North of Trinidad and the coast of Venezuela, Tobago is a tiny dot in the Caribbean smaller than the Isle of Wight.
Until recently it was a quiet, almost forgotten island. Only in the last few years has it begun to stir to the hum of low-key tourism. Daniel Defoe used Tobago as a setting for Robinson Crusoe 280 years ago and even today a footprint still lingers long in the sand.
I spent my first day in Crusoe’s footsteps on Pigeon Point Beach, frequently used as an icon to promote the whole of the Caribbean.
I was amazed and delighted that on a Sunday in May under deep blue skies and a temperature of 33C there were still only a handful of fellow sunseekers. From here I took a snorkelling trip to Buccoo Reef where the water was aquarium clear with fish in every shape and colour.
In Scarborough, the ramshackle little capital, I met my Man Friday – taxi-guide Victor Nixon – who greeted me with a wide smile. It was no false bonhomie either; in less than an hour’s drive Victor had been greeted by name by more friends than most people make in a lifetime in the UK. Along the way we stopped to pick mangoes and paw-paw, and to drink cold coconut water.
Mount Dillon is the perfect vantage point to survey this green and rolling island and, at an elevation of some 400ft, is a great place to catch the breeze. It’s a short drive down to the golden sands of Englishman’s Bay which rivals Pigeon Point for sheer beauty, and also provides excellent snorkelling.
At the northern tip of the island lies Charlotteville, a charming village which is only 25 miles from the southern hotels of Crown Point as the pelican flies, but a 2hr car journey along a winding road.
From the magnificent bay of nearby Speyside I took a boat to Little Tobago Island, now a bird sanctuary with blue-crowned mot-mots in the cool of the woods and thousands of seabirds swooping from its vertiginous cliffs.
I watched the pterodactyl-like magnificent frigate bullying a smaller bird to drop its fish, which the aggressor then caught in mid air.
But not all of Tobago’s wildlife is so savage. In the tropical gardens of the Kariwak Village I was entranced by tiny jewel-coloured hummingbirds hovering within arm’s reach, while at the other end of the size scale I was overawed by the half-ton leatherback turtle which flippered its way onto Turtle Beach to lay a prodigious clutch of eggs.