Merry Christmas!
Door: Evert
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Evert
09 Januari 2011 | Trinidad en Tobago, Charlotteville
Day 14, 2010 December 25th, CoralCay Cottage, Charlotteville, TT
First story in English, for the simple reason that you start to think in English if you always use that language. It is the most beautiful Christmas ever, I just got back from a sleep in the beach-sand, which has a nice brownisch color. Before that, I got a swim in the beautiful waters just off our compound and I enjoyed the intense sun on my face while floating big-time! We all woke up quite late this morning as we celebrated Christmas-eve quite intensely. With loads of local rum (punchkin, with a beautiful 75 vol% of alcohol), tequila (we took the limes right from the tree here in our resort) and foods. When the party got up, we enjoyed ourselves with a porrach-and-flour-fight. Cleaning up was the first thing to do today ;-)
Don’t know when you will be able to Read this story because internet broke down in the whole eastern-Tobago area and, given Christmas, locals cannot tell when it will be fixed. (note afterwards: it has only been fixed just after Newyear and I found enough time to publish some stories today, January 9th.)
Also, for mobile telephony here, you need a quadriple-band to be able to call abroad, at least that is what I have been told by the people in a telephony-shop. It would cost about 200 TT$ to buy a phone which then cannot be used in Europe anymore.
Today, a beautiful, Norwegian, sailing-ship, trimaster, anchored in our bay and the passengers are sailing all the time to the village. The village has a little jetty where all local fishermen unload their boats, to sell the fish in the (very) small fishing market. Charlotteville has maybe 400 inhabitants, a small supermarket, internet-shop, laundry-service, hospital, school and police-station. Also, it has about 3 diveshops and a beautiful grassy field where a local dj is playing Afro-sounds today. It is located in the naturel environment that Center Parcs tries to offer: palm-trees on the beach and all sorts of tropical fruit-trees you can imagine.
Yet, there is also a ’Expeditie Robinson’-part of it. We have about 8 mugs for 14 people and just enough cutlery for everybody to use. Food resources are relatively limited, as budgeting from London is limited. Therefore, we need to help ourselves by catching and slaughtering local chickens and gathering fresh fruits from the trees. People told me that there is always plenty of rice, noodles, potatoes and other ’starch’, but proteins may sometimes be in short.
Tobago is the island of Robinson Crusoë. It is said that he would have lived in the south-western part of the island.
Today and yesterday, the people of the project are really chilled and enjoying the two days off. Alcohol and diving don’t combine. Tonight, there will be more partying so tomorrow will be tourism-day as well; it will only be on Monday, that the 10-day-diving-training-period will start. I already re-read the Open Water Diver-manual so Monday will be practical immediately. The scuba-instructor told me that I will do the training together with a local person, so we will get intense guidance.
This morning, I was thinking that life round here is a bit like a youth-camp as I expertised it with Descartes. Some similarities: everyone is interested in Sciences (here: really everyone is of age in between 18 and 28 and is studying for or holds a Bsc, Msc or even PhD in physics/chemistry/biology/biochemistry/pharmacy/marine biology), instead of watching above to the stars you are looking down, to the bottoms of the sea. (Tobago is in the top 10-diving-places of the World, the best area Tobago has to offer, called Speyside, is just a 10 minute-drive or 30 min-sail away. The Speyside area holds the biggest brain-coral in the World and the bay just in front of our compound has its own manta ray with a diameter of more than 2 meters), there is a chores-scheme (‘afwasploegen’), some people are really freaky about their diving-gear (Instead of a ‘telescopenkot’, we have our scuba-shack; where everyone has his or her own spot for fins, booties etc.) and there is constant struggle against insects (here: mosquitos are really irritant and you cannot scratch your wounds because you don’t dive if they would infect).
The biggest difference with a Descartes-kamp is the division of the sexes. Out of 14 people, we are only 5 men. That makes it a lot of single women to choose from. I’m open for opportunities.
First story in English, for the simple reason that you start to think in English if you always use that language. It is the most beautiful Christmas ever, I just got back from a sleep in the beach-sand, which has a nice brownisch color. Before that, I got a swim in the beautiful waters just off our compound and I enjoyed the intense sun on my face while floating big-time! We all woke up quite late this morning as we celebrated Christmas-eve quite intensely. With loads of local rum (punchkin, with a beautiful 75 vol% of alcohol), tequila (we took the limes right from the tree here in our resort) and foods. When the party got up, we enjoyed ourselves with a porrach-and-flour-fight. Cleaning up was the first thing to do today ;-)
Don’t know when you will be able to Read this story because internet broke down in the whole eastern-Tobago area and, given Christmas, locals cannot tell when it will be fixed. (note afterwards: it has only been fixed just after Newyear and I found enough time to publish some stories today, January 9th.)
Also, for mobile telephony here, you need a quadriple-band to be able to call abroad, at least that is what I have been told by the people in a telephony-shop. It would cost about 200 TT$ to buy a phone which then cannot be used in Europe anymore.
Today, a beautiful, Norwegian, sailing-ship, trimaster, anchored in our bay and the passengers are sailing all the time to the village. The village has a little jetty where all local fishermen unload their boats, to sell the fish in the (very) small fishing market. Charlotteville has maybe 400 inhabitants, a small supermarket, internet-shop, laundry-service, hospital, school and police-station. Also, it has about 3 diveshops and a beautiful grassy field where a local dj is playing Afro-sounds today. It is located in the naturel environment that Center Parcs tries to offer: palm-trees on the beach and all sorts of tropical fruit-trees you can imagine.
Yet, there is also a ’Expeditie Robinson’-part of it. We have about 8 mugs for 14 people and just enough cutlery for everybody to use. Food resources are relatively limited, as budgeting from London is limited. Therefore, we need to help ourselves by catching and slaughtering local chickens and gathering fresh fruits from the trees. People told me that there is always plenty of rice, noodles, potatoes and other ’starch’, but proteins may sometimes be in short.
Tobago is the island of Robinson Crusoë. It is said that he would have lived in the south-western part of the island.
Today and yesterday, the people of the project are really chilled and enjoying the two days off. Alcohol and diving don’t combine. Tonight, there will be more partying so tomorrow will be tourism-day as well; it will only be on Monday, that the 10-day-diving-training-period will start. I already re-read the Open Water Diver-manual so Monday will be practical immediately. The scuba-instructor told me that I will do the training together with a local person, so we will get intense guidance.
This morning, I was thinking that life round here is a bit like a youth-camp as I expertised it with Descartes. Some similarities: everyone is interested in Sciences (here: really everyone is of age in between 18 and 28 and is studying for or holds a Bsc, Msc or even PhD in physics/chemistry/biology/biochemistry/pharmacy/marine biology), instead of watching above to the stars you are looking down, to the bottoms of the sea. (Tobago is in the top 10-diving-places of the World, the best area Tobago has to offer, called Speyside, is just a 10 minute-drive or 30 min-sail away. The Speyside area holds the biggest brain-coral in the World and the bay just in front of our compound has its own manta ray with a diameter of more than 2 meters), there is a chores-scheme (‘afwasploegen’), some people are really freaky about their diving-gear (Instead of a ‘telescopenkot’, we have our scuba-shack; where everyone has his or her own spot for fins, booties etc.) and there is constant struggle against insects (here: mosquitos are really irritant and you cannot scratch your wounds because you don’t dive if they would infect).
The biggest difference with a Descartes-kamp is the division of the sexes. Out of 14 people, we are only 5 men. That makes it a lot of single women to choose from. I’m open for opportunities.
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01 Oktober 2015 - 15:14
XXx_rockkgurl1999_xXx:
hee evert,
merry christmas evert!
groetjes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
grtoetjes sanne
