Thanks to Willie on Leahona for remembering everything in this blog!
Our first stop was a breakfast of “doubles.” A double is a sort of sandwich, only instead of bread, they use a fluffy ,savoury pancake mixture. The filling is chick peas and the topping (of any of a variety of spicy chutneys like mango or tamarind) oozes out, over and through the flat bread and down your shirt. There is no being “neat” with a double.
After our “first” breakfast, Jesse stopped to buy some “plums” from a street vendor. We all thought, “Oh, good… fruit.” Not. The plum turned out to be a “coolie” plum, a small green olive-sized fruit with a hard seed inside. These were marinated in vinegar, olive oil, coriander, garlic, hot peppers and who knows what else, and burned your lips. They were delicious.
We headed east on the Eastern Main Road and then on Valencia Road to the town of Valencia which used to house a US Army base. The only remnants of the base are some stone pillars marking the entrances to the old base, and a slew of bars and barbecue restaurants. In Valencia, we stopped for our second “breakfast” of BBQ pigtails and mango slushies. From Valencia, we continued east on the Valencia Road then south on the Toco Main Road looping back through Sangre Grande (where we hit a mini-traffic jam next to the bus terminal) to Sangre Chiquita. Both towns are so named (“big blood” and “little blood”) because of Ameri-Indian massacres that occurred there. Jesse gets hungry in the traffic jam at Sangre Chiquita so we stop for a lunch of fried delicacies.
We observed many houses with Hindu prayer flags and Frangipani in their yards. Each coloured prayer flag is aimed at a specific deity for a specific purpose, such as health or harmony. The Frangipani is supposed to keep your daughter from marrying too young.
Back on the Eastern Main Road, we headed southeast to the beach at Lower Manzanilla. This is a lovely beach with excellent restrooms, showers and changing facilities, friendly lifeguards, warm waters and gentle waves. After a refreshing swim, we headed south along the coast on the Toco Main and Manzanilla Main roads to Mayaro where we spotted a little shack that said “Cold Nuts”.
The Rasta Man hacked an opening in the top of the coconuts so we could drink the coconut water, then split the coconuts so we could eat the jelly and meat inside. He also had hot peppers for sale, but we passed on those, our lips still tingling from all the other spicy stuff we had eaten earlier. Jesse next stopped at a sweet stand to get Pholourie Dipped in Very Hot Sauce. Eaten without the ’Hot Sauce’ they were sweet and tasty. Feeling guilty about all that fried stuff we were eating, we practically begged Jesse to stop for bananas at the next food vendor we came across. He selected some Grand Michelle bananas which were just as Bananas ought to taste straight from the tree.
We drove through Rio Claro past mosques, two high schools letting out their students and another jam of traffic. Continuing west, we passed a “cocoa house” where the roof slides to create a drying area for the cocoa beans. We also passed lots of teak trees and logs waiting to be exported. In the middle of nowhere just east of Brickfield we came across Harry’s Water Park. Thinking it might be a good place to find restrooms (we were due again), we stopped. In addition to clean restrooms, we found a bar (finally – a Carib!) and a restaurant. We ate the most incredible curried duck and some delicious stewed pork bits.
Still heading west, our next stop was to buy a six-foot length of sugar cane from a roadside vendor. We stopped for another pit stop at Jesse’s uncle’s house where he borrowed a machete to peel the sugar cane and he taught us how to suck on the cane, and how to eat the cocoa beans right out of the pod. While we were there, Nana bought a bunch of coriander from a street vendor and we all took turns smelling it. Heading north again, we bought some sweet boiled corn.
Back in Carenage, we topped off our binge-eating tour with homemade cherry coconut, ginger coconut and rum raisin ice cream. Thank you, Jesse, for showing us your beautiful island and treating us to its marvellous sights, tastes and smells. It was a wonderful day!
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