Along with diving, bird-watching is one of Tobago’s top activities, says George. Proximity to South America, coupled with varied habitat – everything from the mangroves fringing Bon Accord Lagoon, near Buccoo, to the forest of Main Ridge – has invested tiny Tobago with approximately 210 bird species, one of the world’s richest concentrations of avian diversity. Birding becomes an effortless exercise with George, who spots scores of species I’ve never seen before, including blue-crowned motmots and turkey-like chachalacas.
“It’s easy once you know the trees,” George explains.
There may be no bird more emblematic of this island than the white-tailed sabrewing, a hummingbird found only on Tobago and patches of forest in Venezuela’s Paria Peninsula.
“It almost went into extinction after Hurricane Flora,” says George. “There were only about six pairs.”
But George knows his trees, and he knows these birds like to feed on bromeliads. We make a winding drive to Gilpin Trace, the main footpath across central Tobago before a road was cut in the early 1960s, and enter a densely forested stream-fed ravine. The temperature instantly drops 10 degrees. Though much of the island is experiencing a drought, underground springs ensure there’s no water crisis in Main Ridge. Over the next hour, George notes nearly a dozen sabrewings; their glittering green feathers flash like jewels in the dappled forest light. Like its storm-ravaged homeland, this fragile bird is a survivor.
We also spend an afternoon exploring the far side of Tobago, where the Caribbean laps against rocky headlands and small scalloped bays. Each bend in Northside Road delivers a screensaver-worthy vista: the quiet fishing village of Castara; the empty, palm-studded sands of Englishman’s Bay; the turquoise-blue waters of pocket-shaped Parlatuvier Bay. But the prettiest anchorage of them all is Charlotteville, a picturesque fishing village backed by an amphitheater of wooded hills.
Islanders come all the way from Crown Point to buy fresh tuna, mahimahi and kingfish right off the skiffs. Charlotteville’s big-fish reputation extends far beyond Tobago. Anglers routinely land quarter-ton blue marlins at an annual game-fishing tournament in March; the junior-class world record, a monstrous 890-pounder, was caught just a few miles offshore.
I come upon one local waterman, Vernon Taylor, cleaning his catch of the day. Taylor tells me he hooked the recent tournament’s largest kingfish, nearly 30 pounds, and then shrugs.
“It was kind of small,” he says. “I catch one last week, 65 pounds.” Must be universal, the stories fishermen tell.
If it’s possible, the views from Speyside, just three sinuous miles south of Charlotteville, are even finer. The village gazes out at Goat Island, once the private lair of author Ian Fleming, and uninhabited Little Tobago Island, a seabird preserve. Fed by a current carrying nutrients all the way from Venezuela’s Orinoco river, the surrounding waters offer an underwater carnival for intermediate and experienced divers – schools of tarpon, clouds of reef fish, rocky swim-throughs and one of the world’s largest brain corals – which explains why a town of just 1,200 people counts seven dive shops.
Between plunges, must-do diversions include tucking into a leisurely lunch at funkalicious Jemma’s Sea View Kitchen – imagine kingfish in creole sauce served in a waterfront treehouse – and exploring Little Tobago’s wilderness. The latter’s a place that George, a lifelong Speysider, knows well. His father once served as the island’s resident warden, a duty the son held for seven years.
Natural Selections: Caribbean Parks and Wildlife Gallery...
Old-timers still refer to the rugged five-square-mile preserve as Bird of Paradise Island. In 1909, William Ingram, an Englishman who owned the island, imported 24 pairs of greater birds of paradise from New Guinea, where he feared hunters would wipe out the species for its striking maroon and golden-yellow plumage. Since Ingram’s death in 1924, the island has remained a bird sanctuary. The exotic imports thrived until Hurricane Flora but then slowly, inexorably winked out.
“The last sighting of that bird was by me, in November 1981,” George says quietly.
Since then, the red-billed tropicbird, chalk-white with tail streamers as long as its 16-inch body, has become the top tourist attraction; as many as 2,500 nest on Little Tobago, one of the Caribbean’s largest colonies. And wherever there are tropicbirds, there are bound to be magnificent frigate birds – air pirates that harry other birds in midflight, forcing them to cough up their fish catches.
George leads me to a sheer 300-foot sea cliff where tropicbirds wheel in the warm afternoon updrafts; above them frigate birds soar lazily, waiting to mug the meeker birds below. A beautiful, brutal scene, it brought naturalist David Attenborough to this very spot to film the bad-bird behavior for his nature show, Trials of Life. We watch the in-flight entertainment for five minutes, then 10. I sense that George would happily hang out here all day, every day, perhaps wishing for one last glimpse of paradise on the wing.
On my last night on Tobago, I head to Black Rock, a westside beach near the village of Plymouth, where enormous leatherback sea turtles nest from March through September. Although the total number of nests here – about 400 last year – pales next to the egg counts of Trinidad’s Grand Riviere and Matura beaches, Tobago is still a crucial refuge for this endangered reptile. I find Gian Lalsingh, a director of local conservation outfit Save Our Sea Turtles, scanning the sands fronting Turtle Beach resort.
“Once a turtle is up on the beach, we don’t ever leave it,” Lalsingh says.
The female leatherbacks lay between 60 and 120 leathery, pingpong-ball-size eggs, and every successful hatchling counts. The animals, which live in the open ocean and are known to migrate thousands of miles each year, don’t reach breeding age for decades. They must survive long odds to reach this beach, dodging poachers, sharks and other predators and avoiding entanglement in boat lines and fishing nets.
On this starry night, Lalsingh searches for a female leatherback with a distinctive feature: a missing rear flipper, possibly from a shark attack. Without the limb, it’s impossible for this 1,000-pound animal to haul out onto the beach.
“This is the fourth night in a row she’s tried,” says Lalsingh. “Hopefully we can get her onto the beach, assist her in excavating her nest and relocate her eggs to someplace safer.’’
I gaze across the beach and contemplate my time on this idyllic, authentic corner of the Caribbean. I completely understand this turtle’s burning desire to return to Tobago. I’d swim an ocean to get back here too.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Caribbean was a battleground for European superpowers, Tobago was a valuable jewel, changing hands a dizzying 32 times. First settled by the Dutch and the Kurlanders – from an obscure Baltic duchy in present-day Latvia – the island later was contested by the French and the British, who gained ultimate control in 1803. Trinidad, 21 miles to the southwest, has a far less turbulent past: The Spanish ruled for two centuries, then yielded to the British in 1797 – no Dutch, and certainly no Latvians. The islands’ differences are readily apparent on the streets and in the kitchens. Of the nation’s 1.23 million people, only 55,000 – less than 5 percent – hail from Tobago, imbuing it with a distinctly bucolic character. A majority of Tobagonians claim African descent, and their cuisine skews toward hearty West Indian fare. Trini’s cultural stew is topped by Indian Hindus, who first arrived from South Asia in the mid-19th century as indentured laborers and have left a spicy imprint on the island’s culinary scene.
Tobago’s Wild Side
Thanks mostly to their proximity to South America, the islands of Trinidad and Tobago boast the broadest array of flora and fauna in the Caribbean region – some 2,300 plant species, 430 birds, 100 mammals and 70 reptiles. And many of these creatures inhabit tiny Tobago, whose 116 square miles enclose the verdant Main Ridge Forest Reserve, a tract of 14,000 mostly impenetrable acres along the island’s volcanic spine. Offshore, Tobago’s premier attraction is the impressive Buccoo Reef. Just off the popular beach at Pigeon Point, on the island’s southwestern end, this arc of five reef flats encloses a shallow, sandy lagoon. It’s home to a huge assortment of corals and some 70 species of fish. Sadly, unrestricted fishing, coral plundering and pollution from increased tourism has landed Buccoo on the World Resources Institute’s Reefs at Risk list.
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