Tobago’s Natural Wonders
Darryl February 14th, 2008
With sun streaming, we rounded a bend in the Claude Noel Highway above Scarborough shortly before ten in the morning. The green expanse of the Tobago Botanical Garden lay below us, stretching down the north side of the circular valley that contained the port city.
The roadside pull-off marked the high entrance to the gardens.
Just inside the gate, two of the resident dogs were still asleep shaded from the rising warmth, one under a poinciana, the other between two buttress roots of a 100 foot seiba, or Silk Cotton tree.
The resident parks dogs looked healthy. Obviously visitors to this garden were of the well-feeding variety.
One, a Corgi/terrier female between puppy batches, stirred as we walked by, picking up as only dogs can, Nancy’s gift as a soft touch for a generous hand-out. She fell in behind us, offering without asking a gentle accompaniment to our walk.
As we walked down the long path, dozens of trees and ornamental plants dotted either side of the neatly kept grounds. Some were familiar from our Bahamas home - agave americana, casuarina, yellow elder, , and others new - Casalpina, balsam, neem, poui.
Sounds of light hammering and sawing echoed from across a small valley coursing one side of the gardens from top to bottom. The construction mixed with the morning chorus of a dozen small warblers and distant traffic winding endlessly around the port area below us.
We descended a stone staircase lined on either side with twin rows of Royal Palms, a magnificent hallway.
At the bottom of the staircase, the source of the garden’s man-made noises came into sight.
A new six-sided pergola with a pagoda roof was under construction, with the main beams up and the decorative work underway. I noticed that the carpenters were working steady but comfortable, a pace of which I had grown very appreciative of while working on several of our houses in Eleuthera’s constant heat.
A carpenter was bent over a beam on a set of horses, working a high-performance circular saw through the gentle arcs of a finely decorative rib. I asked him what wood he was shaping. A Guyanese wood called ‘Mora’, he told me.
While we talked, I saw that the grain was tight and straight like pine, but with a hue similar to dark cedar. The scent of the sawdust was pleasant, something that would not get to be too much if you had to smell it all day in a furniture shop.
As we continued north on the island’s main highway, the road dwindled quickly from a four-lane to two, to a narrow twisting road etching the coast line.
Several historic forts dotted the coast - Fort Grandby, Fort Milfort- good for half hour walk-throughs on well-kept grounds, with enough interpretive signs to keep interest.
Coming over a high pass, we entered into a cluster of old-time wooden structures. A hillside full of beautiful landscaping pulled our eye to its sign, and we turned in.
It was Michael Sterling’s ‘Genesis Park’, a small zoo, gardens and artshop in Goodwood. Michael is a one-man dynamo giving us an energetic tour, telling us with great pride that he was the recipient of Tobago’s best Tourist Service and Entrepreneur awards for this year.
Back on the road for a few miles, we came to the turnoff for Rainbow Falls. The road wound around the base of a wide valley for two miles or so through small farms and homes. These were subsistence farms for the most part. On the road were remnants of small business attempts. A yellow truck had been parked so long that a vibrant colony of orchids had established on its roof.
The valley around us quickly narrowed. We arrived at the end of the road, the doorstep of the Rainbow Falls Guest House and Tour.
As we parked beside a Lady Ginger in full bloom, a ten-minute shower was just ending. Hearing the car, the proprietor came out to his gate and beckoned us to come out of the rain into a lean-to shelter attached to his house.
After a few pleasantries, our host looked down at our shoes. “Your’s won’t do”, he said. “Your’s won’t either”. We would have to exchange our running shoes for his ‘Wellies’- calf-high rubber boots. While he gave us directions to the falls, we pulled the boots on and tucked our pants into the tall tops. I slung our packsack with our lunch onto my back, and we were off on the two mile trail to the cascade.
We walked further on the road we had driven in on until it came to a small river. We picked our way across to the other side, the bottom of the river solid with grey stones. The falls were upstream on this river, and the head of the path to them appeared on our right as we waded out.
Immediately climbing a steep grade, masses of Heliconia Caribea dwarfed us on one side rising up the valley wall, and giant bamboo on the other, lining the slope down to the river about thirty feet below.
One of Nancy’s giant boots was making sloshing noises, meaning that at least one of our four feet was now wet. Somehow it seemed that likely this was to be insignificant compared to what was possible in the Tobago jungle ahead.
The tall grass on the path-side rustled, startling us. Then the grass parted. Two small friendly dogs belonging to our host poked their heads onto the path, bright eyes glancing back and forth between us and the knapsack, punctuating the obvious basis for our new friendship with some doggy grins and nose-up sniffing.
With the understanding that they would be our local guides in return for a bit of shared lunch at some indeterminate point along our trek, the four of us fell into line on the trail.
The path had not been cleared for several years, and the fresh rain made for wet going. Old machete cuts on the rough slashing looked to have been made at least a few years ago. Our host’s explanation at check-in was that help was hard to get and he was advancing in years. I missed my own machete, something that was normally always attached to my arm in bush like this.
Our path wound through the floor of the valley, a clay gumbo covered with a mat of bamboo leaves. Our over-size boots broke through in the wetter patches, sucking our boots in about three or four inches. When this happened, all we could do was stop and slowly extract each foot each at a time until finally working our way to the other side of each mud hole.
The trail crossed the river several times. With the path in the condition it was, there were times when the day’s previous rain obliterated the path. When this happened, I scouted through each possibility out of the seemingly blind end to see if I could find some kind of sign as to where we were to go next.
We could see that the land in the valley where the river had looped to create a floodplain had been cultivated by previous generations.
In one clearing, there were bananas and pigeon peas in a casually kept area of tall grass. Adding a further dimension to what our host had said about finding labourers, if this was ever to be productive farming land again, it would require the full energies of a younger man than the present owner.
Along a high part of the path, the jungle’s canopy suddenly started to roar. A rain had started, and the noise was the sound of the drops on the leaves of the high bamboo. Amazingly, even in a strong downpour, very little made it to the jungle floor, and we stayed dry as we waited a few minutes for it to stop.
The rain shower slowed then stopped, but the roaring sound seemed to continue. It was the falls, ahead.
Dropping down the bank, we waded up stream, walking where we could on the tallus bars of grey-green limestone created by the moving waters of the small river.
Rounding a bend, the water in the Rainbow Falls splayed in a wide fan across the wall of the valley where the water fell, tumbling about 100 feet into a pool.
As we stood watching, the sun broke through the clouds, bathing the wet cliff side and cascading water of the falls in bright light. The canyon’s dark moist walls shone with a thousand sparkles.
While Nancy waited below, I climbed a few extra feet over the wet mossy boulders at the bottom of the falls to get a better view of the pool.
Along the sides of the high valley stretching up on either side, constant moisture supported a green mat of ferns, orchids, bromeliads, and heliconia.
We stood in awe while the falls filled the canyon with sound and mist. Behind us, the retreating light of the afternoon played through the tall bamboo onto the river’s bed as it left the fall’s basin.
Turning, we started back reluctantly.
On the way down, we stopped at the edge of one of the banana groves to eat our lunch, finally rewarding the dogs with pieces of french bread for their companionship.
As the sun dropped into the long golden part of the Tobago afternoon, we lingered on the last mile back to our car to store some lasting memories of this unforgettable natural spot.
The Rainbow Falls are above Goldsborough Bay on the Atlantic side of Tobago, approximately 15 miles north of Scarborough.
