Exploring the western most reaches

Friday 15 Jan 2016

Tobago - Castara

We woke up to sunny skies and a feeling that the sea had calmed down somewhat. We had breakfast and headed out to explore fairly early.

Just for a change, we headed west along the northern coast initially back to Moriah. From here, we headed towards Arnos Vale where we'd heard there was a bird sanctuary. We drove around some very small roads getting nowhere, quite literally sometimes when we found roads fizzling out into unsurfaced tracks. We stopped and asked people who said to just follow the road to Plymouth!

After a while, we checked again and found that it was actually beyond Plymouth, almost back in Buccoo. Finally, we found it and drove up the rough track to a small car park where we found a family of Americans taking family photos. They seemed to have rather a lot of children. We were quite pleased when they left as they were rather noisy!

The sanctuary is an abandoned estate bequeathed by its ex owner to be a refuge for wildlife. Apart from a 'visit or centre' where the birds are fed daily at 0800 and 1600, everything has largely been left for nature to take over. We wandered along a couple of semi-overgrown trails. We were the only people there. We saw several birds, but we were a bit late in the day.

We decided to have a look at the western most part if the island and followed the road back through Buccoo and Canaan to the airport. We turned off near the airport for Crown point and Pigeon point. The first is full of big hotels and commerce and the second was blocked by another development. I'm glad we aren't staying here.

Our remaining missions were to get a snack lunch, buy some fruit and go to the supermarket. The first of these led us from fast to fine dining. We stopped to fill the car up ( 35p per litre) and rather sadly noticed a drive through Wendy's. I'm ashamed to say we did the unthinkable and ended up with a take out meal sitting on the low cliff overlooking Buccoo Bay. I suppose it can be excused as we knew we were going to eat in more style later.

We visited the same fruit and veg stall that we'd been to previously and stocked and the to the supermarket before heading back to Castara where we relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon.

At six, we drove to the far side of Castara and climbed up the steep drive to Castara Retreats, a rather nice set of apartments with a restaurant. We were just in time to see the sun setting over the sea. The restaurant is built high on the side of the bay the view superb. It called for cocktails!  A lime refresher for Lynn and a caipirinha for me. We'd booked a table overlooking the bay and chose starters and mains from the menu, for me, kofka to start and jerk chicken whilst Lynn had an antipasto salad to start and jerk fish. The kitchen adjoins the dining area and we were asked by the chef how spicy we wanted our dinner. Wow, it was really good, without doubt the best food we'd eaten on island. They had a small, mainly Italian, wine list, but we had a beer each. We also succumbed to the desert menu, chocolate torte for Lynn and home-made chocolate ice cream for me. We turned down the fine rum to  finish it off. Highly recommended, a little prices, but well worth it. We recommended it to ourselves and booked to go back on Monday!