Easter in beautiful Tobago Cays: swimming with turtles and sting rays

Take Off
Jörgen Wennberg
Mon 6 Apr 2015 19:33
Tobago3.jpg

After an hour motoring trip from Canouan we arrived back to Tobago Cays. We have been so much looking forward to coming back in better weather! This means less wind and less rain. However this season has been very windy according to the locals and funny enough the rain clouds were still there on and off. However far more less people than in January and we spent 4 fabulous relaxing days full of adventure. Our first night we stayed between the two islands of Petit Rameau and Petit Bateau as the wind was pretty rough. We went straight to the beach to have a walk along the island and what did we see?…. A parapente! 
  
  

It was a German guy that had tried to fly parapente 14 years ago but crashed. Now he tried again and the first thing he said very proudly when he landed was that he is now the first person ever to has flied parapente in the Tobago Cays.

    

Sundowner by the beach

  

  

EASTER: The witches flying to Blåkulla turned into Inez in Batman and Alex in Jasmine from Alibaba. 

  

EASTER: Lack of the traditional Swedish easter eggs, the kids found the empty Pringles boxes and painted them. Inez had received for her birthday easter stickers so the work was really easy! The day after they were filled with easter sweets ;-)

  

  

EASTER: the traditional painting of the easter eggs.

  

  

HAPPY EASTER from Le Petit Tabac


Tobago Cays: The islands of Mayreau and the Tobago Cays were under private ownership from at least the 16th Century up until 12 April 1999, when the Cays were purchased after long negotiations by the state of St.Vincent & the Grenadines. The purchases were restricted to the five islands of the Cays, while the larger island of Mayreau remained in private hands. While the cays are uninhabited, they are surrounded by the three larger inhabited islands of Union Island, Mayreau and CanouanMajor users of the area include: cruise ships (an estimated 50,000 visitors each year of which 10,000 visit the Cays); yachts (an estimated 3,000 yachts anchor in the lagoon each year); day charters (from nearby hotels); sport divers and snorkelers; and fishing enthusiasts.

The beach at Tobago Cays

      

  

  

We went snorkling from the beach and …

  

… just a few meters in the water we could see turtles, turtles and more turtles!

  

  

  

The day after we took the speed boat to Le Petit Tabac with a lovely guide Carlos. When we left the weather looked really promising. 

  

 We went for a long walk around the island of Le Petit Tabac. The sand we were walking on showed to be crushed sea shells!

    

The kids found a natural game park

  

  

The most eastern point where you could see both the Northern and the Southern part of the island.

  

Here and there we could see old coral shapes, showing that the land has risen many years ago.

    

Beautiful colours from ashore becoming more and more dramatic following the bad weather coming in!


  

  

So we quickly run back to Carlos, jumped into the boat hoping we would get away from the rain but we got totally caught into it!

In the afternoon we took the dinghy to another islands Le Baradel: white beach…

  

   

… excellent snorkling with sting rays…

    


… nice hiking up the hill where we saw lots of iguanas…

  

   

… a lovely view…

   

  

… and a huge pile of sand being fun for small kids as big ones! 

  

  

Being curious about kite surfing Jörgen helped out a guy with his kite.

   

      

In the evening we had a BBQ on the beach organised by Carlos. We had lobster - huge ones! 


  

  

  

We assisted Carlos in his cooking and realised that just a meter from the kitchen were other hungry animals : stingrays! They knew that by sunset the sea would be full of seafood rests.

  

We had a lovely and delicious BBQ by 17.00 so we could enjoy the dinner in daylight (gets pitch dark at 18.30) and Carlos joined us when he was finished with all the cooking. He shared a lot of interesting facts of how people live out here. For example his son is living on St Vincent with his mother as the school is more developed there. It takes about 1h30mn by speed boat one way to go from Union Island (where he lives next to Tobago Cays) to St Vincent.

   

  

The second night and for the rest of the stay we moved Take Off to Horse Shoe Reef, the outer side of Tobago Cays towards the Atlantic. The wind had dropped a bit and it was tenable to anchor there. What a sight and more convenient to be closer the good snorkling at Horse Shoe Reef. 

  

  

Once again, the kids got all thrilled when they saw us packing our snorkling stuff = movie time! We locked them in the boat with a movie and we went of snorkling at Horse Shoe Reef.

    

And the first animal we saw leaving the dinghy was a stingray!

  

  

  

Happy snorkelers!



After 4 happy days in Tobago Cays we left for Union Island