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AND
AWAY WE ... TOBAGO!; CARIB ... 01/25/2001
Lewiston
Tribune
Section: Outdoors
Date: 01/25/2001
Page: 1C
Keywords: Travel
Caption: Phil
Druker photo
Guide Darlington Carver and tourists Margit von Braun Jeannie
Harvey and Ian von Lindern search the trees for birds in
Tobago's lush rain forest.
And away
we ... Tobago!; Caribbean island proves to be a worthy winter
getaway full of fish, fowl and fun
Byline: Phil
Druker
Tobago or not Tobago, that was the question.
When we got cheap airfare to that island just off the
coast of Venezuela in the southern Caribbean Sea, the answer was
clear. We spent our winter vacation on that jewel of an island.
Renowned for its pristine coral reefs and rain forest,
Tobago promised to offer a great break from gray Palouse winter
skies, and it met that promise in every way.
December is the end of the rainy season down there, and
it did rain sometimes -- short tropical cloudbursts that came
after sunset or early in the morning. The nighttime showers
cooled things down, but the morning showers mainly steamed
things up. Things didn't need much steaming, however, as the
temperatures rose to more
than 85 degrees every day.
On this trip we had some really difficult decisions to
make. Should we go diving? Should we go snorkeling? Should we go
bird watching? Should we just hang out and relax?
For me, an inveterate chicken when it comes to the ocean,
the choice of diving isn't
possible. I haven't taken the prerequisite diving classes, and
I'm not sure I could train myself to breathe underwater and deal
with all the gear.
But our travel companions, Margrit von Braun, an expert scuba
diver, and her husband, Ian von Lindern, braved the depths and
returned with glowing
reports of beautiful coral, sea turtles, huge 7-foot tarpon, and
even a nurse shark.
My wife, Jeannie Harvey, and I stuck to the simpler
pleasure of snorkeling. The Atlantic and Caribbean waters off
Tobago are a balmy 75 degrees this time of year, which meant we
could stay in the water for an hour or more before getting too
cold. That was a good thing because Tobago's coral reefs offer
plenty to see.
There was coral: black coral, poisonous brown fire coral,
red coral, blue coral, yellow coral, elk horn coral, smooth
brain coral, and rough brain coral, to name a few. The reef on
the northeast end of Tobago -- a short 10-minute boat ride from
our beachfront hotel -- supports some of the largest brain
corals in the world. Usually, brain corals are a couple feet in
diameter, but there the brains often grow to 12 or 15 feet.
Alongside the corals grew yellow tube sponges and gray
barrel sponges, which looked something like giant clams. The
warm Caribbean sun shone through the aquamarine, 5- to 50-foot
deep water, making the sea floor glisten and sparkle.
Tobago's coral reef supports a vast number of different
types of tropical fish. The most colorful were the incredibly
bright, iridescent blue and yellow queen anglefish. No little
aquarium-sized fish, the gaudy adults were up to a foot long and
tall. In those same waters swam blue chromis, black and yellow
speckled French anglefish, bright yellow damselfish, red
groupers, blue tangs with iridescent light blue stripes, yellow
and black striped sergeant majors, black damselfish, orange
filefish, bluehead wrasse, four-eyed butterfish, green
parrotfish and blue parrotfish.
Under shelves in the coral hid speckled boxfish and
yellow eels. There were fish with big eyes, fish with little
eyes, and fish with black spots near their tails that looked
like eyes. There were skinny, long, blue trumpet fish and there
were multicolored flounder resting on the sandy bottom.
Squids scuttled through the water in small schools. Other
fish formed mixed schools that skimmed the ocean floor, feeding.
In those schools there might swim two or three hundred fish (it
really was beyond my means to count them) representing 10 to 15
different species. Aggressive, tiny black fish would dart out of
the coral to scare away the whole school of much bigger fish
from their territory.
Farther out to sea, the coral forms a wall and drops off
steeply. There, the water turns deep blue. Through that deep
blue water you can see huge tarpon cruising, and just below the
surface patrol silver barracuda.
We could reach the coral reefs in two ways. We could hire
a local fisherman or tour guide to take us out in his 20-foot
open boat, drift with us in the current, and watch us to make
sure we were safe. This cost about $25 for a morning for four
people. Or we could just swim from the sandy shore out to the
reef.
On one of these ventures, we swam out to the reef wall
and found ourselves swimming amidst a vast school of 3-inch long
silver and yellow fish. Their numbers were in the millions, or
maybe the hundreds of millions. The fish swam in a slow
procession that formed 5-foot wide braids. Glistening in the
sunlight, the fish swam in one direction, but the braids of fish
looped around and through each other for as far as you could see
vertically and horizontally in the clear aquamarine water.
Looking at all those fish was like looking into infinity. We
stayed with that unusual sight until the sun started to sink and
the water chilled us to the bone.
While in the midst of all this plenty, it was difficult
to remember that coral reef habitats around the world are
rapidly disappearing because of pollution, coastal development,
over-fishing, global weather changes and poisoning the waters to
collect fish for aquarium tanks. Even tourists can destroy coral
reefs if they stand on the coral, causing it to break or if they
collect it.
One day we went bird watching in the rain forest. Tobago,
which is only 28 miles long and 8 miles wide (about one-tenth
the size of Latah County), supports more than 200 species of
birds. Its 1800-foot-high central ridge is enshrouded with a
lush rain forest -- it rains 150 inches each year there (Moscow
receives 22 inches). Much of the rain forest has been protected
as a forest preserve since 1776, making it the world's oldest
protected rain forest. A British governor of the island created
the preserve to "protect the rain."
In one day, we saw more than 40 species of birds. I don't
know why tropical birds are so colorful or how it can be that
such brightly colored birds can be so difficult to see. But we
saw birds of every size, from pheasant-like chachalacas to tiny
green, blue, and red black-throated mango hummingbirds.
We saw a tropical woodpecker use a stick to extract ants
from their nest. We saw blue motmots, bright red trogons, a very
rare white-tailed sabrewing hummingbird, flocks of orange-winged
parrots, and blue-backed manakins.
Speyside, the village where we stayed, had four good
places to eat: our hotel (great food but a little expensive),
two restaurants that didn't serve beer, and another that served
beer and dangerous rum punches. When we had to decide where to
eat, we could decide based on what we wanted to drink.
So, all our decisions were easy ones on this trip. And in
the end, we were really glad we decided to go to Tobago.
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