Somehow, we lost March on this blog - even though(or perhaps because) the month was full of trips and visits: Nick Reale blitzed both Trinidad and Tobago - surfing, climbing the highest peak, beaching it at Maracas - all much to the delight of his cousins. Dawn and Maryellen returned with Peter and Pesche for a week on Tobago: will try to catch up with details and more pix later.
Good Friday found us (with Catherine's girl friends from Hopewell along) hiking the forests along the Rio Secco, swimming in a beautiful waterfall pool and the kids joining the Trini kids in climbing up the waterfall for a death defying leap into the pool below - all survived, with Catherine leading the way. That night we went to the beach at Matura, and witnessed a wonderful spectacle of a leatherback turtle laying her eggs. Truly tremendous. And she did it surrounded by 50 people (sort of like giving birth in a NYC subway station). The naturalists assured us that once the laying process began, she was oblivious to our presence. The turtle was probably 700-800 pounds, and deposited around 80-120 eggs before she left the beach, only to return several more times before the season ends to do it again. The glow of witnessing this event was somewhat diminished as we walked off the beach, and passed the body of another turtle who had drowned several days earlier in a fisherman's net just offshore the nesting beach: after millions of years of existence, still very imperiled.
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