The magic of ‘Crusoe’s Island’

The magic of ‘Crusoe’s Island’

A tour guide explains to sightseers. The midday sun pierces the canopy in stark, warm pinpricks of light.	The Gilpin Trail … linking the past and the future.
	TOBAGO has one of the oldest forest reserves in the Western Hemisphere, and next to the Utah canyons, may also be one of the least explored places here as well. Quietly walking through the lush, untouched vegetation is reminiscent of one’s first trip on one of Buccoo’s famous glass-bottomed boats … an almost imperceptible intrusion into a another’s private world. One of the popular forest tours is on the Gilpin Trail, where Dexter, a friendly, certified guide decodes some of nature’s secrets.
The trail was literally cut with machetes hundreds of years ago, when it provided a three-day short-cut for transporting cocoa and coffee via donkey and mule trains. But the tour is not only for tourists and inhabitants of the concrete jungle; it also serves as a great way to get some exercise, as well as see, smell and hear the forest in a way that not even Google can produce (yet!). Dexter says the most dangerous thing in the forest is probably cigarettes, so smoking isn’t allowed. He says the reptiles and mammals there are not particularly harmful to humans, and indeed, some birds seem as if they need to preen properly before pandering to photographers from their eye-level perches. There is life everywhere, and observing it in a natural habitat can give even the passive personality an invigorating high. Water gurgles happily in brooks too shallow to bathe, but which support a water world of sorts; freshwater fish, amphibians and thirsty mammals and birds. Paths lead off into the bush, where creatures big and small call out and carry on vibrant conversations amongst each other, amid a backdrop of the wind gently rustling through brittle leaves, while at the same time forcing the mighty teaks to play squeaky fiddles with their boughs. The midday sun pierces the canopy in stark, warm pinpricks of light that swath cleanly through the syrupy air. It wouldn’t be any surprise if it were revealed that Robinson Crusoe actually didn’t want to go home after he ground ashore in Tobago, as the popular story has it. Truth is, most people take the seemingly insignificant Main Ridge Forest for granted, but little do they know of the magical wonders that exist in their own backyard.

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