Part of the islands' attraction to tourists is its position outside the notorious "hurricane belt." A large portion of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico are battered by hurricanes every year between the months of June and November. The country has a tropical climate, with six warm months of summer and six wet months of winter. Trinidad, the larger of the two main islands, has a rectangular shape with a thick, westward-pointing "tail" in the southwest corner.
Occupying 1,841 square miles, Trinidad is the larger of the two main islands. In the early days of its settlement by humans, it derived its name from the Arawak language. There are disagreements over whether it was named for the hummingbird or simply, "island." When the Spanish Catholic explorer, Christopher Columbus arrived, he called it Trinidad, in recognition of the Holy Trinity.
A popular tourist attraction is the annual national carnival, an extremely colorful and somewhat racy two-day event held every year just before Ash Wednesday. A celebration of dancing, music, parades and masquerade, carnival serves as a final fling before the long period of Vatican-inspired abstinence known as Lent. The predominant music of the festival is normally calypso, although soca has been making inroads and becoming very popular.
Calypso music got its origin in the 1600s. It was a mixture of West African kaiso music with a strong influence from the slaves of the French Antilles. On the other hand, soca, or "chutney music" as it is lovingly called, comes mainly from the Indian subcontinent.
It was the French who brought Carnival to the islands, but they prohibited their slave population from partaking in the festivities. In the spirit of grace, the slaves started their own party and called it Canboulay.
The British authorities got involved and tried at first to ban the weapons the gangs used, mainly sticks and torches. When this did not quell the violence, they banned the festivities outright. This riled the ordinary citizens, who loved the Canboulay and were not that worried about the fighting.
Bereft of their big party, the natives launched a series of angry encounters, referred to in the history books as the Canboulay Riots. Eventually things simmered down and a new, less rambunctious version of the festival evolved. This is what we now refer to as Carnival. This two-day spectacle is what really makes it worthwhile to search for vacancies in Trinidad and Tobago.
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