Great courland Bay - Turtle Beach, Trinidad and Tobago
Sunday, July 29, 2007
This is where the Latvian Courlander Gathering takes place every 2 years, celebrating the history of the 17th C. Latvian settlement headed by Duke Jakubas. Several place names in Tobago are Latvian in origin: Courland Bay, Liepaja, Runnemede, Kursu Licis, etc. There is a permanent exhibit at the Turtle Rex Hotel showing the artifacts and historical literature of that period. The Turtle Rex Hotel is a great place to stay - right on the beach, where each night during turtle season, you will see at least one Leatherback Turtle coming on shore to lay eggs. These turtles are a protected species and were near extinction a few years ago, but now are more in numbers. Their size of shell length can reach up to 7 ft! Their head is as big as a human head, and does not retract into the shell. It is that primitive! We couldn't photos while we observed them though, so I scanned in a postcard to show their scale.
