It was once more adventure time for me when I left Ocean Reef, via the Upper Keys Transportation Service, for the Miami airport to catch a 1: 30 PM flight for Port Of Spain, Trinidad.  My destination was the Asa Wright Nature Centre, famed for its teeming bird life.  I was joining a one week tour offered by the Caligo agency in Armonk, N.Y.   They specialize in Trinidad and Tobago tours and had advertised in Bird Watcher’s Digest a one week trip to the A.W.N.C.  The all expense tour included board and room, guiding, and air fare from Miami.  Jim decided that would be the perfect Christmas present for me, while his present would be a week of peace and quiet at home.  At the airport I checked in at British West Indies Airways and then found a quiet seat where I could eat my sandwich and apple juice that I had packed along in a paper bag.  Airport restaurants have never been favorites of mine and the people-watching is great seated along the sidelines.  Among other things, I saw an elderly couple fall off the two bottom steps of the escalator.  Fortunately they were not hurt but there was a lot of frantic fussing about by airport officials.  When my flight was boarded on time at 2 o’clock, I was pleasantly surprised, as several people had said that BeeWee, as B.W.I.A. is called, often ran late, often very late.  I also expected a second class plane, but not so.  The carrier was new and lovely and the service was excellent.  The flight was comfortable but long (5 hours?) as Trinidad lies just off the coast of Venezuela in South America.  We made three stops on the way, Antigua, St. Kitts, and St. Lucia, where a large number of passengers got off.  They were a diving tour, my seat mate told me.  He and his wife were part of the group. 

During the flight, I noticed a young woman seated with a much older man.  It occurred to me that they might be headed for Asa Wright too, and this turned out to be the case as we landed in Trinidad and got acquainted at the baggage claim at Piarco airport.  My fellow travelers were Polly Treadway and her father Bill Lord.  They are from Maine and New Hampshire respectively.  Their flight had been much more strenuous than mine, as they had left Portland in the wee hours to catch their Miami flight in New York.  After going through customs, we were met by Singh, one of the drivers for the Centre.  By that time it was completely dark as Trinidad is one time zone ahead of Florida.  We set out from the airport and soon were in sparsely populated country.  The Nature Centre is only about an hour’s drive from Port of Spain but the road becomes narrow and twisted as it enters the private compound of the former plantation which was our destination.  The Asa Wright Centre is in a mountainous area that is the northeastern spur of the Andes.  The mountains are not high, possibly 1200 to 2000 feet, and are covered with thick tropical growth.  This surrounding rainforest created an air of mystery as we went up the hairpin turns in the road.  When we arrived,  I was greeted at my cottage by the manager, Wilfred, a man of East Indian descent, as is forty percent of the population of Trinidad.  He bowed and introduced himself and showed me the tray in my room containing a sandwich and a hot water jug for tea.  All the late arrivals at the Centre are greeted in this courteous way.  I was rather tired but more fortunate than some of our group who arrived at three and four in the morning.  Did Wilfred greet them too?  My double room and bath, for which I had to pay a single supplement, was in one of the older cottages.  It had all the basic comforts but was not luxurious by any standards.  Later in the week, I had a chance to see one of the newer cottages and it was much nicer, with a porch and an extra washbowl.

During the night, just as I was going to sleep, I heard raucous noises in the trees next to my cottage, but that didn’t keep me from getting a good night’s rest as I was very tired.  I thought the noises might be monkeys, but learned later they were caused by Great Kiskadees roosting over my roof.  All the guest rooms are on the steep hill above the Centre.  I had to go down 30 stone steps to the main house for breakfast.  Food is served on a buffet and seating is family style at four large round tables.  Each has a Lazy Susan on which fresh condiments are set out for every meal.  At breakfast I met the rest of our group.  We introduced ourselves by first names and quickly established a friendly rapport.  They were all paired except me.  There was a mother and daughter, a father and daughter (my friends from the evening before), an American couple just retired after living many years in Brazil, an unmarried couple from the Bronx who are old hiking and birding pals.  A mixed bag if there ever was one.  About 8:30 we met Robert, our guide for the first day which was to be spent on the grounds of the Centre, exploring the many hiking trails.  We met on the verandah of the main house, which is the center of activities.  There he gave us some background on Springhill Plantation, now known as The Asa Wright Nature Center.  The house was built in 1903 and later purchased by the Wrights, an English couple who were looking for a house in the tropics for health reasons.  In 1967, after Mrs. Wright died, the plantation was bought for a nature center under a trust administered by the Bank of Nova Scotia.  Robert also told us what we might expect to see in the way of botanical and bird species.  Just 19, our guide is a native Trinidadian, and is being trained at the Centre by the older guides.  He already does a splendid job.  Springhill was a cocoa, coffee and citrus plantation but is now returning to natural rain forest.  As we set off on the trails, we saw birds, jungle plants, flowering trees, native butterflies, and a lot of creepy crawlies whose names I never learned.  It had been a wetter than usual rainy season and many of the trails were muddy.  We did a lot of slipping and sliding going up and down hill.  Part of each day was spent watching birds from the verandah.  On the terrace just below the big windows are several large wooden trays filled with fruit, as well as many nectar feeders.  It is possible to see a dozen species of birds at one time as there are medium size trees nearby in addition to the feeders.  Most of the birds I saw in Trinidad are Venezuelan species and were completely new to me.  Although we have a book of Venezuelan birds with colored plates which I studied before leaving home, it didn’t prepare me for the brilliant colors.  Iridescence can’t be captured in printer’s ink.  Purple Honeycreepers, Green Honeycreepers, and Blue Dacnis were a flash of color as they flew in and out, a dozen at a time.  Bananaquits, a species occasionally seen in Florida when one might blow over from the Bahamas, were too numerous to count.

On our second day, Wednesday, we met Joguie Ramlal, who is considered the most experienced bird guide in Trinidad.  We went in his van to Blanchisseuse beach on the north shore of the island, stopping often to look for birds along the way.  The road was winding with hairpin turns most of the way.  It was beautiful on the shore of the Caribbean but extremely windy.  There were no shore birds at all that day, which was a disappointment but we enjoyed our lunch on the beach.  The sandwiches were made of home baked bread and we had fresh pineapple as well.  We stopped for birds on the way back, returning to the center about 4:30.  At the end of each day of birding, people went to their rooms to rest until six o’clock when rum punches were served on the verandah before dinner at seven.  The conversation was mostly about the day’s events, the birds seen, the ones just missed, and the day’s count.  We all exchanged a few personal statistics so we knew where the others were from, at least geographically.  One lovely surprise at the Nature Centre was the food.  It was served Caribbean style, using the native fruits and vegetables.  Rice was served in the form of pilaus every day, accompanied by freshly made curries and other condiments.  There was an interesting native squash called Christophine [Chayote] that appeared in different dishes.  It grows uncultivated in open places and is free for anyone to pick.  All of the breads and pastries are baked in the Centre’s kitchen.  One day we were served a delicious green vegetable dish called callaloo which is made of taro leaves pureed with seasonings and offered in bowls like a thick soup.  The can of peanuts and bags of dried fruits I had brought along for emergency rations remained untouched in my room.  Besides three hearty meals a day we were also given afternoon tea on the verandah.  A fresh pastry was always served at that time.

On Thursday, Jogie was our guide again for a trip to Nariva swamp.  On the way we stopped at the government agriculture station where we saw several species of water birds that were new to me.  We birded along the way to the swamp area which is a vast section of wetlands at the eastern shore of the island.  There are huge mangrove trees with invasive root systems growing out of the water at the side of the road.  Again we had lunch at the Caribbean shore at a public park on the east side of the island.  Every day that we went out in Jogie’s van, Singh followed behind in his car carrying his food and water jugs.  In the afternoon we drove to a section of flooded rice fields to look for water birds.  We saw quite a few new species for the day.  All the houses in that area were on stilts and the roads were on top of causeways.  The people were East Indian and that particular group seemed to be living at the poverty level.  Our last stop of the day was at a coconut plantation at the shore.  We saw birds everywhere we went that day.  We totaled around fifty species.  When we were loading up for the trip home, I realized that I wasn’t feeling as well as usual.  The ride back to the Centre was about an hour and a half but seemed forever to me.  When we finally got there, I climbed up that long stairway and fell into bed.  I was sick in every way possible for a tourist.  When Polly came by to go to dinner, I told her no dinner and no trip the next day.  Wilfred was kind enough to send a tea tray to my room the next day and by dinner time I was able to get dressed and have soup in the dining room with the group.  That was when I found that I had picked the right day to be sick, as the trip to Aripo Savannah and Arena Forest had not been as productive as expected.  Also, two other birders in our group had been sick that day so I wasn’t the only one to miss the trip.  I was anxious to get my strength back as the next day, Saturday, was to be very strenuous as well as our last guided day.  A highlight of a visit to A.W.N.C. is a walk to Dunston Cave to see the Oilbirds.  This species is found in three places in Trinidad as well as parts of South America.  A very interesting bird, they were actually rendered for oil in the old days for use in lamps.  Now protected by law, they are making a comeback.  Oilbirds are large – eighteen inches long – and are the only night-flying, fruit-eating species of bird in the world.  They are shy and easily disturbed so trips to the cave are allowed only two or three times per week.  Dunston Cave is in a remote corner of the Asa Wright property and is about an hour’s walk from the main house.  As we approached the canyon in which the cave is located, the trail started to go down and down, twisting along the sides of the ravine and around huge boulders.  In many places the trail had disintegrated entirely because of the wet season.  It had been raining on and off all morning, which made the footing worse than usual.  We stopped about 50 feet from the entrance to the cave and then were taken to the opening by twos as that is all that may look in at one time.  The last few feet we leapt from boulder to boulder as water was rushing a foot deep around us.  Eliason and Robert were our guides that day.  They helped us in the rough spots and shined a flashlight on the birds as they roosted on a stone shelf.  Their eyes shone red in the light.  The climb back out of the chasm was very difficult and I felt it especially because of my illness the day before.  Bill Lord – 84 years old and sick the day before too – was an inspiration and I figured if he could  do it, so could I.  Sheer determination kept him going.  When we got back to the Centre, I passed out cold on my bed until lunch was served.  We departed then for Caroni Swamp on the west side of Trinidad.  It was about an hour’s ride in a van and Jogie was our guide once more.  We stopped at several places on the way, including the Port of Spain sewage ponds, where we saw a variety of water birds.  Arriving at Caroni about 4 P.M., we boarded a large open launch for a trip around the swamp, which stretches for miles and is dotted with mangrove islands.  We saw quite a few birds in these islands, including the elusive Potoo, which clings to the trunks of trees and is hard to see.  At 5:30 we were anchored in a bay to see the evening flight of the Scarlet Ibis.  They came in to roost in large numbers, wave after wave, hundreds at a time.  Their color is an astonishing brilliant red that makes an unforgettable sight against the green islands.  While we were anchored watching this grand finale to a glorious week, we were served doughnuts and rum punch, it being tea time.  I accepted the doughnut but turned down the punch.

On Sunday, our day on our own, I had firm intentions of taking a good rest, but when Polly Treadway suggested we walk down the Bellbird trail, I couldn’t resist.  We both wanted another look at the white-bearded mankins performing on their lek.  I was hoping for a sighting of the male bellbird, as earlier in the week I had seen only a female.  We could hear them going bonk-bonk in the jungle growth.  I finally did see one with the help of Elias who was taking a Victor Emmanuel group along the trail.

Our last dinner as a group was rather festive with lots of bird stories during the cocktail hour, then meeting new people who were just starting their adventure at the Centre.  There were birders from England, Germany, California and lots of other places I didn’t have time to learn about.  The next morning, I and my New England friends rose at 5 o’clock to be taken to the airport by Singh.  The night before, a tray had been brought to my room with a sandwich and a hot water jug for morning tea.  I put the sandwich in my bag and ate it when I got home that afternoon.  Headed back home on the wings of BeeWee, it was a good flight to Miami with one stop at Aruba.  It was truly a wonderful week.  I saw 94 species of birds, many tropical mammals and reptiles, and all those interesting people.

Betty Hughes Crall, January 1991