Out and About in Tobago

[Joanna Gray]

My husband specifically chose Tobago out of all the Caribbean islands for our honeymoon because the wildlife (birds and marine life) were noted as spectacular, the people really friendly, the island just the right size for exploring in a few days and the scenery amazing – and what a choice. We loved it!

We stayed at the Coco Reef (brilliant – see review) and hired a car from Sheppy (also brilliant – see review) for five days. We drove all the way up both sides of the island and through the rainforest. While it’s a tiny island it took us a full day to drive up each side and back down to our hotel. The coves and beaches are just fabulous and it’s amazing how the Atlantic sea differs in temperature so much on their side from ours! All the local people are so friendly and you need to be prepared to beep and wave at regular intervals! We gave a guy from Roxbourgh a lift one day and got a quick rundown of all the local gossip for our trouble! He told us that draughts is really popular and they had terrible landslides last November. We didn’t feel at all nervous. The one thing we noticed on Tobago is that you’ll hardly ever see just one person standing in a shop or in a village – there are always a bunch of people standing in a group chatting and laughing. It’s such a social island.

We took an island tour with William Trim from the Forestry Service for a very reasonable price. While we did this half way through our holiday, I would recommend it as something to do quite early on or even if you’re not hiring a car to get a chance to see the whole island in a day. It was so comprehensive, and gave us a great idea of where we wanted to explore further with our hire jeep.

William and his team are involved in the conservation of the island – organising research and management programmes in the rainforest as well as sustainable plans for the island as a whole. As a local, William was able to give us a fantastic tour which covered local history and how the island was fought over by various European countries for its sugar resources, leaving many influences which can be seen today; contemporary information on how the land use has changed and lots of fascinating insight into the local people and how they live and work; as well as a small tour into the rainforest to meet some research students who were designing a management programme for the island’s hummingbirds and lots of information on all the local plants and birds.

William picked us up at 7.30am and the tour lasted until about 1.30pm. We covered the whole island with stops at some amazing places – once at a viewing point up a road so steep I think we were at 90 degrees on the way up, but the view was amazing!

William is such a nice guy and what made the trip for us was the fact that he knows everyone on the island (partly because he’s local, but also because he’s involved in community awareness programmes for conservation) and it was a constant beeping of horns, calls of Yo, Trimmm!, and Hey, bee beep, bee beep! Fantastic and hilarious! We couldn’t recommend him more as his local knowledge is outstanding.

Contact William Trim on (868) 660 - 5529 or 735 – 4351 or at [email protected].

My last recommendation is Arnos Vale Hotel in the afternoon. We had wanted to visit Little Tobago as my husband is a real wildlife boy and loves birds, but the weather unfortunately turned on our last day with the car and we didn’t fancy getting trapped either on the north end of the island or on Little Tobago itself if a landslide occurred. So we compromised with Arnos Vale and had an amazing few hours with Pirate the parrot and all the birds who come to Arnos Vale for an afternoon feed. Handfuls of humming birds and lots of other exotic birds (sorry I’d need my husband at this point to name them all – to me they just looked beautiful and colourful). It’s listed as a must on this website and we’d have to concur.

Other great places to visit are the Tobago Cigar Company – perfect for gifts (at La Terrazzo restaurant on the road to Plymouth) and the Argyle Waterfall where Alison or one of the other guides take you through the forest to the Waterfall where you can swim. Wonderful!

We loved every minute of our holiday in Tobago – a totally fantastic, unforgettable place!