Bird watching with Jesse

Friday, we took a tour with Jesse James in Trinidad. Anyone who knows Jesse knows that this means 2 things:

• A good time will be had
• There will be good food, and lots of food

This was a bird watching/nature tour to the Asa Wright Nature Center, with lots of great information, not just from the expert guides at the nature center, but also from Jesse himself. I'll be lucky to remember 10% of what I learned today.

Jesse picked us up around 8:30 this morning, and returned us around 6pm. It was a full day!

The nature center is a 2 hour drive from where we are anchored, near Chaguaramas, Trinidad. On the drive there and back, we were regaled with history, information about landmarks, advice on great restaurants, personal stories, and a shocking amount of detail on plants and animals that we saw along the way.

Jesse was worried that we might get hungry before lunch, so he stopped at a roadside vendor to get some saheena for everyone. It was just enough to hit the spot and keep us from resorting to cannibalism, but not so much that it would spoil lunch.

At the nature center, we got to watch a short video about the history and renovation of the place, followed by a briefing by our nature guide.

We hadn't even started our tour yet and we were overwhelmed by the sheer number of hummingbirds at the feeders.

We did a short easy walk down and back up one of the many trails there, getting a description of the plants and animals that we saw on the way. And we saw a LOT of them.

We returned to the nature center just ahead of a brief rain, and waited on the large patio/veranda for lunch to be ready. We saw so many birds there that it was hard to tear ourselves away for lunch. But I'm glad we did.

Jesse told us that the buffet lunch was good, and he was right. So much food, all of it very tasty! I went back for seconds, and Lynda even had dessert.

After lunch, we had several options. We could go hike more trails, we could go swim in a fresh water stream, or we just just sit on the veranda and do more bird watching. I had injured my hand yesterday, so swimming wasn't going to happen, and the nature guide was staying at the veranda, so we decided to stay put and take advantage of his expertise.

As we sat there drinking coffee, chatting with the guide, we saw more and more birds show up. I think our minimum effort, lazy bird watching on the veranda doubled the number of different birds we had seen today.

Finally, at 3:30, there was a "tea service", which means more food and drinks. So much good food!

At 4pm, we all piled back into Jesse's van and headed back to the marina.

We did, of course, stop for more food, this time some home made ice cream at a small shop.

Overall, this was an amazing trip, highly recommended. Trinidad's reputation for excellent bird watching is well deserved. And Jesse's tours really are as legendary as everyone says they are.

#notsponsored, but if you want to have an amazing experience in Trinidad, reach out to Jesse at +1 (868) 683-5202 on WhatsApp. You won't regret it.

The screenshots are from the Merlin birdwatching app. I didn't get pictures of everything that we saw, but these will help you imagine what we saw...

We can't forget this cute little aguti:

And then there are the hummingbirds. Can you identify them all? I certainly can't. Thankfully Lynda and our guide helped sort them out for us. Honestly, the hummingbirds are too much for me to try to tackle tonight, so let's leave that for a future blog post.