Sunday 7th February

Tobago

Tobago's quite a titchy island with only very few tourist attractions other than beaches, but nevertheless it's an enchanting place. Sugar cane was once its main industry but this has  now completely closed down.

On today's bus tour the main visit was to a mid-19th century watermill that was used to drive machinery that crushed sugar cane to extract the sugar than was subsequently converted to molasses and rum. The guide at this site was clearly in love with his work; in between meeting tourists and showing them around he'd begun to clear the jungle around the stream so that he could start to build a replica of the original Amerindian village that archaeology has shown once existed on the site.

Another stop was at the grave of a woman who'd died in 1783, whose inscription read, 'She was a mother without knowing it and a wife without letting her husband know it except by  her kind indulgences to him'. This was described on the Excursions Summary as The Mysterious Tombstone' - you can imagine how lacking in conventional attractions the island is if this comes high on the list :o)

To be fair, it's a beautiful place, with almost an English feel to the green and gentle landscape and with an abundance of really quite tall trees that surely wouldn't cope too well in a hurricane. Let's hope they're spared for a long time to come.

Back on board the excellent Pasticceria is open each day from 3-5pm. On our way back to our stateroom I always drop by for a couple of nice pastries to have with a cuppa as we unwind before dinner at 8.30pm. Gill says, 'Oh dear, the calories', but Dolores, the large,

slightly intimidating woman behind the counter, now recognises me as a regular and slips an extra pastry on to my plate, thus making the situation worse ;o)