myTobago – your questions, review and comment about Tobago

What a great site! We already have most of our accommodation booked for March 2004 with Shirley Rogers at Hummingbird Heights which came highly recommended here. We now need to book a few days in Charlotteville and I'm wondering if anyone can review a self-catering apartment for me. We are a family of 5. Hilltop cottage looks nice, but its hard to get a real feel for it. Any other suggestions? Does anyone know Hilltop cottage? Looking forward to your replies.

Roger

I haven’t got any personal knowledge of Hill Top Cottage myself, but hopefully one of our contributors may know the cottage and be able to give a report.

Our listings only gave very brief details of the property, but I’ve now been able to track down a photo. From the view in the photo, I suspect Hill Top Cottage is on the track leading to Flagstaff Hill. Wonderful views and fresh cooling breezes, but you better be fit! This location ties in with a comment on the Man Friday Diving site that it is a 20 minute walk up a steep road. Believe you me, in Charlotteville, steep is STEEP. Mind you, I assume you will have transport. Pretty essential, because it’s remarkably isolated up there.

I haven’t stayed in Charlotteville since the early 60s, but we always make an annual pilgrimage there as a reminder of those happy days. I hope to rectify that next year and have heard two or three good reports of Top River Pearl. My reports don’t give any great detail, so I can’t tell you much, but a quick reference of their web tells me that Top River Pearl offers affordable accommodation in either a two-bedroom self-contained cottage or four apartments. I know they also opened a small Cappuccino Bar there at the end of last year and believe this café also does snack and light meals. I had hoped to visit it during my last visit but ran out of time.

Hope this helps.

Steve,

Thank you for the info. I will check out Top River Pearl. Do you have a preference between staying in Speyside or Charlotteville? We would like to do this end of the island for a few days. My daughter and I plan on doing some diving, but as an entire family we want to snorkel and hike. I will hopefully get out fishing.

Charlotteville has more charm than Speyside. It is also a larger, more compact village (town, by Tobago standards). Speyside is smaller and more drawn out along the coast, so everywhere is a longer walk. Charlotteville also has Pirates Bay - one of the prettiest unspoilt beaches on the island (see our http://www.myTobago.info/beaches.php Beaches page) which is only a 10-15 minute hike from the centre of Charlotteville. There are other isolated beautiful beaches only accessible by boat.

I'm thinking aloud as I type. I guess on balance I'm saying Charlotteville. Either way, the two villages are less than a 15 minute drive apart, so as long as you've got a car, then you can get the best of both worlds. Even taking a local taxi will be cheap enough, quite frankly.

Steve,

We seem to be online at about the same time, so I have a quick question about navigating your site. I want to view posts from your forum from months past. When I make this request at the bottom of the forum, I get bumped to the most recent page and no further. Is this because there are no posts that date back this long ago?

roger

Hi Roger

Here I am sitting minding my own business and finishing the first draft of our review of Being, a luxury villa at Arnos Vale. I thought I was all alone in the world until your post dropped in.

The answer depends upon how far back you are searching. The current forum was re-created from an older, more basic system. I had to transfer some 1100 posts manually. This covered all posts made since I launched myTobago at the end of April 2002. The oldest posts on the new board are dated 20th and 27th March and that is the date the system will search on, even though the posts were originally posted up to a year earlier. Old post are marked with a notation "Post Recreated: Originally posted xxxxx". Therefore, you will be unable to search for posts prior to March.

Hope this answer your question.

Steve,

That does answer my question, thanks.

Roger

I can recommend Man O'War Bay cottages in Charlotteville - the website is http://www.man-o-warbaycottages.com/.

They are all extremely close to the beach. One of them (I think no 3 or could be 5) is a larger one which has a deck which opens onto the beach.

The cottages are well kitted out - we didn't need any of the stuff we took with us! The grounds around the cottages are lovely and the village is a long - at least 3 minute - walk away!!

We are longing to return there - and our most recent trip to Charlotteville was in March!

Hope you enjoy Charlotteville!

Louise