Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago are the southernmost islands of the Caribbean chain, and Trinidad was once joined to South America: its Northern Range continues the coastal mountains of Venezuela, in sight across the Gulf of Paria. At La Brea the Pitch Lake is a natural lake of asphalt welling up from below, and scarlet ibis roost at dusk in the Caroni Swamp. Tobago lies to the north-east, ringed by reefs, its spine under the Main Ridge rainforest, protected since 1776.

Columbus sighted Trinidad in 1498 and named it for the Holy Trinity, after three hills on its south-east coast. Spain neglected the colony until 1783, when it invited Catholic planters, many of them French, to settle with enslaved workers. Britain seized Trinidad in 1797; Tobago, fought over again and again, became British for good in 1814. After slavery ended, indentured labourers came from India from 1845 to 1917. The islands were joined in 1889, and the nation won independence in August 1962 under the historian Eric Williams.

Carnival brings two days of costumed bands, calypso and soca before Lent, opening with J’ouvert at dawn, when revellers smear themselves with mud and paint. The steelpan, hammered out of oil drums in the 1930s and 1940s, is the national instrument, and Divali and Eid are public holidays. Doubles, curried chickpeas in fried bread, are sold from roadside stands. Natural gas feeds the ammonia and methanol plants of Point Lisas, and Angostura bitters are made on the island.