Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Trinidad - Carnival




Carnival in Trinidad:
This past weekend, Feb 13 – 16 was carnival in Trinidad. This was our first and we thoroughly enjoyed it, albeit I think I am now hard of hearing, my ears are still ringing. Sunday night was the start of the festivities but we decided to abstain from this, and seeing the roads all asplash with paint and the painted bodies at the beach the next day, we are glad we did. Monday, we went onto Ariepita Avenue where there is lots of action and saw the parade and costumes but was nothing compared to the next day. We got there early in the morning, calling 10 early and stayed a couple of hours. There were lots of parade floats and lots of bodies! There were only about 5 floats when we arrived but they just seemed to keep coming. The boom boxes are huge trailer mounted speakers with independent power generators. You can feel the vibrations thru your body with the noise but it seems that you just go with the flow and jive like everyone else. I can still hear the music and the beat, what a blast!

Barbados



Barbados.

We had to go to the lovely island of Barbados on business no less. We arrived Friday afternoon and after check-in, met up with a friend that I hadn’t seen in over 17 years. He works there and it is always nice to renew these types of acquaintances. We lounged around the beach and pool for two glorious days until I had to work on Monday. Work consisted of a concrete manufacturer plant visit which lasted all of no more than 2 hours, then back to the pool to wait for our flight out that evening. Our hotel, Accra was right on the beach and the water was a clear aquamarine blue, just a beautiful spot. Now I need to figure how to get back there! Here are a couple of pics.