People are hard at work in vacation places. Fortunate are those who vacation and are allowed into other working lives, other enterprises. Pat Ganase visits Charlotteville, centre of the Northeast Tobago Man and the Biosphere Reserve.
It is late August in Charlotteville. The rising sun lights up Campbleton. Rainbows from the misty horizon dance over Booby Island. The sea is a pond, calm, clear to the bottom; its channels of sand shimmer between boulders and bouldering corals.
This is our holiday place on the northwest coast of Tobago, where the water is warm, the rainforest resplendent and the sunsets startling. Here is the heartland of northeast Tobago, as different as can be imagined from southwest Tobago.
Walk along the beach from the Man-o-War Bay Cottages to the village. Check the heron keeping an eye on you while chasing a crab on the sand. Pass the end of Bay Road, looking for what the sea washed up overnight: maybe a sea urchin, maybe polished sea-glass chips. Duck under ancient almonds whose roots sip the briny earth and branches hang heavy over the shore.
Fishermen are at their boats, some returned with redfish from a night of banking, some gassing up to set out. At the fishing depot, you are told come back later.
Maurice the calabash artist is at work on some new gourds, gifts from friends in Central Trinidad. Priya always has early customers at her vegetable shop; she procures breadfruit, silk fig, dasheen from the area.
[caption id="attachment_1107992" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The MARIN Tobago coral crib floats serenely in Man-o-War Bay -[/caption]
There’s another knot of villagers at the junction of jetty and grocery. Now repainted bright blue, the tiny supermarket has everything you need: bread and beer, rum and rice, cheese and ice cream.
Look up towards the hills and you’ll see a village laid out with purpose. The plantations of sugarcane and cocoa circled the pleasant bowl that became the town at the edge of a natural deepwater bay. A grassy park is the centre of the village; on one side are police station, health centre, nursery school, churches and cemetery. The Charlotteville Public Library is a welcoming oasis in any not-very-busy day, offering newspapers, books and magazines and free Wi-Fi.
[caption id="attachment_1107999" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Man-o-War Bay is still as a pond, perfect for kayakers setting out to Hermitage or Pirates Bay.[/caption]
If you continue where the road rises above the curve of the bay, you’ll cross a forested patch – look out for Trinidad motmots – and arrive at Pirates Bay, one of the pristine beaches that encircle northeast Tobago. Beaches are ephemeral places requiring nothing but your presence.
Another day, we’ll take the kayaks across the bay. Paddle between the sailing boats and yachts anchored at the moorings placed there by the foresight of the Environmental Research Institute of Charlotteville (ERIC), which piloted the proposal for the designation of the Man and the Biosphere Reserve conferred in 2020.
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