Blanchiseuse on Trinidad's North coast

[s] - a quick note while awaiting the ferry!
We have arrived in Trinidad and spent the first night at a Benedictine Guest house near a monastery on the southern edge of the Northern range. The view over the plains was spectacular, but Cath did not see many birds, though we had a couple of nice hikes among the forested valleys.
We then traveled by bus via Port of Spain to Blanchiseuse, on the North coast. This has a very pretty sandy beach as well as some potential for hiking. It was not safe to swim in the sea as the surf is very strong (we did paddle) but we hiked up to a nearby river pool and had a swim under a small waterfall. Cathy did the whole thing and climbed up to an upper pool and was washed down the waterfall (more accurately waterslide) more or less inadvertently due to the strong flow of the river - rather painful in fact.
In the evening we went to look for leatherback turtles which lay their eggs on the beach at night during March. As we were walking along at 9:20 PM (in the dark) we noticed something throwing sand about. Briefly I though it was a person lying there and idly throwing sand down the beach but we quickly realised that it was a smallish leatherback turle preparing the hole for its eggs. The animal was about five feet long and has large front flippers that it uses to move about the beach and create the initial pit, while it uses its back flippers to dig the deeper hole for the eggs, and we watched while it completed the hole, laid its eggs and then covered them up, a process that took until nearly 11:00 pm. It then move back into the sea and disappeared. This was a very memorable experience - these animals come from as far away as Australia.

Later we hiked part of the way to Paria along the north coast l (there is no road for about 25 miles). The trails in Trinidad were made for shifting cocoa crops to the processing stations. However little or no cocoa is grown now and all the chocolate is imported.

We are now heading for Charlotteville at the east end of Tobago, but will first take the 5 pm ferry from POS to Scarborough, Tobago.

We are sorry to hear that Claire is in hospital and hope she will improve.