I explored the ‘unpretentious’ Caribbean island that’s probably the nicest place on Earth

It’s a pitch dark moonless night. We slip at sunset and canoe from Pigeon Point Heritage Park to the mangroves in Bon Accord Lagoon, past the sandy spit of No Man’s Land, the fireflies, and the juvenile spotted eagle ray. 

The air is hot and humid. In the shadows, cayman eyes peer back at us, illuminated by torchlight. Above us, huge fish-eating bats swoop low and silent. Below us the water is bright with bioluminescence. 

I slide from my canoe into the bath-warm water and observe my limbs shining and sparkling with blue light. Beneath me, fish flash past like luminous torpedoes. 

There’s something so utterly beguiling about Tobago that makes you yearn to stay there for the rest of your life.

It is breathtakingly beautiful, yes, like much of the Caribbean, and there are few places that don’t have a view that you could print as a postcard. 

What I wasn’t expecting to find was the people so infectiously charming, the demographic so inclusive and the underlying mood so wonderfully unpretentious.

There is such a low crime rate nobody locks their cars. It is unhindered by exclusive resorts, everyone shares the same palm lined beaches, eats at the same tables and there is an easy equilibrium that exists between locals and newcomers. 

It is the Tobagonian way, and we find ourselves here during the Tobago Heritage Festival. 

Our first stop is the Shepherds Inn in Crown Point, a traditional teak built hotel with a waterfall pool and, mercifully, air conditioning. 

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From there, we take our first excursion to Main Ridge Forest Reserve, the rainforest area that covers the steep central rolling bluffs that make up the main ridge of the island. 

Up in the hills the traffic swaps cars for goatlike sheep, who obey the seemingly vague road laws with patient tolerance. The air clears and there are stunning views to distant coves around each bumpy corner. 

As you step into the forest the warm air draws in. William, our guide, introduces us to trapdoor spiders, forest crabs, bloody bay frogs, rufous tailed jacomar, black snake, agouti, leaf cutter ants and a rare great black hawk. The rainforest is alive with unfamiliar noises and enormous leafy plants. Iridescent hummingbirds flash past us out of the bushes as if it were perfectly normal. 

If this is the ideal introduction to the flora and fauna of Tobago, then Harvest is the ideal introduction to its people. 

After checking into the stunning beachside Bluewater’s Inn on the Atlantic side of the island (whose lobsters are matched only by their sea views), we find ourselves in the town of Speyside where we’ve been invited to one of the most altruistic parties I’ve ever encountered. 

Harvest is a somewhat unique festival (it doesn’t even happen in Trinidad) where entire villages open their doors to friends and strangers alike, offering bountiful food and drink for everybody.

The set up is lavish and the generosity is competitive. My offer to bring a bottle of rum was laughed at. Some even take out loans in order to host. 

Our first port of call is the house of the Chief Secretary. Big speakers are pumping local Soca music (a sort of cross between calypso and RnB) and chairs are set up for the elderly. Everyone else just mixes in.

The barman hands me a mix of Puncheon (overproof white rum) and 420, (a bottled cocktail already containing rum and a plant genuinely called ‘Horny Goat Weed’). We dance and eat and I share a pipe with an old man on crutches on the beach, before trucking onwards to another party up the hill where we chat and drink while hummingbirds, now glanced at with only slight interest, flit around our heads. 

But it’s on the warm night walk through the narrow streets that cling to the sides of the hill that we see how Harvest really swings. The slopes are alive with thumping music. People spill from one house to another and laughter fills the hot night air. 

On Tobago, every other day seems to start or end in a procession. As the days meld into one, we find ourselves celebrating the procession through Roxborough, ending in a re-enactment of the Belmanna riots where plantation workers, protesting about their appalling working conditions, were attacked by police. This ignited the Freedom Movement and the abolition of slavery.

Then there is the Black Rock sea festival Carnival procession. The music truck and steel pan band drives at glacial pace from Black Rock to the beach, followed by us all, beginning with the conch blowing, to symbolise the call to the people to help pull in the nets called “Pulling in the Seine.” 

At the beach there are speeches and frantic choreographed dancing, customised bicycle displays, volleyball and open fire drum skinning. Once again, food, morning drinking and infectious laughter is everywhere. 

We visit the island of Little Tobago, a seabird sanctuary where, from high on the cliffs we watch frigate birds stealing fish from laughing birds by pulling their tail feathers mid-flight.

We ride horses into the sea at Buccoo Bay, snorkel amongst tropical fish in waters so clear it feels like a fish tank, and laze waist deep, half a mile off shore on the pink shallow sands of Nylon Pool where men with bars set up on dories and kayaks plie me with a restorative mixture of White Oak rum and sorrel.

We eat fish smoked over grape wood on Pirate Bay and drink a savage homemade hard rum that tastes of coconut and trouble. 

For the last few days, we stay at the Coco Reef Resort on the western point of Store Bay, a hotel built with a huge atrium style reception and dining area that refuses to clarify where inside and outside met. Once the staff discover I am a cartoonist, they excitedly walk me over to a picture of Gerald Scarfe taken there in the late 1990s. 

We are now close to the main strip of bars, fast food, thumping music and The Jade Monkey Casino where I lose all my money on a whim chance. I am commiserated by locals who laugh with me, and I realise that I still leave happy. 

Nobody left behind

Tobago seems to have realised what treasures it had early on and held them close. The island has a complex past, having changed hands over 30 times. From this, a tight community has developed that bases itself strongly on the idea of nobody being left behind. 

The best analogy, however, came from our charming minibus driver, Phill.

As he drove he tooted his horn and waved at people so often we had to ask ‘Phill, do you know EVERYBODY on the island?!’ to which he answered: ‘I don’t know these people, in Tobago we just toot and wave at strangers and they wave back.’

I sat in the back of the minibus sipping a cold bottle of 420 thinking I’d probably found the nicest place on earth.

Guy Venables was a guest of Tobago Tourism Agency. For more information on planning a trip, please visit their website.

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