Steel Pan Orchestras

You have to love Trinis. I passed this sign on my Saturday morning walk. This seems to be fairly typical of how things go around here. Very nice sign and the concert it promotes is very reasonably priced. TT$30 converts to a bit less than US$5 so as I walked I gave serious thought to going to the concert. There was only one problem. I'll give you a moment to look carefully at the sign to see what the problem is.

The sign doesn't say what day or time the concert is; just the location and the cost. This seems to be in keeping with the Trini sense of signs and directions. Some things you are simply supposed to know. An unrelated example is the NAPA (the National Academy of the Performing Arts) which is the gigantic theater center in Trinidad. No web site, the box office has a calendar of past events but not for the current month. And the local newspapers tend to report performances after they happen.

So as soon as I got back to the apartment, I looked up "The Junior Champs in Steel" on the web which, of course brought up nothing whatever. But then I got lucky when I searched for "Queen's Park Savannah Foyer." That brought me a site that told me that the concert was today from 2:00 until 6:00.

So at the appointed time I set off for the Savannah and was almost immediately reminded that this is the rainy season in Trinidad. I know I'm not going to get a lot of sympathy from the Houstonians but I was caught in what can be described as a "white out" rain. It came down so hard that you could not see more than a few feet in front of you. I hadn't gotten more than a block from the apartment and did have an umbrella with me but even so by the time I got back I was soaked through and through. The rainy finally stopped about 3:30 and I debated whether to try again. Ultimately the deciding factor was the price. At that price I would still count it as money well spent even if I only saw a couple hours of the concert. A very soggy walk to the Savannah and I arrived at the Queen's Park Savannah Grandstand. The foyer area turns out to mean "under the grandstand." So we sat in tents and watched the teenagers perform under the stands.

The first band I saw perform were the "Rising Stars" from the US Virgin Islands. (Do we call folks from USVI Americans?) Two of the groups were school organizations but this orchestra was sponsored by the USVI Superior Court. I assume there is a story behind that but I don't know what it is. A steel pan orchestra consists of a variety of steel drums and a conventional drum set. I also don't know why it is an orchestra and not a band but I don't make the rules.

Next came the BP Renegades which is a local group. About this point, the pattern was starting to appear and though I tried not to be self conscious about it, I did start to look around. I was, in fact, the only Caucasian there. I like this particular picture because it shows so many of the steel pan drums. What it doesn't show well... what no picture can really show despite my choice of shots for the Rising Stars... is that the musicians generally don't stand there and play. They dance around.

The final band I saw a full set for were the boys from St. Margaret;s Boy's College. And they took their dancing around seriously. And it was apparent that the girls from St Francis Girl's College were very entertained watching the boys perform. The Trinis use the word "college" differently than we do. For them, a college is what we'd call a high school. What you get when you finish college is still a degree but it is the equivalent of our high school diploma. So I was watching a bunch of high school bands perform.

The pictures just don't do the performances justice so I hunted up a video of the Rising Stars in action during the Carnival in the Virgin Islands. It does give the feel for what the concert was like.

Fine Dining in Port of Spain - Melange

I continue my search of the better restaurants this week with a place called Melange which Fodor's describes as one of the best in the city.

I'm still trying to figure out the restaurant scene around here. I was surprised to discover that almost none of the restaurants are open on Sunday and have come to expect that very few of them are open on Saturday. But Friday? Come on. Surely these folks go out to eat on Friday. And while Georgia and I have long tended to eat earlier than most folks, I decided to try Melange at about 7:00 which I figured must be prime time for diners around here.

So I walked up to the restaurant and wasn't particularly surprised to discover that it looked rather like a converted old home. About half the places around here look like converted old homes. Sitting behind a podium on the porch who seemed both surprised and bored when I walked up and asked if they had room for a single diner. They did. I had the place to myself. Eventually there was one couple who came to dine there but other than that...

I apologize for most of this group of pictures. The restaurant was dimly lit and 7:00 in the evening is well after sundown. The poor little cellphone camera just isn't up to dim lighting. Melange was nicely furnished and they played what can only be described as easy listening steel pan music. Slightly jazzy. Thoroughly forgettable. The menu was interesting but as the waiter explained to me, many of the items had run out yesterday. Apparently both they and the locals are aware that no one goes out to eat on Friday, Saturday or Sunday here and so they manage their resources so as to minimize the waste.

So for starters I had the Chicken Tikka. I am more use to them describing the dish as Chicken Tikka Marsala which I am led to believe is the most popular restaurant dish in England. But this was definitely not the Marsala version. It is probably the Indian dish before the English decided that it needed a sauce on it. Very tasty and nicely presented with a rice pilaf and a sprig of some herb that I can't identify.

For the main course I had tiger prawns which came with another rice dish and some very lightly cooked vegetables. The group in the middle is the generous serving of prawns with another herb for decoration. They too were nicely prepared. Still for reasons I can't quite figure out, I wasn't particularly impressed with my meal at Melange. Nicely prepared. Nice presentation. And yet... Fodor's described it as "Some of the most imaginative food on the island is to be found at this elegant establishment on restaurant row." And I didn't really find it so.

Mailing Address in Trinidad Part II

Some time back I put up my mailing address here at the request of one of my fan. Who, as close as I could tell, immediately sent me a Father's Day card.

It arrived today. The marking on the back of the envelope says it got to Port of Spain on July 4th and at my office which is also in Port of Spain a mere five days later on July 9th.

Assuming my fan sent it to me on June 15th, a mere 2 days before Father's Day, the card took 19 days to get to Trinidad from the US and five more days to travel the three miles across town.

It is a very nice Father's Day card.

Fine Dining - Veni Mange

One thing Georgia wanted to do while she was in Trinidad was to eat genuine Trini food and it just doesn't come much more genuine in Port of Spain than Veni Mange. Mange is pronounced as two syllables "mon-jay." Some of the references like Fodor's consider Veni Mange to be the best restaurant on the island. Based on our experience, it ranks well up there.

Like so many businesses in Trinidad and as opposed to several of the restaurants I've been too lately, Veni Mange looks rather like an old house. Everything around here, it seems has a wall or a fence around it. The restaurant itself is up the stairs you see behind Georgia. So up the stairs and in we go.

When we got there, the restaurant was basically empty. Veni Mange does have some unusual hours. It is open for lunch Monday through Friday and for dinner on just Wednesday and Friday. We took a late lunch on Tuesday which is apparently a very slow time. The interior is brightly colored with painted chairs and tables and an assortment of local art on all the walls.

Georgia studying the menu whichchanges daily and is handed to you on a clipboard.

Georgia's light lunch. Starting from the left and working our way toward the right we have: Lentils and rice Lima Beans with a yummy sauce Creole stewed beef Fried Plantains and Provisions Bok Choy with Pumpkin In fairness, four of these dishes were "our" side dishes and not just Georgia's.

And just in case you doubted whether Veni Mange could serve an elegant dish... this is my "ocean salmon" which turned out to be two filets of some locally caught white fish. In any case, we ate everything except some of the lentils and rice.

We also met the owner who immediately became one of our favorites. As we were leaving she asked if this was our first time in Trinidad and how long we were staying. Being the type I am I responded "I'm only here until April." After that registered, she laughed. As we were heading down the stairs, she came out after us to be sure we had the card.

Veni Mange is definitely on our "Do again" list.

Back to Maracas Bay

Of course, you can't come to a tropical island without going to the beach. But Port of Spain is a working port city and so there is no beach on our side of the island. The locals drive over the mountains to the other side of the island to go to Maracas Beach. I wrote about that in an earlier post. I haven't been back since I first got here because I enjoy driving the mountain roads in Trinidad so much. But with Georgia here and having gained some recent experience driving the mountain roads, I decided to try it again.

Georgia enjoying the beach at Maracas. Of course, if you go on Monday morning instead of the weekend, there are fewer crowds. In our case, the beach had a nearly post-apocalyptic feel to it. We counted a dozen people on the beach. And we felt safe since there were also four lifeguards or about one for every three of us. You don't get a much better ratio than that.

I went too.

Georgia has many times expressed a desire to get Trini-food while here and Maracas is pretty much the epicenter for one of the classic Trini dishes, "Bake and Shark." Bake is a fry bread (which makes no sense to me) while the Shark is, shockingly, a shark. Served freshly made with a large variety of freshly made sauces... my personal favorite is Tamarind sauce. Here is a clip from the Food Channel's Bizarre Foods on the matter.

We went to the best known of the bunch, Richard's, which is the one featured in the video but it isn't the only one. There must be a dozen at Maracas Bay and free enterprise and the Trini ever subtle sense of advertising being what it is... For some reason, I couldn't convince Georgia to go to this one. I guess she's just not patriotic enough to go to Uncle Sam's Shark and Bake.

The Monastery

While she was here, I tried to steer Georgia away from outings that required me to drive into the mountains. The thing I dislike most about Trinidad is driving here. The roads, especially the further you get away from the urban center, are narrow, poorly marked and poorly maintained which doesn't stop people from stopping effectively reducing a narrow two lane road into a very narrow one lane adventure. But everyone is aware of this and for the most part seems to have adopted a "If we slow down and drive courteously, we can all get through this with only a few fatalities" approach. Outside the big city, the drivers are actually pretty courteous.

I did let Georgia persuade me into an outing to the Mount St. Benedict Monastery. The other thing I love about driving here is what passes for directions. So the first step of an outing like this is going over the maps and the internet trying to figure out exactly where these destinations are. Sometimes you get lucky and the destination has a website with decent directions. Mount St Benedict has a web site and it does have a page called "Online Map" with the helpful heading "How to get here" and a Google map showing the alleged location of the monastery. I'm prepared to guarantee that no one yet has found the monastery from that map because it shows it on the island of Tobago rather than on Trinidad.

But with my new favorite site Wikimapia , I was able to figure out how to get there and so off we went.

The drive wasn't bad at all and the monastery was as nice as we thought it might be. The parking lot for the chapel is in fact on a terrific slope just like it looks. The monastery is located on top of one of the local mountains. If the road was maintained like many around here, it would have been a treacherous drive. But this one was well maintained and actually clearly marked.

And the view from the monastery was very nice. The town you see below is Tunapuna and my kids are lucky that they were born before I got here since this is one of my new favorite names. Don't you think Tunapuna Kimmel sounds nice?

Of course, being me, there was one thing I hadn't expected to see that caught my eye and tickled me at the same time. The local water system operates at a fairly low pressure and many people have these large black plastic storage vessels and pump the water up in their own homes to get the pressure they want. The monastery, being on top of a mountain, has the same problem but a bit more extreme because of the elevation. Of course, since it is a monastery... it's Holy Water in the convenient 400 gallon drum.

Happy Birthday, America

Georgia left Trinidad on the 4th of July but that didn't stop her from getting to enjoy the Independence Day celebration sponsored by the American Embassy here. For reasons that are not real obvious, that party was held on June 30th. The venue was a huge, very nice home called the Marine House in the St. Clair district which is undoubtedly the richest neighborhood in Port of Spain. Apparently, the US stations marines at all their embassies to act as guards. It is such a hardship duty, the marines need a mansion to live in and because it is in the wealthier part of town, they hire local security guards to protect the marines.

Although not attended by the entire expat community of Port of Spain, quite a few show up to enjoy the festivities and the subtle decorations. The pool toys belong to the large number of children who attended and not to the marines. I think...

This is Georgia and Cole Meador (Binh's son) enjoying their Haagen Dazs ice cream. The variety of American foods present in Trinidad is curious. By far the most common ice cream stores present are Haagen Dazs stores while the most common restaurants are KFC.

And of course what is the 4th of July when celebrated on June 30th without fireworks? Apparently the Trinis were also celebrating their Independence that day so they shot off fireworks at the Savannah that evening. And also on the actual 4th of July. And my apartment is well placed to enjoy them.

Fine Dining in Trinidad - Flair

Back to the restaurant beat here with one of the restaurants that Georgia and I went to while she was in Trinidad. I've commented before that Port of Spain seems to have an exceptionally high count of fine restaurants relative to the size the city is... Georgia saw an official census that had the city under 100,000... and Flair was one of the close ones that appealed to me.

I know you guys all think that I'm not actually in Trinidad given that I never appear in any of the pictures, so I handed Georgia the camera to get at least one picture in the blog. As you can see, the interior of Flair is marked with simple modern decor while the exterior has got simple, modern bright green Christmas lights. I'll show you another picture of the exterior later.

Since we've turned into foodies... straight to the food. Georgia had a beet and goat cheese salad as a starter. The beets were sliced very thin and Georgia proclaimed it delicious.

While I started with the shark hush puppies. Three of my order of six are left here and they are about the size of tennis balls. Clearly it was too much for one person and the plan had been to take them back to the apartment. But as they say about the best laid plans of mice and men...

Georgia's main dish is a spiced barbeque chicken dish with a side of a tropical slaw. The chicken dish was very good but the slaw was disappointing. Still on the whole she had a perfectly satisfactory meal.

I, on the other hand, had Jerk spiced swordfish filets with a rum and banana chutney on the side. My original plan had been to take some of that back to the apartment but... well... by the time I had slowed down the board was clean. Hmmm. Georgia's dishes all arrived on plates while mine came on cutting boards. I wonder if there is a message there.

Another shot of the interior, this time showing the master chef and a couple of his staff.

And finally a shot of Georgia standing outside the restaurant and you can see a better view of the lights. Everything taken into account, including the fact that it is located about two blocks from my apartment and was a completely satisfactory meal, I will definitely be returning to Flair in the near future.

Random Shots

Just a couple of random pictures I took while Georgia was in Trinidad.

The full moon over Port of Spain. Somehow it looked a lot bigger when I took this shot.

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When Robert and Andrea got married, they had their reception at the Harvard Club in Cambridge. As it turns out, Port of Spain has a Harvard Club as well. Perhaps not quite as upscale as the one in Massachusetts but...

Georgia in Trinidad

My apologies to my follower but the delay between posts is largely Georgia's fault. Georgia has become quite the world traveler of late. She just got back from a trip to Japan with our daughters and she decided that she needed a TT stamp in her passport as well. She came to Trinidad and, well, I've been distracted. So the next few posts will include a lot of pictures of her.

Of course, being the highly computerized family that we are, she wasted no time in checking her work emails. And reading the newspaper over the internet. We routinely cancel the newspaper when we go on vacation but this time the Houston Chronicle sent us a daily link to their all electronic, full page version of the newspaper. So Georgia didn't miss a single day of the exciting news in Houston.

We did see many of the sights of Port of Spain and if you guessed that among the first things she wanted to see would be the Botanical Garden, you would be right. As I've pointed out before, the Botanical Garden is mostly trees but there are many beautiful flowering trees as well. This isn't the best example but it is the best we ran into after it occurred to us that we should be taking pictures as well.

Georgia did have one thing she wanted to experience while she was here that we weren't able to connect up on... a steel pan orchestra. About the closest we got was this sculpture in the Botanical Garden. The musicians in the sculpture are a bit on the skinny side but the drums are basically spot on.

But since I don't want her to be too disappointed...

Coroni Swamp

Labor Day, June 19, 2012. Besides going to see the Maracas Waterfall... the tallest in Trinidad... I also went with Binh Meador and her family to the Coroni Swamp. So why would anyone go to a swamp on their holiday?

To ride in one of these spiffy boats and to see the birds, of course. In this case we're off to see a very specific variety of bird.

But first, let's enjoy the swamp. The Coroni swamp has almost no actual land but is made up almost entirely of Mangrove trees. These trees, in addition to being pretty weird looking with roots coming out of them at all spots and dropping down into the water, are one of the few plants that tolerate salt water and air. After some years they die and start land forming in what was all salt water. And they create a habitat that's suitable for birds, snakes, crabs and a bunch of other fun animals. So we cruise through the waterways, looking for and for the most part not seeing anything.

But never fear, our guide is there to point out the snakes dangling in the branches over our heads... You didn't see that one? We'll back up so you can see it better. See Binh? There's a six foot Boa Constrictor right over your head... What's wrong? You hate snakes? Sorry about that, Binh. Here take a look at these spider like crabs climbing up the Mangrove roots right next to the boat. Yes, a fun time was had by all. But seeing Binh cower in terror about the snakes wasn't we came there for. We came to see the birds.

Now as it turns out, the Coroni Swamp is a major habitat of the national bird of Trinidad. The Coat of Arms of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago (what do mean, your country doesn't have a coat of arms? And just one national bird? What kind of cheesy country do you live in?) features the national bird of Trinidad, the Scarlett Ibis, the national bird of Tobago, the Cocrico and the national bird of the Caribbean, the Hummingbird. We've come to see the Scarlett Ibis. But during the course of the cruise, we only see a couple. But after an hour and a half of cruising around the swamp seeing a few herons and osprey, our guide stops the boat and we wait. But not for long.

My poor little camera doesn't really do them justice but before long there are wave after wave of herons and Scarlett Ibis flocking to the trees on the far side of the water from us. Sometimes in twos and threes. Sometimes in dozens or more.

Before long, the trees across the swamp are covered with them. A good pair of binoculars or a solid telephoto lens would have helped here but still it was pretty impressive seeing all those bright red birds... they turn red from eating the crabs pretty much just like Georgia does... in flight.

Maracas Falls

As I mentioned before, I decided to go visit one of Trinidad's many waterfalls on my off day today... Labor Day. One of the most talked about is Maracas Falls. I've mentioned earlier one of the most popular beaches on the island is Maracas Beach which is a drop dead gorgeous beach. Well Maracas Falls has basically nothing whatever to do with Maracas Beach. The only way to get to the beach from the water falls is come back through Port of Spain. As I have come to expect, the drive started out with some pretty good road but eventually degenerated into "Am I still on a road?" mode. After a couple of wrong turns and getting vaguely lost and "Oh of course we can get my car and your truck past each other on this one lane road" moments, I eventually got to the trail head for the walk to the waterfalls.

The hike is one of the tougher ones I've done including sections negotiating your way through some large wet rocks. The trail is wet both because it is the rainy season but also because there are small springs and watefalls along the way.

But after a mile or so of trail, some sections rougher and hillier than others, you catch your first glimpse of the waterfall. In this picture you can just see the top of the waterfall among the tree tops. Given the terrain, it is clearlyquite a tall waterfall.

	Once you finally get into the open you can start to appreciate just how tall this waterfall is... about 200 feet. It isn't that great a waterfall if all you care about is a massive amount of water. It is clearly no Niagara. Still it is a very setting a very pleasant sight to see.

There is not a large pool at the bottom but there is a large open area and several folks seemed to be making a day of it there. At least until it started raining...

Happy Labor Day!!

I know that in the United States, you think Labor Day comes in September but here in Trinidad and Tobago, today is Labor Day, one of many holidays where they close down everything here. Some are familiar. Some seem a little odd.



The Trinis celebrate Labor Day on June 19th, the anniversary of the Butler Labour riots... In 1937, rabble rousing labor leader Tubal Uriah Butler was wanted by authorities on charges of inciting a riot. The police attempted to arrest him while he was giving a speech to his supporters, mostly oil industry workers with the rather predictable result of a riot. So arresting someone for inciting a riot incited a riot. Seems like a perfectly reasonable excuse for a holiday.

HOLIDAY	DATE	Celebrating
New Year's Day	January 1st	The Start of the New Year
Shouter Baptist Liberation Day	March 30th	The granting the Spiritual Baptists the right to openly practice their religion again.
Good Friday	April 14th	The crucifixion of Jesus
Easter Monday	April 17th	The day after the resurrection of Jesus and the disposal of hard-boiled colored eggs
Indian Arrival Day	May 30th	The easing of a labor shortage with a bunch of indentured workers from the sub-continent
Corpus Christi	June 15th	A smallish city in Texas
Labour Day	June 19th	Labour union riots
Emancipation Day	August 1st	The British freeing both of their slaves
Eid-Ul-Fitr	August 20th	Muslims being allowed to eat during daylight hours again - the end of Ramadan
Independence Day	August 31st	Trinidad becoming independent of the British crown. Either that or my birthday
Republic Day	September 24th	The citizens of TnT forming a republican form of government
Divali	November 13th	The Hindu version of Hanukkah - the festival of lights
Christmas Day	December 25th	The giving of Christmas gifts to friends and family
Boxing Day	December 26th	The returning of Christmas gifts to the stores.

So what's a visitor like me suppose to do on the day they celebrate rioting against police and oil companies? I'm thinking about going to see a waterfall or two. That seems perfectly appropriate to me.

Fine Dining Part 2

I am becoming increasingly impressed with some of the restaurants in Port of Spain. Keep in mind that I'm in a country with 1.3 million people and a city with just a few hundred thousand... though that may be counted like the 59 people who live in Speyside. Being reasonable about it, let's say that Port of Spain has 600,000 folks in the immediate area which makes it about the size of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I've told you already about my visit to The Verandah which is, in fact, a fine restaurant. This time I'm adding two more to my fine restaurant list, the Chaud Cafe and Buzo Osteria.

Chaud Cafe

Chaud is a popular word in Port of Spain for a restaurant. There are at least three, Chaud, Chaud Cafe, and Chaud Creole, which are all well regarded. As close as I can tell, chaud is a french word for hot.

As it turns out Chaud Cafe is located at One Woodbrook Plaza which means its about 100 yards from One Woodbrook Place where I live. The plaza is a small shopping area whose largest shop at the north end of the group is The Shoe Locker. At the opposite end is a group of four small restaurants of which two are not closed for renovations. The last one of them is Chaud Cafe.

The Chaud Cafe has a simple, elegant interior and gives the impression that it is a bar with a few tables inside and an outdoor dining area. Given the cloudy skies and that it has been raining a lot lately, I chose to sit inside.

And the food? This is the Portuguese Garlic Pork Belly, with a penne pasta side and a glass of Sangria. All in all, it was a very good meal. I ended up taking some of the pasta dish home in a particularly nice container... not the usual Styrofoam clamshell... and the Chaud Cafe was a pleasing surprise.

Buzo Osteria

The formal name for Buzo's is Buzo Osteria Italiana so you can probably guess what kind of food they serve. No. It is not Chinese. Buzo is not located in the nicest neighborhood. All right. So. The neighborhood is more than a little run down. Even from the exterior though, Buzo has a thoroughly modern, well maintained look.

The interior is almost an odd collection of styles with the rough brick and stone walls to the modern light fixtures. I found myself wondering if this building had started out as something else and been converted to a restaurant. Given that the style doesn't seem to match any other building I've seen I think it was designed to look like this.

For dinner I had a baked salmon with olives, tomatoes and a white wine sauce. The side is a small salad (I do not want to see what the Grande looks like. I suspect it is a huge platter) made with assorted greens, peppers, tomatoes and corn. The third item is the focaccia bread. I had already eaten the piece that had green olives in it. The meal was delightful and the best I've had in Trinidad.

The meal was good enough that I decided to go completely wild and have desert as well. This is a dollop of vanilla gelato with whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top served with espresso around it. It was very good too. And as I rolled back to the apartment, I thought about the last three restaurants I'd been to and decided that the last pair would stack up well anywhere.