Trinidad

Can you believe it is 2009? We had quite a nice dinner and celebration on board ship last night. Today we got an update on our injured passengers. The lady with the broken hip was air lifted from Santarem today and on her way to USA. The gentleman that was air lifted actually went to French Guiana, he received a blood transfusion and is stable.

We arrived in Trinidad late because of the delays but no one was upset as we are all glad of the good outcome of the medical problems. It was pouring rain as we pulled in as you will see from the photos on webshots. We went on our bird tour anyway, to see the roosting of the scarlet ibis. The Scarlet ibis is the national bird of Trinidad and Tobago and as so is protected so it has flocks of hundreds of thousands. Each evening they come to roost in the mangrove swamp and we were there to watch it happen. The photos just cannot even hint at the majesty of the scene. The white herons arrive first and dot the trees and then the reds start coming. The white birds move into the inner tree branches so that eventually all you have are the reds. It looks, from a distance, like red bows all over the trees. Just watching them arrive in ones, two and big flocks is a wonder of nature. We could hear them from across the lake and I bet it is quite noisy up close. As we sat there watching the sun appeared and so too did a rainbow which went from shore to shore on the lake. Then it was time to leave before darkness caught us in the swamp. As we left the swamp we had sunset so Jack tried to capture it too. Back to the ship and a nice warm dinner. Tomorrow we need to get up at 6am as our tour starts at 7:45am. One week left and it will be hectic as we do an island a day. I wondered if I could last for 3 weeks on a cruise and now find that I cannot believe there are just 7 days left. We have been enjoying hearing of the adventures of our fellow passengers and feel like real newbies to traveling the world when we hear their stories. So many take 3-5 trips a year. Several are headed straight to another cruise ship in Fort Lauderdale when we get back. Must be nice to be able to travel like that, but I do wonder if you get tired of not going home occasionally? Maybe some day we will be able to try that too!