Trinidad Things to Do

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Pronounced Juvay (its French), and meaning Open Day, this is the last opportunity to join a band to make the parade of the bands on Tuesday, it's messy, very very messy, and nobody gives a flying f*&k about anything.
You can find CEO's, lawyers and high flyers, partying next to everyman, dancing in the street, covered in paint and just not caring, thats the beauty.

We started out J'ouvert after the Calypso Monarch final on Sunday night/ Monday morning, you just follow the crowd and end up in a street packed full of people (at about 0200) and you hang around, drinking, dancing to music pumped out into the street from bars lining the street, meeting people and dancing dancing dancing, and wandering around, then the 1st Band truck passes (around 0430 ish), it is quite literally an articulated lorry packed with speakers - and voila - J'ouvert has begun, follow the truck (or wait for your band to turn up and follow it) around the town all day, all night if you want, more drinking, more dancing, more paint, like I said, messy.

I wish I could put into words the atmosphere, its unreal, just dancing through the street, meeting tourists, locals, anyone, everyone is there for a good time, if ' try everything once' is something you agree with, then you MUST try this.

If you've joined a band before J'ouvert there is usually an all night party anyway in whichever part of town your band is located in, so you just go there and do the same as the street party, but set off from the beginning.

Crime isn't as bad as you may think during this, we ended up hanging out with a group of gangster types, who, at one point, did try and steal my camera, but it wasn't malicious and after I'd got it back off them, we carried on hanging out anyway, they looked after us pretty well and its generally accepted that the economy would suffer quite a bit if crime put tourists off.

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According to some the best Carnival in the world, to others, 2nd after Rio.
Whatever, if you end up in Trinidad for Carnival you won't be disappointed.
In Trinidad there are generally 4 days of Carnival, the weekend including Dimanche Gras, then Monday and the Mardi Gras on Tuesday, usually followed by Ash Wednesday on the beach at Maracas bay, but the build up to Carnival can begin as early as October, with new Soca and Calypso music being released.

The Parade of the bands is really the visual piece de resistance of the Carnival, the costumes are in 4 categories, Kings, Queens and Junior Kings and Junior Queens, the costumes can be absolutely huge, contain fireworks, smoke, lights and all being carried across the stage by one person, the winning costume this year was so big that pieces of it had to be taken off so that it could fit down the streets during j' ouvert.....

The costumes usually take all year to design and build, and the physical training of the people carrying the costume takes about the same.
The parade takes place on Monday and Tuesday, with Monday being J'ouvert, the entrants usually only wear part of their costume, but on Tuesday all the bands come out in full force (there were 120 bands this year), which usually takes all day, the bands get marked as they go around the parade circuit with the winner being announced at the end of the day.
You can join these bands on J' ouvert and actually take part in the parade, you get issued a costume and if you get an all inclusive, your drinks too.

Most of you would heard this word Pitch Lake or Asphalt Lake is in Trinidad. I went on with high expectations to see this. It turns out to be an amazingly huge car park!!?? This pitch lake looks like a car park area of a huge mall with some bushes here & there in the middle. The Asphalt here comes out naturally from the oil-bearing rocks, when ever they take out a truck load of asphalt from it, it recovers it up within a short span of time.

There are lot of places in Trinidad to do bird watching. The emblem of Trinidad & Tobago itself has birds like Scarlet Ibis (Pink) on the left, the Cocrico (Brown) on the right and humming birs in the middle.

Looks like a good beach. I have been told this is one of the famous beaches here in T&T. Since it was late when I visited this place...didnt swim. All the beaches closes by 6:00pm...so make it before.

Nice & lovely beach. Great for swimming, the sand and water is so nice. It takes nearly 1:30hrs to 2 hrs to reach there from POS. Worth drive for the beach. Its not so long, but quite and clean. You can look on the oil rigs at a distance and on some clear days you can see the mountain ranges of Venezuela (I dont have that opportunity) ...I like it here.

During weekdays the beach is deserted...if you are making during those days, make sure you travel with group. Prevention is better than cure!!!!

Nice & lovely beach to swim, lot of coconut trees along the shores. There are lot of corals and so the waves get blocked and provides a good Since there are lot of corals on the sea, the beach is filled with dead corals, which hurts while resting in the waters.

Further up north from Salibea towards Toco, you will find this nice beach called Balendra. Loads of people during weekends...not much to say about it. Quite up further there is a spa hotel...hope from there it must be wonderful scene (not been there to the spa). Try tov visit or make a dip.