Asa Wright Nature Center

We had a restful morning before dinghying ashore and picking up the hire car. Looking at the map we decided to drive to the Asa Wright Nature Center and, if time permitted, see something else on the way back. Because of the traffic it took us over 2 hours to get to the center. The center focuses on bird watching and has a number of tours throughout the day. The next and final tour was at 1:30 so we decided to have lunch there and wait for the tour. While we waited for the tour to start we were able to observe a number of birds from the veranda of the nature center. Oddly enough we bumped into a few fellow cruisers who had arrived the previous day and stayed the night, among them being Jackie and Gary from Inspiration Lady.

The tour turned out to be quite interesting. The first thing we were shown was what looked like a foot path through the undergrowth. It turned out to be a leaf cutter ant trail.

It was quite fascinating to see the ants carrying their snipped off leaves, often with other ants riding atop the leaves to guard against wasp which liked to lay eggs on the leaves which would subsequently hatch in the ant nest. We were later shown the nest soldiers which had formidable mandibles which apparently had the ability to cut right through flesh. We didn’t try that out.

Being terrible about remembering the names of things I can’t give all the names of the birds. We saw a couple of nocturnal birds that would stand on top of vertical branches during the day looking very much like an extension of the branch.

Towards the end of the walk we heard and saw a bearded bellbird way up in the trees. It’s call was extremely loud. I thought it would make an effective bilge alarm.

It was three O’clock by the time the walk had finished so we had to dash off to do shopping. We ended up having a brief look at the Falls Mall before shopping at the large Hi Lo next door. We bought a lot of stuff – particularly non-perishable items – as some things are a lot cheaper here in Trinidad and we had the car which made things a lot easier. By the time we had everything loaded on the boat we were exhausted so we ate and went to bed early.

Looking at the weather forecast today it’s almost certain we’ll be sailing to Grenada tonight. We’re looking forward to getting back as we do prefer it there. We have more friends there and we hear the carnival atmosphere is building up. Now that we have the freezer running I’m keen to replace the house batteries which I need to do in Grenada. So today will be clearing up the boat, making her ready for the trip, clearing out and collecting our wine. I will need to bend the lids of the starboard battery boxes so I can fit them properly.  I may make the second battery box if we have time and may also start on their lids too.