried fish at 7am was all that was provided for the day...re-enter starvation.

Packing up the campsite took what seemed like 8 hours. We got most everything cleaned up and in piles and started carrying things back to the van then waited for everyone else to do the same. Who knows what they were doing down there for another hour! I've decided that I can handle waiting, no problem. It is waiting without understanding why that is the killer. Sitting around without any knowledge as to why you are not doing ANYTHING just drives you nuts! Everyone finally came around and we set off on the hike. Up until now the trip had been just fine, there was a beach and a campfire and the fish thing was cool, but it wasn't great. Our ending destination of the hike made it great! It was a wonderful waterfall and natural spring, then we climbed up the waterfall and explored the river, finding some cliffs to jump off of into deep, deep pools. I'm a bit of a heights wuss, which I didn't realize until that moment, so I jumped from a shorter ledge! It was really amazing and beautiful, making everything worth while. We finally left Matlot at 3pm...of course without lunch and starving!

The kids playing in the river when we arrived...they had a huck finn raft and were so cute steering it around the river

Our campsite once we got everything all set up...my tent is the one in the very right front of the picture

Looking out onto the beach from our campsite, it was great to wake up to the waves!

A soccer game on the beach...the guys from our group played some too but they were being pretty hyper-masculine so the girls decided it was best to steer clear!

Our fish stew, looks pretty much like mush! We ate it out of styrofoam cups with sporks, but if you added a squeeze of lemon and some extra seasoning it was really good!