The Emperor Valley Zoo - Trinidad

Port of Spain, the capital of my beautiful republic of Trinidad and Tobago is home to the Emperor Valley Zoo.  Once again we were presented with a period of schlepping, our daughter this time, to summer camp and wanting of a time waster, lollygagger, shooting the breeze moment.  Well our daughter claimed that she had no interest in the zoo, as she was all zoo’d out, having visited several like locations stateside.  Our son, on the other hand, is absolutely intrigued by animals, and in his mind the promise of adventure.

If I may, I would like to indulge you a little, on my island’s history and some facts on the capital city of Trinidad.  Port of Spain, even though our nation’s capital is the third largest municipality on the island of Trinidad, placing after the southern location / city of San Fernando, where I reside, and the central location / city of Chaguanas.  The city of Port of Spain is our hub for commerce, retail and administration, and serves as the financial mecca of the Caribbean.   Two of the largest banks in the region find home in Port of Spain.  This city became our capital in 1757 preceded by ‘San Jose de Oruna’ (Saint Joseph).  Cumucurapo (place of silk cotton trees) was the name of the Amerindian fishing village where Port of Spain was founded.

The Emperor Valley Zoo is located right next door to the Botanical Gardens in Port of Spain, Trinidad and occupies 7.2 acres, utilizing the original foliage and flora of the area.  It tries to capture a wilderness atmosphere and appeal by keeping the woodsy effect in its pathways, fences and buildings.  The name came from the Morpho or Emperor Butterfly that is indigenous to this valley.  The Zoological Society of Trinidad and Tobago which was founded in 1947 brought this zoo into existence in 1952.

We pulled into the parking lot and was greeted by the parking attendant to whom I said “d pahken fuh d zoo is here?”, and he replied “yes”, pointing off to our left.  We pulled in and parked and my husband approached said attendant for the parking ticket, I do not know what he said to the attendant, but whatever it was, it gave the attendant the impression that my husband is a ‘foreigner’.  My husband could actually walk to the home he grew up in (where his dad still resides), in Belmont from the zoo.  I think it was his GA ‘new’ bred southern hospitality “Thank you sir” that did the trick.  The parking attendant chuckled and said “you must’ve lived outside”.  So I asked “wheh is d entrance?”, and he pointed us in the correct direction and my son’s adventure began.

We paid for our tickets (“leh me geh two adult, one chile an’ ah senior citizen please”).  We entered.  I looked at my mother and her face lit up when presented by the first exhibit, I wondered to myself, who is going to enjoy this more, my son or my mother?  It was sweltering, and although I donned a pair of shorts, I knew that sweating would prevail shortly.  I pursed my lips, letting my top lip hover over the bottom and blew, expelling air and making a non-whistling air sound, nothing but hot air warmed my chest, but I did it again and again, hoping to find comfort.

We saw turtles, ocelots, goats, ducks, hogs, tapirs, birds, lions, snakes, reptiles, owls, monkeys, an alligator, an otter, butterflies, flowers, fishes and foliage. 

In writing this blog, I re-awakened my son’s enthusiasm by asking him for reminders on animals and the different species that we saw at the zoo.  He walked over to my computer and looked at some of the photographs captured and said “mom, you write about the pictures you take? I like that”.  I smiled and said “yes son, it helps us remember exactly where we’ve been and what we’ve done”.

I do not like the smell of animals, in retrospect, when reading novels and the author describes the pungent smells of the wild, I can only imagine it smelling like the zoo and worst.  I cannot fathom the fear felt knowing a dangerous predator was lurking around.  Imagine after saying all that I am still interested in hiking trails, I guess I will have a good ‘pooyah’ at hand, and know how to use it.  Truly though, praise God I was born in this era and not of the wild wild west, because I wouldn’t have made it at all.  I can move like Keanu Reeves in the matrix when I see a wasp or any of the bee family.  As a child we had an estate, it was a citrus estate with cocoa and coffee.  My father would sell citrus by the hundreds to the local grocery stores and to some of his co-workers.  One day my mother, sister in law and I, went to the estate to secure some oranges.  Well in typical teenage fashion, I found that they were taking too long to come up with the requisite oranges and sauntered off to get it on my own.  I came upon a tree laden with ‘valencia’ oranges, this by far was one of the sweetest oranges on the estate.  I was thrilled, what a catch, I can get all that we need off of this one tree (I thought).  I climbed this tree and started picking.  Well before long, I knew why this tree was laden.  On this tree was a huge ‘maribone’ (a wasp that causes fever and swelling in its sting) nest, and of course it was awakened by my thrashing about the tree.  Well I do not know how I did it, but I came down the ten (10) to fifteen (15) feet that I had climbed, promptly and ran through the brush, making several summersaults and flips, trying to evade and lessen the bite rate.  I did get stung, but not by as many as I would’ve had I ‘dilly-dallied’ around.  Adrenaline is a power house, I am living proof.  My mother and sister in law heard the commotion and came running to see what had transpired, only themselves to be confronted by angry maribone swarming around, looking for me, hiding in the bush.  I run from cockroaches, lizards and birds (lol, a parakeet came into the house, and I screamed and ran out the room), I am definitely NO nature buff (said parakeet is now in a cage in the living room – a whole different story).  

Off of my tangent and back to the zoo, and talking about birds, the zoo houses some of the most colorful and pretty birds that I have ever seen. We saw the Trinidad Motmot, Macaws, the Scarlet Ibis, Pelicans, Guineafowl, Ducks, Toucans, Flamingos, and more.

Walking down monkey avenue (as I’ve labeled it), my son said “there is the chimpanzee”, and I said, “I do not see it”. He said, “you don’t see that chimp in the corner there with his face like this?” and he made his face similar to the chimp, and low and behold I then saw the chimp.  I had him make that face again, just so that I can photograph it.  We had a good laugh and continued down looking at the ‘pink swollen bam-c’ monkeys, howler monkeys, mandrills, spider monkeys, to name a few.  My son also wanted to know why the monkeys’ backsides were pink and swollen, to which I had absolutely no answer and quite a perplexed look on my face.

All this walking and monkey business made us hungry, but, as I said, that smell, that pungent odor, I could not eat in such surroundings.  My son however had no problem buying something at the cafeteria and sitting and devouring said something.  I decided that a nice beastly cold beverage would be all that I needed and got me a mango slushy.

We left the zoo and walked over to the Botanical Gardens, and as luck would have it a shower of rain came down.  We quickly sheltered under some thatch huts made for picnickers.  We made our way back to the car with thoughts of grabbing some pholourie at the Lady Young Road overlook.  The same parking attendant when presented with our parking ticket to get the cost of parking, laughed again at / with my husband.  Again he was guilty of the “have a nice day sir, and thank you, ‘preciate it’.”  The parking attendant had pure confirmation on his face, yes indeed that man is foreign.  Nothing could be said to deter him from his calculated conclusion.  It’s a wrap.  Off to run an errand and back to the science center to pick up our daughter from her day of ‘Gamers World’.

Here are some of what I captured (including my son making a chimp face).

Enjoy!

--NorDean Canvas

Turtle

Ocelot

Ocelot

Pelican

Wild Hog

Wild Hog

Tapir

Owl

Parakeet

Mimicking chimp

Chimp watching us

Scarlet Ibis

Scarlet Ibis

Alligator

Blue Macaw

Blue Macaw

Flamingo

Flamingo

Butterfly

Ginger Lily

Ginger Lily

Balisier

Macaw

Otter

Botanic Gardens

Botanic Gardens

© 2013, Odette M. Lawrence and NorDean Canvas. All rights reserved. The use and/or duplication of this material without the express and written permission of this blog’s author and/or owner are unauthorized and strictly prohibited.