Party-hard Trinidad

The twin island republics of Trinidad and Tobago, just off the coast of South America, have long been on my wish list of places to visit. The brochures tell tantalising tales of palm-lined white sand beaches, forests, savannah and reefs, all home to a magical variety of plant, animal and bird life. But these seductions just serve as the backdrop to my chief reason to visit — which comes in the guise of the West Indian Carnival.

Feast before the fast

Just the mention of the fact that I am going to attend this orgy of non-stop music, barely-there costumes, swinging hips and oodles of energy at this year's carnival, has everyone's faces glowing green with envy. For whatever kind of party you're looking for, Trinidad will have it at this time of year — with the volume pumped up six times over. For those who came in late, this grand celebration of life was initiated by French planters in the late 18th century, long after the carnival had been incorporated into the Catholic tradition as a final binge, before the fasting period for Lent.

After hopping aboard numerous tag-tail plane rides, I land five days prior to the main event in Port of Spain in the dead of night and there's a dense stillness that engulfs me. As if everyone's getting enough calm to gear up for the storm of partying ahead. I awake at dawn, predictably to the strains of soca , the soul of calypso, the music of Trinidad and Tobago, wafting in through my bedroom window.

It's in the hotel lobby, in stores and everywhere I go. The first day I proclaim rather overmuch that I prefer listening to the sounds of the birds, the waves, the wind, as we drive through the island. By the eleventh day of being here, I know my heart's going to beat permanently to the rhythm of the soca tracks that I've scoured every store to find.

Dances with strangers

My driver tells me, between giggles at the lyrics of a particularly risqué soca song called ‘Garlic Sauce', “Trinidad's carnival, unlike the one at Rio, is all about participation.

What makes it special is that it lives fully under the skin of the locals and anyone with a desire to wine, wave, chip and jump can sign up with a band.”

The days leading up to the carnival are littered with people out shopping for spangly bikinis, feathered head-dresses and the right skin tone tights from Nichols. Pre-carnival nights are riven with competitions for the best calypso dancers, soca singers and steel pan bands, usually at Queen's Park Savannah.

I quickly get used to the idea that total strangers will want to dance with you — no matter where you come from, no matter what you look like. That life-long friendships are formed while you dance and drink the evening away, over tablefuls of food and foot-stomping music, at the many ‘fetes' and ‘limes' around town.

Dressed for the ‘mayhem'

If you hail from a prescriptive or conservative society, Trinidad seems hypnotically seductive as it morphs all my preconceptions of the world. Trinidad's not trying to change the world. It flows with it. It doesn't stack virtue against vice. It says it's okay to have a good time, to have bodyguards if need be, in case the mayhem gets out of hand, to wear sunscreen because the sun will certainly get too hot, but at all costs to live, to participate, to experiment, to fall and most importantly to pick oneself up, to dance on.

Children are encouraged to embrace an open way of life. In the kiddies' carnival, it is clear to see that liberated dance, openness to the world and fearless abandon is written into their curriculum of life. And there's not a whimper out of them, no matter how hot the sun. The life force is being injected in to them young.

At first I express some reservation at getting into a costume that is little bigger than a string of golden dental floss. The major clothes I'm wearing are in the form of an impressive array of feathers in my hair. But as time wears on in this liberated space, clothes seem almost a burden and I am seduced, like a runaway nun, into the freedom implicitly written into this arena.

Chocolate attacks

With excitement building up around me, there is little choice but to throw myself into j'ouvert , a raunchy fiesta that begins post midnight.

Bands of people roam the streets attacking each other with chocolate, mud, oil or body paint, depending on the medium they've chosen for play. Of course, the freely flowing alcohol and the pounding soca beat from the music and alcohol trucks driving along with each group, injects mojo into this drunk, dirty but altogether happy mass of humanity. A man jumps off a wall and nibbles on my ear. In any other world, I would have been affronted. Now I just offer a loopy grin that matches the rabbit ears affixed as costume to my skull.

As the sun comes up, masquerade bands hit the streets and turn them into a living museum as locals dance along with blue devils and jab jabs , traditional carnival characters. J'ouvert has, of course, only been the foreplay to the carnival.

I know that over the next two days of dancing in the sun, with the band ‘tribe' that I've elected to play with, I might return to the hotel a full five shades darker, with my toes swollen from too much foot-tapping. But then I compare this with watching the bands pass me by on the big stage while I sit in shaded stands. And realise quickly that there is no alternative to being fully alive than to playing the game from the field. The moments of dancing centre stage are brief, but the journey through the streets was well worth it.

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