A Little Legwork & A Day at the Beach

Good day, my friends. I hope today is a pleasant one for you. As I begin today's story, I'd first like to send a bit of positive energy your way. I hope you can accomplish all that you set out to do in the day ahead.

So, friends, I've got a question. Do you hike? And if you do and you'd have to choose, which will you prefer: a day hiking or a day at the beach? Recently, my family had the opportunity to experience both in one day and I think I can safely say that everyone in our party firmly prefers a day at the beach. Here's what happened.

Recently, my family and I undertook to go on a hike to the waterfalls in my country. The waterfalls we agreed to visit was the Maracas Waterfalls in St Joseph.

The entire trip turned out to be a comedy of errors, but we had tons of fun and a delicious meal after. So here's what happened. Because we had never hiked to waterfalls before, in fact we had never hiked before to begin with, we had zero expectations.

I blush to admit this here, but I honestly thought it would just be a matter of driving up to the park, and maybe a five minutes walk to the waterfall and that would be it.

We didn't think the Maracas Waterfalls would be strange because Trinidad is a small island and we were familiar with Maracas Beach pictured below, and since they both shared the same name, "Maracas", how different could they be, right?

To answer the above question: VERY different.

It was a simple hike, I admit, but to novices, it was a lot. I tried to be cheerful and encouraging, but it was a grumbling party all the way to the waterfall.

My son, for example, wanted to know if we were going to the waterfalls to bathe, why couldn't we just do that in the shower.

My mom was pissed. We were walking at a snail's pace, navigating the nature trail and still she felt that we were moving too quickly. She grumbled and grumbled and grumbled and trailed us by several feet.

No one cared to look at the natural surroundings because, I forgot to mention this bit, it had rained that morning so the trail was muddy and everything felt damp.

Eventually though, we got to the waterfalls and, well, you saw our expectations above, right?

This is what we saw:

That early in the morning, it was about eight o' clock by the time we arrived, we were the only people there, 25 minutes into the bushes in the Northern Range with not a soul around. The air was cold, the water droplets freezing, the rocks were extremely slippery, and it wasn't like a gushing waterfall. It wasn't Niagara, if you get what I'm saying.

And so, mom was annoyed. And after my son attempted to climb one of the rocks, keeled over and busted his toe, she insisted that we retrace our path back down the hill so that we could head to the beach instead.

I really tried to make the most of the moment, guys. I talked about the clean air and the spirituality and the peacefulness, and my mom was like, "I want to go! This place has S-N-A-K-E-S!"

And so we left with the procession following the same order that we climbed the hills- the party in front and my mom trailing several feet behind. Now, wouldn't you know, guys, we were just halfway down the hill, when we observed that there was a snake in our path.

It was a little baby snake to be honest, a garden snake. And so my niece who was with us observed, "Oh, guys, be careful not to touch the rocks at the side of the hill, look there's a snake."

And sure enough, the snake was poking its head out and looking at us, it almost looked like a vine.

My friends, my mom heard the word snake and yowled!

Listen, my mom is very devout. She goes to church religiously on Sundays. She is always praising God, always singing, always instructing us on the Word and His ways, but in my entire life up until that moment, I never knew that my mom practiced glossolalia, the practice of speaking in tongues. That morning on the walk back from the waterfall though, she did.

She leaped into the air, yowled and was like, "Ashalabalalala!" And then, my friends, hands to heart, I swear, my mom who was several feet behind us, pushed past us like she was on a skateboard and she sped all the way down the hill so quickly, none of us could keep up. The entire group collapsed into laughter. We called after her, but mom refused to look back, she just kept pumping, knees to chest, guys. Eventually, we met her back at the car and suffice to say, she was not amused.

Well, we did recover from this incident though. We went to the beach instead, and everyone had tons of fun, and then we had a lunch of paratha roti, curried chicken and mango sauce and it was delicious.

And so, my friends, as most tales go, all's well that ends well. One thing is for certain though, my mom's not going to be joining us on any nature hikes any time in the future. And personally, though I don't mind hiking every now and again, I must confess that I prefer the beach too. But please tell me, what you prefer.

Thanks for reading, my friends. I truly appreciate your time and attention.