Travel&Vacation

Seven miles off the coast of Venezuela, on the tiny Caribbean island of Trinidad, I’m about to come face to face with two dozen swirling, shrieking guardians of the dead. Likened to devils by the ancient Amerindians of South America, these sentinels of the afterlife are actually rare cave-dwelling birds that nest like bats and look like ravens with fiery red eyes. The souls of the departed were said to dwell in the recesses of their subterranean lair.

I’ve hiked through a sweltering rainforest to find these devil birds, and I can hear them before I see them. They scream and flutter just out of sight, flapping their wings and circling the interior of this place called Aripo Cave as if to warn me—
keep out
. It’s taken me the better part of a day to reach the cave, though, and I’m not about to stop now.

My guide, a brawny local from the Trinidad-based eco-outfitter The Pathmaster, urges me forward, down the slick, jaw-like rocks of the cave mouth. Soon I’m on my hands and knees, and then I’m crawling on my stomach across a narrow underground ledge for a better look. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see them, and I understand why the Amerindians both feared and revered them. They are hideous and loud, but compelling in their strangeness.

“Time to go,” urges my guide, who leads me back toward sunlight and then on to a tiny stream, where I scrub
guano
from my hands and feet. The return trip to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad’s capital city and my home base for this eco-adventure, will be a long and tiring one, but my spirits are buoyed. I’ve seen nature at its most unusual, and gained an insight into the belief system of a culture long since forgotten by most of the world.

Follow the Pathmaster

Andy Whitwell, founder and director of The Pathmaster, fosters these types of experiences for many of the travelers who visit his adopted home of Trinidad. “Undisturbed natural areas are phenomenally important to us as people and to the world as a whole,” he says. “I’m hoping that when people leave, they will have more interest in protecting what’s around them.”

Of British descent, but born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Whitwell spent 18 years traveling around the tropics as a research scientist before coming to Trinidad to work in ecotourism. He’s set up The Pathmaster to cater to ecotourists interested in “active nature travel,” and he employs several local guides who specialize in different ways of interpreting the world around them. One guide, a shaman named Cristo, describes the rainforest as his “library” and points out unique local flora used for medicinal purposes by the island’s indigenous population. Whitwell, on the other hand, is the “bug man” and themes his trips around his knowledge of tropical insects.

“I use two guides on nearly every trip,” adds Whitwell. “I select the guides based on their expertise and the interests of the customers. Consequently, my margins are smaller, but the experience is better.”

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