Travel with JoY

I'm sitting up in bed in our little cottage in Trinidad, writing this post. One of the things I find so amazing is that there is no glass in the window behind me. A bat just flew in and flew out the french door at my side. I'm inside a mosquito net in a sleeveless gown, barefoot and very comfortable after a shower. It was a bit warm today, maybe up to 85 or so, but we rarely felt it since we are under the canopy of large trees and our deck is on the north side of the house. I painted out there today while Yata wrote a song in the study, a room with another glass-less window overlooking the plains and mountains to the north. This sort of lodging wouldn't be for everyone; in fact, Nick, our son, asked me how we kept the rats out. Actually, we have a resident guard cat Lulu and two dogs besides. There are too many dogs in our neighborhood, a common problem on many of our trips to less developed countries. But regardless of the bats, and such, we love being in such c

We've been here for over two weeks now. There is a really thriving art and music scene here. Almost daily we meet more artists: painters, musicians, potters, writers, film-makers and more. Rory and Bunty took us to a concert at the National Academy of Performing Artists for a concert of the faculty and some visiting faculty from the US. We followed that up with a trip a few blocks away to the “pan yard” of Phase II, one of the favorite Pan drum Orchestras. They were in “practice-mode” preparing for the first phase of competition which will culminate in a huge show, Pandemonium, in the main open air stadium downtown Port of Spain in less than a month. Pan orchestras are something really exceptional about Trinidad. They are made up of up to 125 players playing anywhere from two to nine drums at a time. Each drummer's drums are positioned into a metal rack on wheels. They practice their one song that they will compete with each year, specially composed for them, over a

Trinidad I Yes, we are in the West Indies, Trinidad to be exact, having come from frosty Wisconsin (WI) we are lavishing in tropical warmth, barefoot. Sorry to incite any envy, but how else can I tell you what we are doing without mentioning this. The weather is one of the main reasons we leave WI in the winter. But the weather has been interesting here. It's supposed to be the beginning of the dry season but instead the rainy season is lingering into January. What that means is that its been raining a lot! A couple days this week it rained in sheets most of the day and all night. The ground is soggy and the air is humid to say the least. We tried to go for a walk but got rained on and came back to our sweet cottage. The cottage is situated on a four acre tropical garden in the center of the country, in the countryside. We have a deck off the kitchen which looks out towards the hilly grasslands and to the mountain range in the north. Trinidad is also a bird watcher's

Trinidad Tobago in the south eastern Caribbean was our destination. We were flying out of way sub zero Wisconsin. The morning we left to catch our airport shuttle to MSP it was 17 below zero Fahrenheit. So cold that when you drew air in to breath, it actually made your cold-sensitive teeth ache. That was a first! But we could put up with that knowing we'd soon be in a steady equatorial climate, warm and humid, for two months! I was transporting artist's materials (warned not to tell TSA that they are paint) acrylics to be exact. I have been a watercolorist – the easiest to travel with, an oil painter- not so easy- and a pastel artist- the pastel sticks show up on the xray machines looking like bullets or shells as they are composed of heavy metals such as cadmium and cobalt-which need to be left out like a lap top if carrying through security. I have recently started using acrylics which have the advantage, or disadvantage of drying quickly. I hadn't had