Tobago holiday villa: Parlatuvier

Our family group of three were met at the airport by an amazing taxi driver called Anthony, who sang some excellent Calypso music to us during the journey to the appartment. What a fantastic welcome to this beautiful island!
The appartment had everything we needed for a perfect holiday. On one side of the appartment there is a lovely panoramic view of Parlatuvier beach, while on the other there are dramatic rainforest slopes with lots of Amazon parrots, which kept us entertained with their antics!
The birdlife in Tobago is fantastic; our particular favourites were the hummingbirds which visited the flowers by the door to the appartment and the cheeky bananaquits!
We would definitely recommend going on a guided tour of the rainforest, particularly along the Gilpin Trail. We found the details at Tamarind House for Fitzroy who was an outstanding guide and pointed out all kinds of wildlife we would definitely have missed without his expertise!
Our favourite local beaches were Bloody Bay (which we walked to) and Englishman's Bay (which we took the bus to). Englishman's Bay was voted one of the top ten beaches in the world! The snorkelling was good there, although it is best not go out after the fishermen have been trawling!
Everybody we met was very friendly and helpful and we were very glad that we stayed in Parlatuvier as we found it very natural and unspoilt.
The appartment has a refreshing pool with a fantastic view of the rainforest.
Overall, we think Tamarind House is definitely somewhere to get relax, unwind and get away from it all.
We recieved excellent customer service before, during and after our stay and were greeted warmly on arrival at both the airport and the appartment. Thanks for sharing your beautiful holiday home with us! We would love to return one day!

We stayed for 2 weeks in Jan 09. The house was really lovely and probably better than the pictures would lead you to believe. It had the best views of anywhere we've stayed and it was very easy to spend hours on the veranda, with the view, birds, bats and lizards etc. The quality of furniture/appliances was good and there were even english electrical socket points.Access to the village and the beach was an easy 5-10 min walk (after the very steep drive). The house keeper lives in a house just below the property (not overlooked) and was friendly and helpful. You can pre-order food to be delivered although in retrospect we wished we'd ordered more as the local shops were really quite limited and we found you had to go to Scarborough or crown point (both about an hour away) for any choice. You can buy Kingfish in the p.m from the beach but you have to go and ask rather than anybody trying to sell it to you!
This is a very non touristy village (the most tourists we ever saw on the beach at 1 time was 6 but mostly we were sharing it with fisherman, dogs and chickens).There are a couple of bars in the village but they were more back rooms and we were more likely to sit on the sea wall to drink a beer. The sea was fine for swimming in and was probably averagely wavy for tobago. If you want to explore the island you need a car for at least part of the time although given the very windy roads there is quite a lot of driving required. Its also quite difficult to walk anywhere - we thought before we went that we'd walk to the next beaches but there is no access apart from along the steep windy roads. You can however walk up the streams just opposite the house into the rain forest which was lovely.
We went with a 4yr old and a reasonably fit grandmother.If there are mobility problems you can easily drive up the drive and apart from that you'd only have to access 4 steps if you walk through the garden. There are a lot of steps and unfenced swimming pool so it might not be great for 2/3yr olds unless you are very vigilant or do some impromptu blocking of exits.
If you stay weekend of 10//11 jan you should be warned it's harvest festival which seems to be mainly celebrated with v. loud music - otherwise it was very peaceful.
This is a very memorable, beautiful property but you have to be sure you really want to be away from the tourist scene!