Car rental and buses

[Linda Wright]

While staying in Castara 22/5 to 5/6 we took a bus from Castara to L'Anse Fourmi and back.

Although buses run regularly they don't seem to run to anything approaching a timetable. We had to wait a long time for the bus to turn up and had originally planned to travel to Scarborough until we realised we'd be waiting for it to get to L'Anse Fourmi and back before we even got on it!

We enjoyed the trip - it was before we'd hired a car and it gave us the opportunity to see a bit of the coastline and a few other villages. I did feel a bit guilty though when we were on the return journey and the driver wouldn't let a man on because all the seats were taken - we were just out to see the scenery and he may have really needed to get somewhere.

In case anyone else would like to try out the buses when they're there - you cannot pay for the ticket on the bus, you must buy it from a local shop in advance. They don't seem to be for a particular destination, they're just of a particular value. From Castara to L'Anse Fourmi was TT$3 each. I assume the shopkeepers know the cost between two destinations.

We hired a car from Dean at Kafi's Car Rental (Tel 639 3254, 685 9433, email: [email protected]) as recommended by the owners of Castara Retreats. They delivered to the house within a few hours of our phoning. The car was by no means new but that's no bad thing on the Tobago roads! It was automatic and had aircon and we paid a bit extra on the insurance to lower our liability in the event of a write-off (sorry to be so vague, I can't remember what it lowered it to - I think it was something like TT$2000). The total cost for the week was TT$1852.

Linda