South Slope April 20
Last September, during the rainiest rainy season on record, the North Coast Road from Port of Spain collapsed 11 km from Maracas. Part of one lane was miraculously saved; or else, the country’s only route to the Caribbean would be the Blanchisseuse Road from Arima, 2.5 hr from the city, if traffic allows.
The Blanchisseuse Road cannot tolerate traffic. Most of it is closer to one lane than two, twisting into the low mountains from the sea, over potholes of uncertain depths, into a cloud forest at 1500 feet. 2 miles beyond the Marianne River (a wet jungle hike to a swimming hole and Avocat Falls), chop-and-burn fields and chickens signal our arrival at Morne La Croix and Brasso Seco, villages so decidedly isolated that Patois French is still the lingua franca, and electricity is a modern convenience to be resisted. There is a rum shop with morning customers. We exchange looks of stupefaction as we roll past.
The Asa Wright Nature Preserve encompasses more than a thousand acres in the upper Arima Valley, on the south slope of the Northern Range. In 1908, this was the Spring Hill Estate, which cultivated citrus, coffee, and cocoa, and it still serves what must be considered the best breakfast in the world. Before the Blanchisseuse Road existed, everything was hauled up to the British overlords from Arima by mule and German labor. Today such luxuries are served on sterling trays to European and American eco-tourists.
The plantation owners eventually lost the place to colonial taxes, and it was acquired by a Yankee oilman in 1936. He called it the Garden of Eden—secondary growth rainforest, richly watered, with a climax canopy of 150 feet. Duncan Cave is home to the rare Oilbird, the only nocturnal fruit-eating species with feathers to fly. They live only here and in Venezuela.
After the war, the New York Zoological Society purchased nearby land for a field station. Suddenly the oil executive and his wife had interesting neighbors, as visiting scientists and other naturalists of privilege became frequent guests at the old estate. The needs and means for preservation thus took root on site. The non-profit Reserve was formed in 1967. Its primary revenue stream is reported to be coffee.
The main house sits atop a spectacular ridge, alive with natural abundance—bird and butterfly species number in the hundreds, flowering plants in the thousands. The home is a substantial mud-plaster structure, with clean white paint, fine woodwork, elegant hallways, a kitchen, veranda, and a library with 16-foot ceilings, stocked with paperback fiction, reference books, and spotting scopes. Yes, I can live here. Rooms rent for $360 USD per night, where lucky guests are granted access to private trails, caves, waterfalls, and swimming holes. Good for them.
I stick to the road, joining a tailless agouti who hops away from the master house. I follow him on tar and into the rainforest, as a misty cloud bank descends. The generous residents have spread food all over—watermelon slices, nectar dispensers, green-rind oranges. Purple honeycreepers, bananaquits, tanagers, and a kaleidoscope of other small birds land on the melon, briefly dip their beaks, and fly away; that is, until two black crow-size Oropendolas crash the party. Their long straight yellow bills part, first to bark threateningly, then to devour the fruit without discrimination, dripping chunks of pink pulp on their yellow stockings. The agouti never had a chance at this feast.
In the early ’60's, renowned entomologist E.O. Wilson and his wife stayed at Spring Hill for two months, "as guests of an Icelandic native and widow named Asa Wright." It apparently had become a destination for "naturalists and serious birders from around the world." Just down the Arima Valley from there, through broken rain forests, Wilson spent time with naturalist William Beebe at his research station, Simla. Beebe apparently was quite well known and was buddies with Rudyard Kipling in his last year of life. Wilson must have been inhaling ants for those two months, though he doesn't really say much--though he does mention the vampire bats. He also makes the comment that "Asa Wright's retrograde colonial attitude towards the Trinidadians of color" made them feel like they had time warped back 50 years.