Diving diving and Hummingbirds

Saturday 16 Nan 2016

Tobago - Castara

I didn't say in the blog yesterday, but the owners of the apartments arrived from UK late yesterday evening. Today, the two Danish girls leave and new guest will arrive sometime after midnight! It's all change here.

We didn't rush up, but we're on the road by 0930. We drove the now familiar route over the mountain to Roxborough and Speyside directly to the Blue Waters Inn. Lynn settled down in the lounge whilst I headed for the dive centre.

Today there were 4 divers including me. Niko, the Finn, Ian, a Brit and an American I never did learn the name of! The boat took us out to the western end of Little Tobago Island. We jumped into about 4 metres of water and onto a rocky bottom before heading down the slope to 18 metres. There was lots of coral and tropical fish and the visibility was good. It was a drift dive, it started of gently, but rapidly picked up pace, there was no need to fin. We saw several large eels, both Conger and Moray, rare, for Tobago, Sand Eels, nudibranchs and a large Lionfish. Like the other day a large turtle appeared at the end of the dive. For me, it was another 55 minutes of astonishing pleasure. Thanks Lynn for the Christmas present.

Once back at the dive centre with all the kit washed, I joined Lynn for lunch in the hotel. I had calamari! After we'd had lunch we managed to find the Hummingbird Gallery. Nothing to do with art, it is a lady who feeds hummingbirds. If I say there were hundreds of hummingbirds in her garden it would be no exaggeration. Not only that, they were often less than a metre away. There are six species of hummingbird present in Tobago, five out of the six were to be seen here. We spent some time taking photos and talking to the owner who is very knowledgable about the birds.

After that, it was the low-level route back to Castara. We attempted a swim, but the swell is still significant. We managed to get in enough to cool down. Back at the apartment we had a longer chat with one if the owners before settling down to relax ip here whilst listening to fairly loud music floating up, no that's too tame a description, pumping up from the village! We filled the bat feeders earlier, do we are inundated with bats fluttering around the balcony.