Tobago is the beautiful, reserved, soul-sister of exciting Trinidad, its partner in the Republic. The contrast is overwhelming. Tobago is small and it has no major industry to impinge on its lush fertility. It has one main town, Scarborough, and dozens of hamlets and villages with names that reflect the Spanish, French, Dutch, and English colonial powers which coveted it for centuries.

Outside the small holdings of its sparse population, it is full of nature reserves harbouring wildlife otherwise found only on the South American mainland of which it was once part. At its highland heart, among the many waterfalls splashing down into idyllic bathing pools among the rocks and ferns, Tobago protects the oldest untouched tropical rainforest in the hemisphere.

The rainy season between June and December (short, sharp bursts, and a brilliant time to take a swim) freshens the landscape, which erupts into a natural carnival of colourful flowers. This is matched underwater, where the myriad flashing shoals play lethal hide-and-seek among the cup coral in the canyons and deep caves where barracuda, dolphin and manta rays cruise.

You can dig for chip-chip (a kind of shell fish), in the warm clear water of Manzanilla Bay, or hunt the big game fish like marlin, wahoo and yellow-fin tuna. You can have double fun in the knowledge that there’s nothing in Tobago, in the water or on land, to kill you. Unlike Australia there are no man-eating sharks, box jelly fish, lethal spiders, or poisonous snakes.

Undeveloped (no house, hotel or resort is allowed to build anything higher than a palm tree grows) and peaceful, Tobago does however know how to party.

Carnival here is homespun, but just as colourful, rum-fuelled and happily energetic as anywhere. What’s more, you can practice every week throughout the year at the open air dance they call Sunday School.

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