May 24, 2011

Today we arrived in Port of Spain. It was really cool!! We got to see the whole city and we got to see the boat pull into our first port. The one thing I didn’t like was how the oil rigs are right on the waterfront because one of Trinidad’s biggest exports in petroleum. We planned to get up early so that we could get off the ship as soon as possible. Our plan kind of backfired because it took until 9AM for the ship to get cleared. None of us were allowed off the ship until the boat was “cleared”. I am not totally sure what that meant, but all I know is that it is pretty important. We then walked around Port of Spain. It was over 90 degrees outside with a feels like of over 100 due to the humidity. We were told to go to Independence Square so we did, but there wasn’t a ton there. People needed to change money too, so we went to the bank. That seemed to take FOREVER, but I didn’t mind too much because the bank was air-conditioned. It also took a while because people were trying to figure out how much money to take out because of the exchange rate. I took out about $15US and that lasted me the rest of the day plus I have some left for a souvenir. I spent money on a cold drink, lunch, and souvenirs. We then walked up to the Queen’s Park Savannah which is where Carnivale is held every year. It is basically just this really big open park area. We started to walk all the way around it, but soon realized how big it was. It was huge! It is considered one of the largest roundabouts in the world because it is only one-way traffic. We quickly decided to turn back instead of continuing on that part of our adventure. We then kept an eye out for native foods. We saw signs for Chinese food or for KFC (they are on every corner here), but we wanted something that we couldn’t get at home. For lunch I had a chicken pie (not like pot pie) it’s this doughy pastry thing, with chicken inside. It was really good. It is considered a Trinidadian specialty. I also had passion fruit juice with it. I later found Ribena (blackcurrant juice)!!! This is one of my favorite types of juice now, but you can barely find it in the U.S. The only place I have ever found it was the international foods section of Wegmans, only because Wegmans is the best place ever. For those of you who have never been to Wegmans you are missing out. It is only the best grocery store EVER located all over upstate New York. Anyways, after lunch we were getting pretty tired, and one of the girls in my group had to go back to the boat to go on a trip that afternoon. When we got back to the boat we were exhausted from being in the heat for about 4 hours! After we showered and everything I taught my friend Sarah how to play Canasta. We started playing on the pool deck, but every so often a big gust of wind would come and blow all of the cards away. We decided to move inside to the AC to finish our game in peace. After Canasta it was naptime!! I turned on Princess Diaries and didn’t get through more than the first 20 minutes of it. After dinner I came back and did all of my work so that I wouldn’t have to do any work the next day, but I was practically falling asleep. I felt like I was 100 years old!! I couldn’t stay up any longer and managed to go to sleep at 8:30PM maybe 9:00PM