If you’ve never bathed in a large pothole full of mud, mud that’s the consistency of slightly gritty vanilla custard without the delicious creamy flavour, you haven’t lived. It’s a strange experience, bobbing around in lukewarm sludge, feet up, lying back with arms outstretched watching large flatulent bubbles of natural methane gas break the surface around you. And it’s basically impossible to sink in the mud unless you -or a close family member- tie some large, heavy weights to your feet.
Last month I visited the Los Iros mud “volcano” in southern Trinidad a few days after a trip to the Island’s fragrant La Brea pitch lake, the oily subject of my first Trini piece. Los Iros sits in a small clearing in some woods; a pavement of hardened mud close to a rocky beach reached by a very steep path. There’s a shallow cone of dried mud on one side of the clearing which holds a roundish mud pond at its top, quietly bubbling away to itself. Every so often it overflows, spilling small rivers of mud which rapidly solidify in the tropical heat to form the cone although sadly we weren’t there to witness an eruption.
Continue reading “A Tale of Pitch and Mud: Part 2”