Music is the food of life and in the Caribbean that means Carnival Time. To hear local sounds and keep up with the soca and calypso music click here     and here

Just South of Little Tobago on a dive site called Kelleston Drain lies the largest recorded brain coral in the world, measuring 10ft by 16ft to see a picture click here

Inhabitants of Tobago are called Tobagonians, Inhabitants of Trinidad are Trinidadians

Tobago was the location of the book "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe, and is also believed to be the place Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind when he wrote Treasure Island.

Tobago took it's name from it's resemblance to a tobacco pipe, or "tavaco" used by local natives.

The Caribbean Steel Pan, famous for music throughout the Islands was invented here.

Tobago has changes hands more than any other Caribbean Island, around 30 times before the English finally settled in 1814

Oil was first found off the west coast of Trinidad in 1866, but production did not begin until 1908.
The first oil refinery in Trinidad was established in 1912, and Petroleum at one point made Trinidad one of the richest colonies in the British Empire.

The language is English but a French patois is sometimes used. The currency of Trinidad and Tobago is the TT dollar as seen here and gained independence in 1962.

Trinidad is the larger of the two islands. It consists of 95% of the land mass and Tobago the other 5%.

The climate is hot and humid.  Temperature is 78% daily; but a little cooler on Tobago.

There is an airport on each island , two daily newspapers, a television station and two major radio stations.

Trinidad and Tobago are known for creating the dances called  limbo and calypso.

The official language is Trinidad English - English with influences of French and Spanish.

Port of Spain is the capital of Trinidad

Trinidad &Tobago people call themselves Trinis.

The taxis seat 9-25 people, called a Maxi Taxi.

The literacy rate is 97% higher than the U.S. Every adult can read and write.

Most cars in Trinidad &Tobago are Japanese or German.

The police number is 999, 990 for an ambulance & fire.

The people of Trinidad & Tobago say grace before they eat, they are very religious.

The law requires all children to go to school for only six years.

David Attenborough filmed past of his epic series "Trials of Life" on Little Tobago

Jacques Cousteau filmed the reefs around Tobago

The film "Swiss Family Robinson was shot on location here - twenty-two weeks to shoot at a cost of $4.5 million. Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and the Galapagos islands were looked at before Tobago was discovered. It was ideal for filming purposes, with one hitch: there were no animals to be found. Thus, a menagerie was assembled - colourful tropical birds, gulls, ostriches, snakes, tigers, zebras, baby elephants, monkeys - and flown to the island, along with the appropriate trainers.
The director Ken Annakin recalls: There were fourteen trainers in all, and about 4:00 each day, they would come to me and say, "Mr. Annakin, can you tell me what attitude you want from my animal tomorrow," and then they would discuss it and put in last-minute work each night trying to get the desired results. One afternoon at 3:30 our flamingos took off from Tobago and headed south to British Guiana! We couldn't do anything about this, but fortunately the animal handler was right, and they returned the next day at feeding time!
It took five months to build the necessary sets and incidental objects on the island, including the wreckage, which was built on scaffolding at sea, with divers participating. “It was absolutely real shooting,” says Annakin, “something which appealed to me very much because of my documentary beginnings. I liked shooting exteriors. I think it gives much more satisfaction to the audience in the end, and in this case I wanted to keep very much away from the original version that was made by RKO (in 1940), which we ran at Disney. It was a good picture, but you could feel the restriction of them having to work in a tank.”
But Annakin and the crew had to pay the price for realism; it took ten days to shoot the sequence of floating the animals and supplies ashore. “The lines were always getting crossed. You’d find a pig or a cow was tied with a barrel underneath, he’d suddenly turn upside down, and the continuity girl on the camera raft would suddenly shriek, and someone would have to dive in to put the animal right so it wasn’t hurt.”
Every move, every shot was calculated in advance; Annakin, Bill Anderson, Disney, a sketch artist named John Jensen, and stuntman-turned-second-unit-director Yakima Canutt worked together on storyboards, first deciding what they would like to do and then deciding if it could be done. Disney was concerned that there should be something happening every minute, particularly in the climactic pirate attack. He would examine the storyboards and comment: “That works, that works, yeah, that works, although there is a little hole here; we need a bit of action here. Devise some action here.” And they would.

The Islanders have their own unique dialect. Here are some examples:
JUMBIE - ghost
MACAFOUCHETTE - meal left overs
MAMAGUY - make a fool of someone
MESS UP - spoil a good time
OUT DE LITE - turn off the light
TANTIE - auntie
MAKE STYLE - show off.