Tobago March 2006
Flights
Flew with BA form Manchester to Gatwick, 35 minutes!!
Virgin Atlantic from Gatwick to Tobago – 8 hrs 11 mins. Good leg room, choice of videos to watch on your own monitor in the seat back in front of you. The food was edible and tasted ok. Would recommend Virgin Atlantic. Return time was 7 hours (650 mph!!)
The impressive thing about the flights was – no excess baggage charge. We had 3 bags, a total of 70kg but nobody seemed to bother.
Accommodation
Stayed overnight in Russ Hill Hotel near Gatwick – reclaimed from Faulty Towers. I guess its all you can expect from a B&B near the airport. Torn wallpaper, gross bathroom, terrible service at dinner.
In Tobago, stayed at Le Gran Courlan Spa Resort. A 78 bed hotel, it is in the Virgin brochure as having 4 ‘v’s (four star) , our first impression was it was tired and in need of refurbishment, second impression was – it’s a 2 star!. Built about 16 years ago, the décor hasn’t changed since then. There was a medium sized pool with a swim-up bar. There is one other bar, service ended at midnight - then it was lights out & the staff went home! Nothing available after 12pm. The bedrooms were air conditioned (although we spoke to someone whose a/c broke and it took the hotel 5 days to move them), large bed, bathroom (very dated equipment) couple of chairs, tv & coffee maker.
There are two restaurants – one buffet & the other a-la-carte, but we got the impression the food was taken from the buffet, re-heated (to lukewarm) & served in the a-la-carte. The food was typical Caribbean – sweet sources everywhere & lots of chicken/fish. Not all to my liking, but it was OK.
There are Spa treatments included in this all-inclusive hotel, which include salty body scrub, massage & feet/hand wax treatments. Very efficient and an interesting alternative to sight seeing.
We spoke to quite a few of the quests – or coffin dodgers (no children allowed here), the majority of them were NOT impressed by the hotel.
Diving
I chose not to dive with the shop associated with the Hotel, although this was free. I dived with R & Sea Divers Co. Ltd they operate via a small boat (max 8 guests) from Pigeon Point which is where the waters change from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea.
Initially I thought the diving would be difficult – rolling back of a hard boat into large swells (2 meters), strong surface currents and even bigger underwater currents & swells. However, once used to the initial entry, the diving could be quite relaxing. My overall impression of the underwater realm was – once you have done a couple of dives, you have seen about all there is. Not many fish, lots of large soft & hard corals, lots of fans but all a bit ‘samey’. Sea temperatures – Caribbean Sea was 26 ºC surface 25ºC at 18m the Atlantic was 28 ºC surface 27ºC at 18m both very ‘choppy’ with large surface swells. Visibility could be good (100m) but the majority of the time it had lots of crud in the water and down to 20m.
I didn’t see any large sea animals, one of the guys in the hotel went ‘up north’ and saw a shoal of 8 hammerhead sharks, but he was sea sick during the surface interval!
Diver’s Dream dive site was the most ‘challenging’ with very strong swell initially buffeting us around the reef, then over onto the reef plateau which was covered in grass the current blew us over it at about 5knots.
There is an ‘intentional’ wreck sitting on the sea-bed at 30m, which gave a bit of variation to corals, but it was cold (25 ºC).
Dive sites: Diver’s Dream, Majeston, Maverick, Mt Irvine Wall, Dutchman’s Reef, Flying Reef, Arnos Vale, Cove Reef, Cove Crack
Sight seeing
We did 3 tours – one to the waterfall, one to the rain forest and a night out at the local steel band street party. To be quite honest, you can get the same sights (apart from the steel band) in North Wales.
Would I go back to Tobago
The island is unspoilt
by tourism, there is no development, very little shopping, the scenery is green
and hilly. I didn’t know what to expect but it didn’t blow me away.
I wouldn’t go back and I certainly would not recommend the hotel we stayed
at.