Tobago

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. Get exclusive discounts with Metro Deals – save on getaways and spa days. Powered by Wowcher What I wasn’t expecting to find was a place so wonderfully unpretentious, where strangers welcome you into their homes and nobody is left behind. There is such a low crime rate that 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. 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. 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. 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 pol