Another Saturday Adventure

To celebrate the first day of our 3 week Christmas vacation, we decided to head east of Port of Spain to Arima, and the Arima Horse Club Track to catch a few races. Although we are used to harness racing in Ontario, we quickly adjusted our betting strategies to match those of turf track races, where jockeys actually ride the horses.

The afternoon proved to be really enjoyable. The grandstand was coolish (probably 29C) with a nice breeze and a great view of mountains in the distance. There was a solid crowd of people, dominated by men. We got a huge kick out of a group of 4 that had a 40 ouncer of Jack Daniels stuffed into a back pack, complete with cups, mix and ice. I guess that is acceptable behaviour??? It was pretty obvious that not a lot of foreign women turn up at the track, so a few people seemed super friendly to me and less so to Paul.

I'm proud to say that once I settled in and got into my gambling groove, my strategy of selecting a horse by its name and colour worked wonders. In the last 2 races, I turned $15 into $26. That might seem like a big win, and it is in my head, but to convert Trinidad & Tobago dollars into Canadian, you divide each by $5, so I walked away with a whopping $2!!! Ok, we may have lost a bit on 2 other races but you didn't want to hear about that.

On our drive back home, we diverted off the main highway in search of the Maracas waterfall. Our car has been acting up a little so we figured a cool down period would do it a world of good. We eventually reached the end of the road that our car could handle and were just about to park on the road side when a young girl walked out of her house to greet us. She informed us that it would be unsafe (for foreigners) to hike to the waterfall or leave our car on the roadside. But for $150 TT she would be our guide and allow us to park the car in her yard. We agreed and off we walked, with 4 sketchy, scrawny, and smelly dogs in toe.

We were half hoping - half expecting a swimming pool at the bottom of the waterfall but when we arrived, there was not much water pooling. Instead there was a team of 5 people filming an environmental documentary about "must see" places in Trinidad. We were told this segment on the Maracas Waterfall would air on Canadian TV sometime in 2015. Watch for us!

On our hike back to the car (which incidentally was perfectly safe), we diverged off to find another waterfall with a nice little pool for swimming. This made the hike complete, and we managed to ditch the one-eyed, rail thin dog that was still accompanying us. I don't think we took a picture of this dog, as we didn't want to scare you or have you unsubscribe from our blog.

Stay tuned for more reports. We are heading to Tobago next week just before Christmas and then to St. Lucia after Christmas.

We hope all is well with you. Enjoy the holiday season and Merry Christmas!

Gayle and Paul