Trinidad

The extraordinary Carnival of Port of Spain

Trinidad is Tobago's big sister, industrial and wild, 1 300 000 inhabitants for 5000 km², its capital Port of Spain, just a few miles from Venezuela, south of a string of islands including Grenada, Sainte Lucie or Barbados.

Trinidad, its oil and 1/3 rd of forest, the district of Laventille and the Hayatt hotel, the fords of the seventies and the japenese RVS, the seafront of port of Spain and Diego Martin, heat and alcohol... its excesses and its schoolgirls in their pleated shirts, the expensive flag of Trinidad and the compulsary watertanks, the beaches of Marracas Bay and the wine mesked bars, energy and lime, the american style houses, the humble metal lodgings, the modern complex of movie town, the shops of Charlotte Street or of Savannah, TT dollars and the cost of housing. 

Trinidad is also the magic of the moment when the lute turttles lay their eggs, rhum and beer... athletics and cricket, its bake and sharks, Port of Spain and its protective dirigible... its mounted police.

The variety of the island landscape carries us from an emotion to another one without transition, its an exuberant, showy, noisy, exciting and unstable island. Its multicultural, beautiful and rebellious and the different social classes don't mix much. The link, beyond religions that brings people together and unites all the Trinidians, is the music/carnival couple which determines rhythm and beat to life.The carnival is a few days of madness, exuberance but it's also months of preparation and months of waiting; it's a continuum, a perpetual movement.

The carnival is passionnante and says something about the irrationality of mankind ...