Blanch She Cher’s April 19
This title pronounces the town. Blanchisseuse means “washer-woman,“ which shows how little some French surveyor thought of this old hunting settlement, or how impressed he was by one woman. With a population reported to be about 3000, it qualifies as the biggest town on the north coast of Trinidad, but those numbers cannot possibly be right—there is almost no one to be seen. To the east, all roads end, as the Northern Range pushes against the ocean, creating twenty miles of lost coast until the Toco Road begins in Matelot.
My old friends Steve and Sue trek into the bush with me. The Saddle Road from Maraval climbs over the hills and winds past Maracas Bay and Las Cuevas, Thousand Steps at Mitchell Trace, and the aptly named fishing village of Filette, where the only market is also the living room of a family home—$12 TT for water, a Mauby, and a game show on TV. After a 1.5-hour drive from Port of Spain, we reach the Yarrow River, which is low. The vegetation grows more dense, and the roadway continues to narrow, until a sliver of a village appears, perched a hundred feet above the water—Blanchisseuse. The town has a few rum shops and tiny markets, as well some sturdier structures: primary school, secondary school, police, health centre, and at least one hotel.
The road continues above the coast as a good dirt track. Around the corner from the hotel, the pavement ends at a bridge across a tidal creek. Downstream is a lagoon to a sand spit, upstream a good trail to a waterfall, a 15-minute walk. A mile beyond here, the road crosses an easy trail down to a small beach, enclosed by jagged schist and silk cotton trees. Twenty minutes more walking lead to a bigger beach and plenty of solitude. The current is strong. The trees erupt with cicada—some sound like circular sprinklers, others like the shrieks of sirens. Cuban embassy workers might complain of headaches.
We find modest lodging at Laguna Mar Hotel, just east of town. For only $550 TT, we get ac and a blanket on request, but no wifi. We also receive the bare minimum of lighting, shower pressure, and toilet function, but it is otherwise lovely. Steve finds a small tan scorpion on their bed. Pinky, the manager and cook, announces the evening meal at Coco’s Hut to be stewed pork and dumplings, until it becomes fish and paw paw by dinnertime. Breakfast is served at 9 am, until it is cancelled, directing us to a fried chicken shack next to the police station. If you crave good Trinidad cuisine, go elsewhere.
The second guest house is tucked into the forest, next to a spring and a sixy-foot mango tree. The small fruit are green and hard, and they deliver a thundering wallop on the metal roof. Beneath the canopy, little bats dart about like the insects they are chasing. In the dark overcast, they fly even during the day. Giant bamboo bouquets heave and crash in the wind like a bad roof rafter. This is the first decent rain in months.
Two green eyes beam at me from the doormat. Then the lights go off, then on again, then off again, and then the beetle takes flight. In the air, the posterior, or bamsy, glows yellow. This is some kind of bioluminescent cockroach. The flickering eyes are not really eyes at all but wing modifications, although the whole thing resembles a haunted electric mask. This bug is fooling us.
The beachfront contains an eclectic mix of small family dwellings, vacation houses, and works in incremental progress. One villa never quite came to fruition, its naked frame turned green from jungle reclamation. The grey walls of the surrounding bluff are gneiss, though with no mica flakes detected in the sand, and ribbed with white quartz dikes, so says my geologist friend Sue.
The lagoon is shallow and clear and filled with tadpoles. I take care to avoid the bugs scattering at my feet when I realize they are pea-size frogs—numbering in the hundreds, hopping over sand grains as big as washing machines, and escaping the menacing shadow of a skyscraper in sneakers. No sign of caimans, as usual.
Heavy overcast obscures a full moon at midnight. But for my two friends, the beach is devoid of people, but not of turtles. Tractor tyre tracks lead from the water, in swishes, to level dry ground, where we face a 400-pound leatherback making snow angels in the sand. She is the size of a 2-door refrigerator, an inflatable teenage mutant ninja, squeezed into vested armor. Her chubby front flippers barely touch the ground, unlike her rear legs, where all the action is happening: quick sweep to clear, insert egg, quick sweep to cover, and push on to the next lay, a few inches away. She huffs audibly with each thrust, and I feel a strong urge to step back, to do no harm, however much I want to run up and hug this magnificent creature.
The moon is gone. Only a few lights from Blanchisseuse shine on the water. Three-foot breakers curl like silver snakes. In the crashing surf, I see another leatherback, tossing about like flooded furniture. Each wave gets her a little closer to her nursery, after the most remarkable journey, to exactly where she started. I remember not to use my headlamp anywhere near turtles, so I turn it off, but it was already off, so it goes on instead. Mortified, I click it off, but one click is brighter, so I click again, on again, off again, like a damned Morse signal. The turtle looks over in my direction. I run off to find Steve and Sue, but it is too late. She is gone when we return.
At the hotel, Pinky and her girls are excited about the return of the leatherbacks, particularly for the business, although for the turtles there was never a question about returning. Here they were hatched and, forty years later, here they come again. The beach is littered with torn eggshells the size of ping pong balls. The texture is smooth and rubbery. They look like ruptured white balloons in the sand, as if a baby’s birthday party was ruined.
Bang! Another mango hits the metal roof. One of these is going to hurt.