Saturday, 3 Mar: Again we awake to turquoise water, this time at anchor in the middle of the Tobago Cays. Lots of yachts anchored around us, but somehow not annoying. Unlike in the Med, where crowded anchorages always had some boats yahooing into the night… mostly Brits or Italians. Here most boats seem to have “lights out” by 11pm latest and very civilized. We also note that there are so very few motor boats here – 95% are sailing boats. Not surprising really, this is after all a sailors paradise.
After breakfast we get set for a spin around this inner Cay in the dinghy. First stop Petit Bateau island, on the little beach where we saw lots of people heading in for dinner last night. Sure enough there are multiple make-shift cooking areas with Lobster being the popular menu. We book ourselves a slot at 5pm with “Big Mama”. There is no need for us to describe her here!
Then we head out into the blue water, away from the yachts, at the other end of horseshoe reef. We anchor the dinghy and jump in for a snorkel. Just the 2 of us in the middle of this coral sea – wonderful. The coral isn’t that colorful but there are quite a few fish and the contrast of coral and the white sand in-between is rather special. We always have to remind ourselves that we were spoiled with underwater vista in Oman. We move on to Baradal island where we drag the dinghy up onto a peninsula of sand. Apparently this is where there are lots of turtles feeding. We again snorkel and indeed find several turtles, each gently plucking grass from the seabed just 2m down, then occasionally coming up for air. They seem totally oblivious of human presence as they go about their feeding. Lovely to watch them so close up without them swimming off in fear.
Back at Cloudy Bay we wash off all the sand and salt from everything that was in the dinghy then have a snack in the shade with that wonderful breeze coming through. Afternoon is swimming and sunbathing. Then Glen decides it’s time to clean Cloudy’s bottom. On goes the scuba gear and armed with a plastic paint scraper and a green dish scrubber he disappears for over an hour. It’s very satisfying cleaning the hull at this stage when most weed and the odd barnacle are easily removed. Clearly hull cleaning is going to be a more regular activity than it was in the Med, where really nothing ever grew on the hull. Well, this is compensated by topside cleaning, that is just not required here with all the delicious clean fresh rain that we get.
Then it’s off to the beach for our lobster feast. It had better be good because at $37 each it’s not cheap! As we come around to the corner, the golden evening sunlight gives the beach and overhanging palms a magical appearance. Picture-post-card.
Big Mama hasn’t forgotten us, and she puts a 4.5lbs (2kg) lobster on the grill. Meanwhile Glen checks out the guys preparing the fish and lobster on the beach. He wants to find out where is the best place in the reef to find lobster. “Where do you find the lobster?” he asks. They reply “from der fisherman”. “OK, so where do the fishermen find them?” “In der Ocean, man”. OK …. so we guess they don’t want us finding our own lobster!
Meanwhile, as they throw the waste pieces into the sea, there are huge (50cm long) puffer fish waiting for their nightly snack. We’ve never seen puffer fish other than on a reef before.
Soon the feast is delivered to our table – it looks and tastes great, but not quite as good as our first lobster in Grenada, but still quite special, particularly in these surroundings.
As twilight comes, more people arrive from the yachts and take their places at the rustic picnic tables, with the only lighting coming from candles inside 5ltr water containers.
It’s been a wonderful day and we discuss can it ever get better than this?