Macqueripe June 14
I take advantage of the day off with an early morning jaunt over to Macqueripe Beach, a small rocky cove on the north shore. On the way, a roadside food stand at the agriculture station is serving breakfast on plastic tables—bussupshuts with pasty chana, coarse mango chutney with shards of pit sharp enough pierce a tongue, buttery diced cassava, pumpkin, lentils, stewed plantains, salt fish, shepherd pie, jerk chicken, oxtail gravy. Somehow each heaping plate must also accommodate a giant wedge of dry coconut flatbread, simply called “bake.“ The coffee is instant, the juice is watery syrup. There is plenty, it is cheap, all are content, even happy.
Twenty-dollars TT is the going unposted price to park at the head of Tucker Valley. This marks the end of the old estate road, which bridges the north-westernmost tip of Trinidad. The plantation-turned-parkland marks the shortest route from the Gulf of Paria (to the south) and the Caribbean Sea (to the north). The Tobago Ferry cruises across the horizon on its 2-3 hour journey. Such a familiar sight will eventually be a thing of the past, as Toco Bay has been approved as the site of a new port on the northeast point, inching out Salybia (pronounced Sally-Bay) and Grande Riviere (Grand Revere) due to turtle sensitives and practical limitations. Toco will then become industrialized and populated, and a unique rural lifestyle will succumb to the hungers of development.
The small cove of Macqueripe (Macker-reap) is lined with cretaceous shale ledges. Brown seaweed is exposed by the receded tide. Too slick to safely negotiate, the white-guano headlands offer respite for frigates, cormorants, and pelicans, while the turbid green surf crashes over frothing red-clawed crabs. Close by, on the beach, grandma is landing a small eel with a home-made drop line, knife at the ready, while the grandsons play atop collapsed stone arches. Her half-naked and legless husband holds a drop line from his wheelchair, which is buried to its axils in wet sand. A wave pours past him, glittering with minnows, but the corroding wheels only sink deeper and hold fast. The grandkids will eventually have to pry him loose, but for now he seems satisfied to be surrounded by ocean.
In the parking lot above, dueling limes compete with blasting soundtracks—Soca and Dancehall from the Afro side, Chutney from the Indo side—and the Indo-Trini’s have the louder speakers. Wailing singers project shrieks and trills over the monotonous, trance-inducing pings and knocks of tabla. All of this happens in one unchanging infernal chord, with a scale of 12 or 13 notes. I cannot imagine how Sir George ever found delight in this music. And while I realize I will not be here to learn how this eternal song ends, I nevertheless pray for Vishnu to make it stop.
Until the Americans were gone for good in the 60’s, Macqueripe Beach was especially popular with the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys of Company B. Trini’s were expressly forbidden back then, as the entire Chaguaramas (Shagger-ram-us) Peninsula was effectively occupied by the military, both during and after the war. Rusted iron pieces from the U-Boat defense lines are planted about the encroaching jungle, like post-apocalyptic ornaments.
No one apparently has any interest in the towering zip line today. If they did, they might catch sight of the forest monkeys, whose low-frequency howls resonate like distant thunder, or the pesky parrot pairs, with their scratchy metallic songs of love. Giddy children shout at the waves, while their moms chatter and check their phones on the sand. Under a dripping seawall, a couple of vagabond-types puff reefer and discuss the future. Grandpa hollers excitedly to the fallen arch from his wheelchair, and the boys come running. He has both hands on his fishing spool and something big on the other end. No signs yet of a periscope.