During the new year festivities I headed over to Tobago to stay with some friends, drink far too many beers, and go diving in Speyside. Kind of sad really to think that for my whole lifetime growing up on an island I never went diving. Better late than never, I suppose.

We linked up with a dive shop called Wild Turtle, and divemaster Richie took us on a great excursion up the coast to Speyside, a sleepy little fishing village in the northern part of the island. To give you an idea of how quiet it is up there, you can count more goats than people. We were staying in the south in the Crown Point area, which in my opinion is pretty ghetto but at least has a lot of amenities, restaurants and bars, and is close to some of the nice beaches. The drive from Crown Point to Speyside takes a good hour and a bit and is quite windy through the mountains. But a diving day trip is certainly possible.

The diving was absolutely superb. The first dive site was called Black Jack Hole, a gradually deepening slope of very healthy looking corals, big schools of fish, big fat moray eels, huge lobsters, and a lot of other pretty tropical fish, like the angel fish. The second dive was at The Cathedral, which again had a lot of eels, and this time we were treated to the sight of an eagle ray.

To anyone thinking of making a trip to dive in Tobago, do it! Beautiful, clean, high visibility, and lots of nice undersea life. And I would certainly recommend Richie from Wild Turtle. Speyside however has little other than a few dive shops, and the most popular restaurant in the town, Jemma’s, doesn’t even serve booze. So I would suggest staying elsewhere on the island and going to Speyside for a day trip to dive. Unless you really, really like quiet places….