PLU Alumni Travel Seminar Trinidad and Tobago 2024

The Alumni Travel Seminar leader will be Professor Emeritus Greg Youtz.

PROGRAM CANCELLED

Calypso, Chocolate, and Wildlife / April 7 – 16, 2024

Through a collaborative effort of the Office of Alumni and the Wang Center for Global and Community Engaged Education, PLU is now offering opportunities for study away-like programs to PLU alumni and friends. After a hiatus, PLU alumni international travel seminar is being offered in April of 2024 to Trinidad and Tobago!

This travel seminar will introduce you to the story behind today’s Trinidad and Tobago – the Trans-Atlantic trade that produced Calypso music, the Carnival that is also an annual act of resistance to oppression, and the balance between celebrating the heroic struggles of the past with the challenges of emerging as a post-colonial society that can compete with and indeed offer solutions to an increasingly connected, tumultuous and fragile world.

Dr. Greg Youtz has been taking students to Trinidad and Tobago since 1999 and directed the PLU Gateway Program in T&T from 2015 to 2022. On campus his courses focused on music composition, music history, ethnomusicology and the intersections between music and culture.

The deadline to register is December 15, 2023 or when full. This trip is limited to 16 travelers and registration will close when all spots have been filled. 

LOCATION: Port of Spain, Trinidad with overnight excursions to Grand Riviere Village, Trinidad, and Speyside, Tobago

TRAVEL DATES: April 7 – 16, 2024

Total fee for 9 nights/10 days

Single person with single accommodations $4,250*
Per person for double accommodations (Couples pre-arrange themselves) $3,750*
*Does not include international airfare.

Payments are to be made in three installments leading up to the program’s departure.

$1,000 at registration (non-refundable deposit per person)
$1,625 (or $1,375) due January 1, 2024
$1,625 (or $1,375) due March 1, 2024

Includes:
All accommodations, most dinners, all entrance fees, all guides, domestic flight to Tobago, ground transportation during the program and associated tips

The deadline to register is December 15, 2023 or when full. This trip is limited to 16 travelers and registration will close when all spots have been filled.

Day 1
Arrive in Trinidad and settle in to the Pax Guesthouse, high on a hill looking out over Trinidad’s Central Plain. Dinner at Pax Guesthouse.
Day 2
Tour Port of Spain, the capital city with lunch at The Breakfast Shack. Visit National Museum, then tour of Caroni Bird Sanctuary at dusk. Dinner at Pax Guesthouse.
Day 3
Tour of Central Trinidad and the Indian Experience. Lunch in Chaguanas. Dinner at the village of Lopinot and an introduction to Trinitario “fine flavour” cocoa. Dinner at the Mariposa Café. Parang performance.
Day 4
Visit Asa Wright Bird Sanctuary with lunch. Afternoon steelband lesson at the Exodus Steelband Panyard. Dinner and performance with Malick Folk Performers.
Day 5
To Grand Riviere Village, swim, relax, visit the Mt. Plaisir Cocoa Company. Dinner and overnight at Mt. Plaisir Estate Hotel. Midnight observation of leatherback turtles laying eggs.
Day 6
To Piarco Airport and flight to Tobago. Visit Fort King George and bus to the village of Speyside. Stay in the Blue Waters Inn. Swimming/snorkeling/diving options.
Day 7
Little Tobago and glass bottom boat tour, lunch at Jemma’s. Optional visit to Charlotteville or Argyle Falls. Dinner.
Day 8
Free morning. Afternoon flight to Trinidad.
Day 9
Day at Maracas beach. Lunch of Bake and Shark. Dinner at Pax.
Day 10
Departure day / Fly home

Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation in the Southern Caribbean, originally the home of Arawak, Tainos, Kalinagos and other indigenous peoples, the island was “re-discovered” by Columbus and colonized by Spain in the late 15th century. 18th century French planters brought enslaved Africans to work sugar plantations, 19th century British governments brought indentured workers from India, and Venezuelans came across the narrow waters to develop some of the world’s most sought-after Trinitario “fine flavor” cocoa. This heady mix of peoples produced one of the world’s great Carnivals which is the model for those currently held in Miami, New York, Toronto and London. T&T is the birthplace of Calypso songs, Soca dance music, Chutney songs and Steelband. T&T is also a major producer of oil and natural gas and this driver of the nation’s prosperity has to be carefully balanced with the fragile and rich environment that is home to scarlet ibis, located in the Caroni Wildlife Refuge, and numerous species of hummingbirds, lush coral reefs and giant leatherback turtles that nest on the shores annually. Where Trinidad is more industrial and densely populated, Tobago is the island tourists fly into for all-inclusive weeks on the beach, for snorkeling or just relaxation. (Even for Trinis!)
This travel seminar will introduce you to the story behind all of this- the Trans-Atlantic trade that produced Calypso music, the Carnival that is also an annual act of resistance to oppression, and the balance between celebrating the heroic struggles of the past with the challenges of emerging as a post-colonial society that can compete with and indeed offer solutions to an increasingly connected, tumultuous and fragile world.

What we were taught in school as the age of European Discovery and Empire, had a dark flip side: genocide, colonization and enslavement. The vast wealth that flowed into Europe and bankrolled the Renaissance, the scientific revolution and the industrial age (and the mansions we love to look at in Downton Abbey and Bridgerton!) came primarily from gold, silver and agricultural products produced by enslaved or indentured labor in The Americas. The people who survived at the very bottom of this system nonetheless produced the very music that has overtaken the world- blues, jazz, rock ‘n roll, reggae, rap and, yes, Calypso and Steelband.
The crop that was one of the most prized in Europe- chocolate, is being reinvented now in Trinidad as a way for rural village people to make an entrepreneurial living, making their own chocolate bars amongst the very orchards that produced raw cocoa beans for shipment to Europe in the past. In fact, the University of the West Indies, where PLU students have studied for nearly 30 years, runs the largest “cocoa gene bank” in the world- an orchard of every variety of cocoa tree known.
This small, twin-island nation celebrates every year at Carnival like no other country in the world, boasting huge costumes, masquerade bands of thousands of revelers who come from all over the world, dancing to some of the hottest Caribbean music anywhere, and celebrating their heroic survival, their proud present and their hopes for a better future. Though we will miss Carnival itself on this journey, we will seek out the roots and the present-day traditions that inform Carnival as well as much of the rest of Trinidad and Tobago’s complex, fascinating culture.

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