Wild Tobago

  Experience Tobago culture this month: the energized Carnival called the Freedom Festival October 28 to 30, or the more contemplative Art Trail to be revealed November 3. Pat Ganase reports.   As some flock to the Tobago Carnival this weekend, others may choose to get away from the revelry. They may seek quiet in nature on the cool forested Main Ridge or the beaches that punctuate the coast of northeast Tobago. You can escape into the forest from Roxborough (on the east) or from Parlatuvier or Bloody Bay (on the west coast). But if you choose to tour the beaches, you might start at Castara following the Northside (coastal) road through Englishman’s Bay, Parlatuvier, Bloody Bay, L’Anse Fourmi, Man o War Bay all on the Caribbean coast. At Charlotteville, the Northside Road runs into the Windward Road and you climb the highest part of the island to descend on the Atlantic coast, Speyside, King’s Bay (at Delaford), Roxborough, Belle Garden. This route also takes you on the ...

Over the period March 28 to 30, Environment Tobago’s former president and current vice president Patricia Turpin is attending the GEF-7 Replenishment Meeting in Paris. This meeting is the start of several sessions in which the Global Environmental Facility (a fund established in 1991 to tackle the biggest environmental problems on the planet), will consider what funding is needed to address, halt and reverse environmental degradation. This feature first appeared in Tobago Newsday, March 30, 2017. Charlotteville Tobago may be a long way from Paris France. For Patricia Turpin, Charlotteville is home, and Paris is one of many cities where Turpin attends to the business of securing the environmental health and wellbeing of home, the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and the wider Caribbean. Charlotteville, she believes, may yet teach the nation a thing or two about conservation. Though she was born in San Fernando, Turpin has grown conservationist roots in Tobago where she manag...

There’s a quiet revolution taking place in Tobago tourism. It is not on the busy south-west of the island where big hotels straddle the beaches. But if you follow the winding Northside Road to the village home of a Prime Minister and President of the twin-island republic, you’ll discover the transformation of a fishing village into the quintessential Tobago adventure destination. Castara clings to the forested western slopes of the Main Ridge reserve and looks into the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. Here indeed is Paradise. Pat Ganase considers Castara. WaveSong at Heavenly Bay, Coast Hanger, Shady Mango, Sea Steps, Dolphin, Hummingbird, Breadfruit Grove, Sunset, Birdsong or Fiddle Tree! Ali Baba's Sea Breeze is tucked up a secret slope overlooking the quiet Castara cove.The names of cottages call to you and sing invitations to this vacation village on the west coast of Tobago facing the Caribbean Sea. Homegrown developments in Castara over the last 25 years have b...

Anjani Ganase, Trinbagonian marine biologist, continues her weekly exploration of marine Tobago. This week, she takes us to Charlotteville where local and international participants join forces for the conservation of north-east Tobago. This feature was first published in the Tobago Newsday on September 15, 2016 Follow Anjani Ganase on twitter: @AnjGanase My experience of research stations include Carmabi in Curaçao and Heron Island research station in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as those I’ve visited in Belize, Bermuda and Hawaii. These stations are usually set up in remote tropical locations, focused on facilitating and supporting academics doing research on an ecosystem or organism in a natural environment; away from people. In many cases, any discoveries made by the scientists are often taken with them when they leave; local communities may not know that the study took place. Today, more tropical research stations have begun to include community engagement and ...