The birding, the beaches, and Buccoo Reef
Trinidad's quieter sister island: protected rainforest, a reef you can stand up in, and beaches you will not have to share.
Tobago is the quiet half of the country, and people here treat it as the place you go to stop. It is small enough to drive across in an hour, and the pace drops the moment you land.
The Main Ridge Forest Reserve running down its spine has been protected since 1776, which makes it the oldest legally protected forest reserve in the Western Hemisphere. It is also why the birding is serious enough that people fly in for that alone. On the coast, Buccoo Reef is a marine park you visit by glass-bottom boat, usually stopping at the Nylon Pool on the way back, a waist-deep sandbar sitting out in open water.
Pigeon Point and its jetty is the photograph everyone takes. Store Bay is where you eat, from the food huts behind the beach. Speyside and Charlotteville at the far end are where the diving is.
Glass-bottom boat over the reef, then a stop at the Nylon Pool, a waist-deep sandbar sitting out in open water.
A short beach with the food huts behind it. Crab and dumpling is the order.
The diving end of the island, known for drift dives, manta rays and some of the largest brain coral anywhere.
A curve of sand on the Caribbean side with nothing much built on it, which is the entire point.
A street party on Sunday nights, despite the name. Steelpan early, soca later.
A seabird sanctuary offshore from Speyside, and the easiest place in the region to see red-billed tropicbirds.