Fusion 2010

The tagline on Fusion's Facebook pages says, "When you cross the finish line, you'll know more about yourself!" This could not be put in any better words. This year, Fusion found us a year wiser, but they usurped us in what to expect, because this year was exponentially harder than last year.

Again, there were a number of us from the school who participated and we again were split into two teams. My former teammates, Charlie and Nick were in a team with a couple of our friends from Ultimate Frisbee, while I teamed up with Aaron, Katie and another friend of ours from Ultimate, Steve. Last year the two teams were unofficially dubbed "team fast" and "team fun". I was on "team fast", but due to my ankle injury earlier in the year, I told them that I could not participate in a competitive fashion because I thought that I might just be too gun shy to take the trails like I did last year, in fear of re-injuring myself after 6 some odd months of physical therapy. Fortunately for me, "team fun" welcomed me with open arms.

The race began at our favorite beach, Maracas, at 3:30 AM. The first leg of this three leg race required all four members to participate. We started at one end of the beach, had to race to the other end of the beach, gather a plastic bottle and cup and then run back to our team. At which point, another member took the cup back to the other end of the beach, filled it with red water and brought it back to fill up the bottle. It took us 3 cupfuls to fill up our bottle. After checking with an official, we were off into the bush with headlamps on, looking for red flags with reflective tape on them to guide us through the rain forest. I have run these forests before on hashes, but never in complete darkness.

The statistics for this leg were that we would be running about 6.5 miles and ascending 5,165 feet. The ground was wet and muddy and the humidity was thick. We all felt really good and strong for most of this leg. Fortunately, because it was before dawn, the real heat hadn't set in yet. Don't get me wrong, we were all soaked through and through with sweat, but as we knew, the worst was yet to come. For a good portion of this leg, we moved at a decent pace. We passed a few teams and a few other teams passed us.

At the approximate halfway mark, there was a short multiple choice test about Trinidad and the race. Each answer had different time penalties if skipped or marked incorrect, but we felt that we did very well with this. We never did check to see if we missed any at the final results, but I'm going to go on the belief that we were correct across the board. We continued on, climbing, running, scrambling...

At one point, there was a team gaining on us and feeling strong, we tried to hold them off. The sun had risen by this point and we were trucking along the trail. As we continued along, one guy in the back of the red teams pack yelled out, "Hey! Wait!!" Being at the back of our pack, I happened to stop and turn around along with the rest of his team. He pointed up to the right of a point we had just passed, and there was a large Gillette Fusion flag up on a hill by a house. I called out to my team, and we all turned around and followed them up the hill.

We were extremely fortunate that this team was on our tail. When in the heat of the race, you often focus solely on the team ahead of you (as Red was doing to us) and you could very easily miss a turn in the trail. We were very happy to get passed by these guys at this point as they potentially saved us a lot of time. We had friends on two other teams, and both fell into a similar trap of following the teams ahead of them. Once they realized that they were on the incorrect path, they had to turn around, get back to the main trail, and proceed - now being behind teams that were much slower than them. They both said that their detour cost them 25-30 minutes. I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been because not only did you extend your time, but passing on these trails is very difficult and can only be done every so often if you want to do it safely.

After following the red team, we came to our second mental challenge of the race, which was to decode a message. Not very difficult, but kind of time consuming. We handed in our sheet and continued on. At this point, we were starting to get a little tired and of course, this is when we had to climb an extremely steep and muddy hill and then back down that extremely steep and muddy hill. We had to take it slowly and we made it without incident, but we were certainly starting to feel the aches and pains of this first leg. Katie had twisted her ankle (after the first challenge, but can't remember if it were before or after the second challenge). All our knees were hurting a bit and hills never help sore knees. We finally saw the ocean through the brush, and knew that we were almost to the finish of this leg. Soon after, we cleared the brush and ran down a road for about 5-10 minutes to the finish line. After all of that, we were the 17th team (out of 59 teams) to cross the finish line.

It was now about 7:15 AM and the sun was up and you could start to feel the heat for the day coming on. We anticipated that the second leg of the race would be back up and over that same mountain range into Port of Spain. However, we found out that the next leg was to begin at 11:00, at the top of Lady Chancellor Road, which is a somewhat steep road that you will always see people walking/running/biking and that looks out over Port of Spain. Fortunately for us, John, one of the guys on Nick and Charlie's team, lived nearby there, so we all went over to his apartment and sat by the pool, rinsed off in showers and relaxed in the shade.

Before the race, my knee had been bothering me and as mentioned, I was worried about my ankle. My ankle was good, but my knee was a little sore. Katie and I had discussed that one of us would drive if this were a 3 person leg, which it ended up being. But now with her new ankle twist, I told her that I would go on this second leg with Aaron and Steve.

This second leg of the race was told to us as being 13 km (a little over 8 miles). I was feeling good as were were looking out over Port of Spain and because I had just run a 10k race in Tobago the weekend before. That ended up being a lot of false optimism.

The horn blew and we were off. We started down this steep road that branches off of Lady Chancellor Road and headed down into the valley below. Once we were in the valley, we hit a very, very brief flat spot and turned left. It was a hill, but I noticed that everyone stopped to walk. Usually on any given hill, there are some people trying to run or go up it fast. We followed their lead and started walking...and walking...and walking...

This was a hill like I have never climbed before. Granted it was all paved, but that did not account for the incline, heat and humidity. It felt like the longest hike I had ever been on. I was dogging it real bad. Finally, we reached the top. It was a beautiful view, until I realized what I was looking at. Here is a shot I took the day after the race.

I was looking down this hill, thinking the worst was over, but then I noticed something in the horizon. That road, just to the left of that big white house, had a whole mess of people walking up it. I was devastated. Not devastated like a losing a loved one, but I felt all motivation and inspiration leak from my being. But I struggled on. At least I had a momentary reprieve going downhill.

We continued on, passed the white house, but the hill didn't stop. I didn't know what was going on. How could we continue to be going up? This was all that I saw in front of me.

It may not look like much, but it was steep. It felt like we were going straight up. And as you can see, it looks like it goes up for ever. Now, after the fact, we realized what we were climbing. If you go back to the picture with the road and white house, we're actually climbing that hill that goes up to the left. Allllll the way up. And then up some more. I did some research after the race and where the house picture was taken was probably about 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile up this 2 mile road/hill. We went from probably just over sea level to 1500 feet in that 2 miles and were only at 525 feet where the house picture was taken. The incline was about 15º at one point up to about 25º at its maximum incline. To put this in perspective for those who watch NASCAR races, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has it's corners banked at 9º and the Daytona International Speedway has corners banked at 31º.

On top of that, the tar on the road wasn't even. It was melted and almost like waves of tar dripping down the road. This could either be from the continued heat that is the Trinidad climate or it's because the incline was so steep that it couldn't set in an even fashion. Also, to give you a picture of the gradient of the road, as we were climbing up, a 4x4 truck drove past and its tires skipped as it was trying to climb the hill. When I drove up this road the next day, my little Yaris was whining and crying and giving it all she could. Her tires were also skipping as I tried to drive to the top.

Needless to say, it was intense. What little life I had left in me was sucked out. My heart was racing, I couldn't catch my breath, the 90ºF heat at noon time was beating down on us and I just felt like I couldn't go on. For most of this hike past the house in the picture, I kept thinking to myself, "Is there a way that I can quit without penalizing my team? Is there a way that I can call an official to take me back to the start without our team being disqualified?" All answers led to "no" and I forced myself to carry on.

We got to the top of the road and realized that we had to continue to go up, but now though a wet, muddy trail. We continued up and up. Aaron in the lead and me and Steve in tow. Steve was feeling very much the way I felt though most of this leg. Aaron on the other hand, has become an exercise machine and seemed barely winded. I know it was tough for him, but he did not feel it anywhere near the way that Steve and I did. Aaron even carried Steve's hydration pack for a short while as Steve was recouping on the trail.

We managed to get to the top of the hill at last and started a short decline, which quickly came to a halt. We found ourselves at our first mental challenge for this leg. I didn't know how we were going to to, but we sat down on the road and dug in. This particular challenge was doing "deltoids", which are puzzles like: 52CIAD and you had to decode it to 52 Cards In A Deck. The best part of this challenge is that every one we got correct took 4 minutes off our time as opposed to penalties for getting them wrong. We sat there for about 15 minutes or so working on this challenge and got around 20 of them. We felt like we got the ones we could, have now made up the time we lost for the slow trudge up the hill, and moved on.

The rest was actually exactly what we needed. We were now going downhill and hitting some flats. We were actually running at a number of points as well. We passed a few teams, had to cross some river beds and ravines using ropes that were set up for us, and just continued to move as fast as our bodies would allow - which may not be as fast as normal. But all things considered, we were doing quite well.

We hit the final stretch, which I recognized from hiking Lady Chancellor Hill before and we turned on the speed as best we could to finish strong. At this point, my right foot cramped up and it felt like my toes were curling under my foot. Not a good feeling, but again, I muscled through and we finished strong. We now had another 90 minutes or so to kill until the last leg began. So we all went back to John's apartment again.

After more resting, showing and eating, we headed back to the savannah for the final 5k. The same run around the savannah to the port authority that we ran last year. We found out we were in 18th place and we also found out that Nick and Charlie's team were in 1st place. We knew that they were hovering around 4th again after the first leg and finishing kind of strong on the second leg, but we didn't expect this. Apparently, at that mental challenge on the second leg, they answered more than the other leading teams and it shot them to first!

Like last year, our whole team decided to run the final leg under the feelings that we started as a team and we're going to end as a team. Steve was still struggling and Aaron was still strong. Katie was doing well keeping up with Aaron as she was able to rest for the second leg (and her ankle was feeling a little better) and I was somewhere in the middle. I felt like I could have kept up with Aaron and Katie, but I held back with Steve to encourage him on. He was feeling bad for going slow, but I was there to reassure him that we ALL decided to do the race as a challenge to ourselves, and not to compete and win. Considering that the longest race he has ever done was a sprint triathlon (approximately 1.5 hours long), this was something that he (and any of us) really expected.

We carried on. We met up with Aaron and Katie towards the end of the race and we all crossed the finish line together, just as we wanted. Our overall place was 18th and we finished in 6:27:06 over the course of this 15-16 hour race. And as it turned out, Nick and Charlie's team took 2nd place. The other two teams behind them came out strong and John was tanking really hard on the final 5k. He gave everything he could and they were actually worried that he wasn't going to make it all the way to the finish line. The made second place by 44 seconds. Another close one, just like our finish last year.

Looking back on the race, I think I can say that this was the most difficult race that I have every participated in. Harder than my first marathon. Harder than my second marathon that was cancelled and turned into a "fun run" due to extreme heat (which looking back was equivalent to the heat that I did this race in). And much, much harder than last year's Fusion race. But the thing that I will take away, the same thing that I took away from each of those previous races that seemed to get progressively harder and harder; if I can put my mind to something, I will get through it. It may not be pretty. It may not be the fastest and it may not be as strong a finish as I would like. But I will make it through.

Fusion has definitely taught me a lot of things and I do know more about myself. I am grateful to be able to have participated in these races the last two years and it will be one of the biggest things that I will miss when I leave Trinidad.

Leatherback Turtles at Grande Riviere

Last weekend I went to the NE corner of Trinidad to an area called Grande Riviere to watch the leatherback turtles lay their eggs. This is one of the last things that I felt like I had to experience before moving from Trinidad.

Leatherback turtles are pretty amazing creatures. They have to be the closest thing to dinosaurs left on earth. They measure from 1 -3 meters long, about 2-3 feet tall, and about 3-4 feet across. They can also reach about 800-1200 pounds. I realize that I'm math teacher mixing measurement units - deal with it.

Here's the story of how these turtles lay their eggs...

When the sun sets and darkness falls across the beach, these massive creatures come out of the ocean, back to the very beach that they were born. When the eggs hatch, the hatchling turtles dig out of the sand and by the touch and smell of the sand, they know where they were born.

They find the beach by following the moonlight. This sometimes causes problems with hotels on the beach, because the turtles think the lights from the hotel are the moon. Apparently the turtles do not see (or are not effected) by red lights, so all the lights outside our hotel were red. Also the tour guides from the Trinidad Forestry Division have red head lamps to show you around at night. Most of my pictures were taken after dawn, when the last stragglers were on the beach.

After finding a spot that they feel is suitable, they start digging a hole with their back flippers. These flippers take out about 2 tablespoons of sand at a time. They go back and forth with each flipper, digging and digging, until they get a hole about 2 feet deep.

After they feel the hole is deep enough, they lay their eggs. They lay about 70 eggs and do this every 2-3 years after they mature. It takes about 15 years for the turtles to mature, and they can live to about 80-100 years old. About a third of the eggs that they lay (the last third) are infertile eggs. They do this because after the eggs are laid, they bury them with the sand and then compact it with their hind flippers. These infertile eggs act as a buffer to the fertilized eggs in case the sand crushes the eggs or if they get dug up by stray dogs, other turtles, birds, etc. While they are laying their eggs, the turtles go into a trance and this is when white light does not effect them and also when the Forestry Division will tag the turtle for data tracking and conservation purposes.

The picture above is the only picture in this series that was taken at night.

After the eggs are covered up by the hind flippers, the turtle then takes its front flippers and starts swooping back the sand around it to cover up and camouflage the nest. The span of these front flippers are about 6-7 feet when fully outstretched.

Once the turtle feels the nest is fully camouflaged, they head back into the ocean. The whole nesting process generally takes around 45-60 minutes. Although one that we watched at night was up for about 2 hours. She was really big and we guessed that she was a little more experienced with the process, so she was a little more careful about making sure her eggs aren't dug up by predators.

Look at that. Doesn't it look like some kind of ancient dinosaur? So cool.

Some other interesting things we learned about these leatherback turtles is that they have some of the softest shells of all sea turtles. This is because their defense against predators in the ocean (sharks, whales, boats, etc.) is to dive to extreme depths in a short amount of time. They can descend to 100 meters in 6-7 seconds. This is close to the length of a football field, including 1 end zone.

Being a diver now, I can attest to the pressure that can be exerted if proper measures are not taken to equalize when you descend. If the turtles did not have a softer shell, the pressure of the depth would crush their shells.

This had to be one of the coolest things that I've been able to experience while living here. And it was also kind of cool that we were there on Mother's Day.

J'ouvert!!!

Well, I guess I should know better than to promise a blog update "in a few days" or at any time. Seems consistency with this thing is not my strong suit. Although I'm trying to get better. Anyway...

J'ouvert!! J'ouvert (pronounced joo-vay) occurs the night before Carnival Monday. Well, actually it begins on Carnival Monday at about 2 AM. You still sign up for different bands like you do for Carnival and you still follow around a series of huge flat-bed trucks; one filled with a dj and speakers, one filled with a pan band, and numerous drink trucks. The music is still deafening and people are still jumping and dancing (chipping and wining) in the streets.

The thing that differentiates J'ouvert from Carnival (which is also called "pretty mas" because everyone dresses up in their fancy outfits), other than the partying from 2 AM until 8 AM, is that you are covered in...something. Some bands use paint, some use mud, some use oil. The band that me and my friends played was called the Hard Wining Devils, or more aptly called, Cocoa Devils. Yes, we were covered in cocoa.

Me, Katie and Aaron - sporting our new look for evening. Aaron is doing his best Blue Steel.

As the morning progresses and as you wind through the streets of Port of Spain, you often come across another band. Sometimes there is room to pass along both sides of the street, but often one band waits while the other passes. But what is certain to occur whether you are passing or waiting, is that the substance of choice from the different bands get passed back and forth between each band. And as you can see below, people get pretty colorful.

Me, Nick & Gina, Ginger, Meredith and a two of N&G's friends who came down from Canada for Carnival.

With all this splashing of mud, cocoa, paint, etc., one has to think ahead a bit. If you have ever spent time in Port of Spain around Carnival, you'll see nicely painted walls with paint smears on it and big splotches on the streets and sidewalks. And if you're not careful where you park, your car might get hit a bit too. Here's a couple that I saw as I was driving home.

My car was on a side street, so I escaped unscathed. Although I did find some cocoa on my seat when I went out later that day. Oh, and I've been told that with a 2-3 good washes, most cars come clean.

After the night of revelry, everyone heads back home. Some to clean up and immediately head back out for Carnival Monday. Some, like myself, clean up and go to bed. I can't even begin to say how much fun this was. Even though I did not play pretty mas, I am very happy that I have this to take away from Carnival this year. It was a most incredible experience!

I have found a number of ways in Trinidad that when the adults play, they still get the pleasures of being a kid and don't mind getting messy. It's such a great feeling!!

Carnival Tuesday 2010: Part 2

As I was going through pictures with some friends last night, I realized that I missed one of the most surprising costumes that I saw out on the road...

As I was going through pictures with some friends last night, I realized that I missed one of the most surprising costumes that I saw out on the road...

Can you believe that they walked around the streets of Trinidad, in 90+ degree temperatures? That's insane!! But how cool are those costumes?

Here are a few more pictures and costumes that I like that I thought I would throw out here since I wanted to add the Trini Revelers (the mas camp above). Enjoy!

These guys weren't in any mas camp (which is short of masquerade camp if I didn't already mention that somewhere), but I always think people who can do stuff like this are pretty cool.

Next up should be either J'ouvert or Kings & Queens. Stay tuned...

Carnival Tuesday 2010

Wow! It has proven to me to be much more difficult to keep this blog maintained than I had anticipated this year. As previously mentioned, I have had a much more difficult workload and on top of that, I've been looking for a new job as my contract is up in June. But that is all a discussion for another time. Today we are here to celebrate Carnival!!!!

Carnival is an experience that can only be experienced in person. The excitement, the energy, the parties (called fetes)...I can try to explain to you or show you in pictures. But really, to truly understand, you need to live it.

This year, I was going to play Carnival (buy a costume and "chip" all around Port of Spain), but at the last minute I decided to not actively participate, but to rather try to document it a bit. I bought a new camera over our winter holiday, and I was itching to use it. So the following posts will be things that I saw or experienced during Carnival season this year. They necessarily be in chronological order, but I will do my best to get everything out there. I would go in sequential order, but that would mean that it would take me a while to get these pictures up, and I know there are people out there who are anxious to see them.

So without further ado, here is a handful of pictures I took of various bands...

Here is the littlest masquerader I saw along the parade route.

And now we have reached the "end" of the picture show.

J'ouvert and Kings & Queens pictures will be along in the coming days. I promise.

My goodness it's been a while.

I guess it's been a good 4 months since I last posted. Holy smokes! Where has the time gone? Well, not much has happened, but at the same time, quite a bit has happened.

In the category of not much happening...In my last post (back in August), I was training for Coast 2 Coast, an adventure race that consisted of running, biking and kayaking across the entire northern coast of Trinidad. I was in a 3 man team where I was going to be doing the running legs of the race. However, during the training, I was out on one of the trails that I would be running in during the actual race, and as I was coming down off a rock that was in the middle of the trail as we were going downhill. I jumped down at a slight angle to try to slow myself down and some rocks under foot came loose as I landed and I sprained my ankle pretty bad.

It was swollen for a little over a week or so and I finally went to an orthopedic doctor who took some x-rays of it. He confirmed that it wasn't broken, but it was a Type II sprain. I don't know what that means, but there there are only three types of sprain and I was in the middle. Ultimately, I had to start going to rehab and here I am, 3 months later, still with a swollen ankle and still going to rehab to try to rebuild my ankle strength.

The byproduct of this sprain has meant no ultimate frisbee, no hashing, no running (or training for the half and full marathons down here in Trinidad), no yoga, no hiking, etc. etc. etc. My days have been quite inactive, although I am slowly able to start running on a treadmill now. I'm still in physical therapy and expect to not be fully back to into all of my activities until after Christmas (at the earliest) and most likely later than that.

So what has been keeping me busy is my class load. This year I am teaching two new classes: Pre-Calculus and AP Statistics. Pre-Calculus thus far hasn't been too bad, but in the coming month or two, we will be getting into topics that I was never very fond of when I was in school. So this will be quite the challenge for me, to re-learn it and be able to make it more engaging for my students than it was for me when I was in school. AP Statistics is a very in depth statistics class, and I have been told is more in depth than most college introductory statistics classes. This too has topics that I haven't taught before, but I am really enjoying teaching this class as I find it incredibly applicable to every day life. Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy teaching my other classes as well. I think AP Stats just offers unique content and a unique challenge for me. So it stands out as far as topics and research.

The other thing that has been keeping me busy the last few months is organizing and sorting out my resume and job search. My contract is up this year so I had to get all of this together. I never planned on trying to extend my contract here. As a matter of fact, I had intended to go to some South American schools for a few years, then jump over to Europe (hopefully the UK), and then possibly head back to the states. But some of these plans changed in the last 4 months as well.

As it turns out, when I was back home this summer, Angie and I spent a little time together (and I mean a little - something like 2-3 days). And through the course of those 2-3 days and numerous phone calls and e-mails, we realized that we needed to try to move this relationship forward instead of continuing to put it on hold. So now my plans (and job searches) are focused on England. Angie just started a 3 year contract doing social work in Essex County in England, which is just outside of northeast London. I'll be trying to get into one of the international schools in England. But if that doesn't work out, I'll look to get into one of the local schools. Fortunately for me, there is a shortage of maths teachers in England right now and we are in high demand. So hopefully the job search will be a short and prosperous one. I knew that getting a maths teaching certificate was going to be useful in finding jobs. Here's one time that I actually had some good foresight.

So that's a quick nutshell of what I've been up to. Sorry for those faithful followers of my Gouda Life and who have been really bugging me to update my blog (you three know who you are) and all those other people who also check my blog regularly but haven't been as vocal to me to update. I am hopeful now that I have broken my dry spell of not writing that I will get back into the groove again. We'll see though. It's hard to write and post things when I'm not actively participating in them (Coast 2 Coast, half-marathons, etc.) but rather supporting my friends in them.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Be on the lookout for pictures and stories from my trip to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving. If you don't hear from me before then, you will definitely hear from me when I get back from that.

Oropuche and Pitch Lake

As I mentioned, I've been doing a little swimming and snorkeling since I got back to Trinidad (as well as running, hiking, yoga, and ultimate frisbee). Aaron, Katie, myself, and a few other folks from school are also training for this event called Coast to Coast. Coast to Coast is where individuals or teams, Aaron and I are a team, run, bike and kayak across the entire northern coast of Trinidad (more about that in a later post).

Neither of us have really done much kayaking in the past, so we have been looking for ways to break ourselves in. Aaron, always being the source of our many, many adventures, found an eco-tour on the south part of the "bite" of Trinidad. So off the three of us went, along with a friend from ultimate frisbee, John and his girlfriend, Anika.

We got to the southern coast around 7:30 AM and after going over some quick tips, we were off. The kayaking was just the means of going on this eco-tour, which took us down the Oropuche river, to the Oropouche Lagoon, which was kind of like a swamp. As we were heading towards the swamp, there were two paths that we could take, the easy way and the slightly more difficult, but interesting way. Not fearing a little challenge, we took the difficult way.

This path was quite scenic and also a bit foul smelling. It's down in one of the large industrial corridors of Trinidad, where a lot of mining of natural gas and oil takes place. The water was definitely not the cleanest we have seen either. But that was not the difficult part. The difficulties were that the river got very narrow and there was also a bit of overgrowth where we actually had to chop through branches to get the kayaks through. The end result was that we got to this somewhat secluded place and got to see some interesting birds. Aaron has become quite the bird watcher, and I can kind of see why. We saw some pretty cool and colorful birds - a couple were photogenic, others not so much. Katie took these two pictures.

After checking out the birds for about 20 minutes, we had to head back, as the tide was going to start rising and would cause some additional complications for our return. So on we went. Getting through the overgrowth was a bit easier, although there were some hiccups here and there. The interesting part was almost immediately after we cleared the overgrowth and the canopy that it provided, because it started to rain. Now it is rainy season here, so we shouldn't have been too surprised to be caught in the rain. But the thing that was a bit surprising was the type of rain that we were caught in. Thunder and lightening is not all that common here, at least not in the north where I live. But this was a pretty hard and steady rain with both thunder and lightening. The fact that it was lightening and that we were in a river was not really my concern. Rather the fact that I was holding an aluminum rod/paddle was.

Needless to say, our kayak back was a bit more expedient than our casual drift into the swamp. But it was without incident, which we are all pleased about. No one capsized (although there were a couple near misses). We got the kayaks loaded up on the truck and headed back to the tour guide's house to drop off the kayaks off, change clothes and went and got some food.

After lunch, we went for a short hike, to try to see some toucans, macaws and red howler monkeys, but it was too hot and none were out to be seen. We parted ways with the eco-tour guide and since we were in the south, we decided to go to the pitch lake. This is essentially a natural opening where pitch (the stuff used to make asphalt and fill cracks in roads) comes up from innards of the earth. It doesn't look like much as you look at it from a distance or as you try to take it in from a wider point of view.

But as you get closer, it actually becomes quite interesting. You can walk on it, because the outer layer has "hardened" a bit. I say that in quotes, because during the day, when the sun is out, if you stand in a spot for a minute or two, you can actually feel yourself sinking a bit. Not a lot, but you definitely leave indentations where you stood. Another really cool thing is that there is a lot of different minerals coming up in the pitch. There are sulfur pools that people soak in for healing purposes, there are spots of iron, where the pitch has a slightly redder tint to it, and there are spots where natural algae form. But all of it comes from these cracks in the pools that you can see in this picture.

These pools are sometimes shallow and sometimes very deep, depending on the cracks in them. It was very cool to be right there and be at a place where you are basically seeing the opening to the inner layers of the earth. I've been to two volcanoes before (Mt. St. Helens and one in St. Vincent - which I should post some pictures from now that I think of it), but those are such huge openings and because they are not currently active volcanoes (in the sense that lava is flowing from them) there is a lot of hardened lava/rocks and growth so it doesn't really feel like you are looking at the openings that you are.

Every once and a while, our guide at pitch lake, would direct us to not work in a particular place and tell us to follow his path because he didn't want us to fall into a weak spot. It sounds like most of the weaker spots were around the far outside edge, but better to be safe than sorry. We did find one spot where there was an opening to some actual liquified pitch, and our guide was nice enough to show us what it looked like in it's natural state.

Kind of cool, huh?