I woke up this morning to beautiful weather in Tobago. The last couple of days have been unusually rainy – but today, the sun is out and it is warming up! This is the view from Paradise Point Villa – the name of Alice and Danny’s beautiful home).
After coffee, we made our way back down the hill to the village of Castara to have breakfast at Cheno’s. This is such a quaint village and once you arrive, you find that the people are kind and generous.
First we needed to make a stop at the big clay oven where the ladies were going to be baking bread today. We wanted to place an order because the menu was intriguing. Kristen, Alice, Susan, and I walked through the gate as they were beginning to fire up the oven, placed and paid for our order: coconut tarts, coconut drops, coconut roll, raisin rolls, pone, and pumpkin bread. She was a sweat lady hiding behind a very serious facade…but I finally coaxed her into letting me get a picture.
We walked back up to Cheno’s for breakfast – which was delicious – and then walked around Castara for a few minutes. I picked up a couple of souvenirs for Cindy and then we drove back up to Paradise Point Villa to pack our bags. Today, we would be moving to the Magdalena in preparation for the DISES round table that officially starts today. But I had to take one last picture of the Castara beach…
Before driving back up the mountain, we all wanted to check our the beach. The fishing boats were coming in with the catch of the morning. They cleaned and prepared the fish right there on the beach. Of course, Susan and Kristen jumped right in to help them out. I’ve got video of that “cleaning process” that I’ll post soon. But check out these fish!!
We packed our suitcases and then relaxed for a bit at Paradise Point Villa. We had to kill a couple of hours while our bread was being baked in Castara. Finally the time came to make our departure. Mark and Danny drove the suitcases to Magdalena while the rest of us returned to Castara to pick up the bread…which wasn’t quite ready yet. We still needed to fill time for another hour. Fortunately, that’s not too difficult to do in a place like this. We picked up a soda and sat down but I was too enticed by the ocean so I took a walk up the shore. Here are a few pictures.
As I walked up the beach, I was able to see these little crabs running along the sand. When I came up to the rocks, there were hundreds of them – and they weren’t so little anymore. See if you can find the crabs on this rock. They are definitely there and they are NOT small – just nicely camouflaged!
I needed just one more picture before picking up the bread – and here it is:
The bread was finally ready for us to pick up – and we had a LOT of bread! As we walked up to the oven, you could smell just how amazing it was going to taste. We carried several brown paper bags of bread to the car in anticipation of sample each one. It was time to leave Castara and make the one hour drive to the other side of the island and to the Magdalena. But the journey was anything but boring. Along the way, we saw a HUGE lizard cross the road; stopped to help a sheep that had tangled himself around a post; discovered a new fruit that was amazing; and saw two caiman gators as we entered the Magdalena.
Tonight was also the official opening of the DISES Round Table. We’ve just wrapped up our first gathering over dinner…and the day starts early in the morning. So, good night. I’ll write again when I can.