Mixin' it up

Monkey Business: 14 May 08

Waterloo Mandir

And so the journey continues, which literally means there are too many photos for one post…

After the heady excitement of the Pitch Lake, we took an unofficial stop at a “puja shop” to buy a prayer flag for Penawar’s garden (and taste even more snacks).  Back on the bus, Jesse drove us north along an interesting coastal corridor.  This took us past busy oil refineries (a source of this country’s wealth) and huge industrial depots, through open fields that were recently once home to large sugar cane plantations and into pretty fishing villages.  Trinidad isn’t a huge island; it would only take a few hours to drive from one side to the other.

Shiva guards the Mandir entrance

At the village of Waterloo, we pulled into the Siew Dass Sadhu Temple, a white onion domed structure at the end of a pier built out into the shallow Gulf of Paria.  This temple took Siew Dass, an indentured Indian labourer some 25 years to build by hand. It's certainly a monument to resilience in the face of adversity.  His dream project finally came to fruition many years later when in 1995 it became part of a Government project to celebrate the 150^th year of Indian arrival in Trinidad.  Now it is a meditative temple, home to expressive statues of Hindu gods and the site of an open-air crematorium.  Colourful prayer flags flap in trade winds – petitions for prosperity and good fortune, while surrounding mudflats are a peaceful home to a large array of Trinidad’s birdlife.

Hanuman Murti

A little further on, we saw monkeys.  Well one big one actually!  Eighty-five feet in all, the Hanuman Murti stands in colourful splendour, looking over a bright pink and very intricate Hindu Temple.  I felt as if I was suddenly whisked back to Delhi!  Did I have my cute little ruby slippers on that day?  No, but isn’t it interesting to see how life is cut, styled and moulded by cultural differences.  The Caribbean zest for colour just cannot be contained.  Now that’s deep for a post and for 5am on a Tuesday morning!

How is this for a tropical flower?