Pitch Lake

We had a great family adventure yesterday. It started out with a drive to San Fernando, a city in the southern part of Trinidad, to attend the national Calypso band finals competition. Calypso Caribbean style music is huge down here. The competition is part of the build up for Carnival, which starts next weekend (I'll do another post about Carnival later). Anyway, by the time we got to the site of the music festival and heard the bands warming up, we decided we really haven't developed a taste for Calypso music and didn't think we wanted to pay the admission fee and fight the crowds all day to attend the concerts.

Since we were down that way, we decided to drive even farther south to "Pitch Lake", the largest natural asphalt (or tar) lake in the world. There are only 2 others, one in Venezuela (which is connected to Pitch Lake by an underground channel that flows under the ocean floor) and the La Brea tar pits in southern California. In fact, Pitch Lake is located in the town of La Brea. La Brea litterally means "pitch or tar" in Spanish. The tar pits in southern California were named after the town in Trinidad. Pitch Lake was discovered in 1595 by Sir Walter Raleigh.


When you first arrive, it isn't much to see. But we signed up with a local tour guide to see it up close and personal since we had come so far. Our tour guide, Cyril, has probably smoked enough weed in his life to to keep most of California high, but he was knowledgeable of the lake and pretty entertaining.


In addition to producing tar, the lake produces pools of mineral water that bubbles up from underground springs. In fact, it's surrounded by a marsh of mineral water thats covered with water lilies.


There were some capitalizing local young boys wading into the marsh to pick the lilies...



and sell them to gullible visitors...


The adventure starts with walking through the marsh (at which point I realized I could have reached down and picked the lilies myself...). There are boards that have been placed on the pitch bed just below the water to walk on to get past the marsh and out onto Pitch Lake.

However, there were other pools that we had to cross out in the middle the lake (without boards), which not all of us wanted to cross...


The springs bubble up through fissures in the pitch which can be several feet deep.


Cyril said that there were different springs with different combinations of minerals that create pools of different colors and characteristics. The bright green one is for minor skin conditions, the brown one is for serious skin conditions, the milky green one is for tightening old age wrinkles and the clear pools are great for general aches and pains. People come from all over to soak in the pools.



Of course Tauna wanted a "souvenir" bottle of the anti-aging water to take back with us.


Isaac enjoyed the pitch itself. Cyril tells a great tale how the entire lake is a giant living organism with lots of mystical stories surrounding it.



In conclusion, what initially appeared to be a very dull-looking "tourist attraction" turned out to be an interesting natural wonder that we all enjoyed.