Tobago Cays

Where it sits. The Tobago Cays are five uninhabited islands — Petit Rameau, Petit Bateau, Baradal, Petit Tabac and Jamesby — lying in the southern Grenadines between Canouan and Union Island, roughly 40 kilometres south of mainland Saint Vincent. They sit inside a shallow sand-bottomed lagoon of about 1,400 acres, held in place on its windward side by Horseshoe Reef, a four-kilometre bank-barrier reef that takes the full force of the Atlantic swell and leaves the water behind it flat and startlingly clear. The whole area, together with the inhabited island of Mayreau, forms the Tobago Cays Marine Park, owned and administered by the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and listed as a regionally significant ecosystem under the SPAW Protocol in December 2014.

What is in the water. The reef complexes here are the most extensive and best developed in the country. Alongside Horseshoe Reef, the park contains World's End Reef, Egg Reef and Mayreau Gardens, the last of which — with the fringing reefs around Mayreau — is considered the healthiest and most diverse; the reef around Petit Tabac ranks next. Corals include Orbicella annularis, Montastraea, Porites, Acropora, Millepora and Siderastrea, with sea fans and other gorgonians and sponges on the slopes. Seagrass beds of turtle grass and manatee grass carpet the lagoon floor at Baradal, where green turtles graze inside a marked no-anchoring zone and can be snorkelled with from the surface. Cushion sea stars, queen conch and sea eggs are common on the sand, and barracuda and jacks patrol the reef edge. Rangers enforce mooring buoys, and spearfishing and turtle harassment are prohibited.

On land, carefully. The cays themselves are dry, low and windswept — coconut, agave, cactus, sea grape and low scrub rather than shade. Manchineel trees are well established on Petit Rameau, Baradal and Jamesby; the sap and the fruit are highly poisonous and even sheltering under one in rain causes blistering, which is why the trunks are usually marked. Petit Rameau holds a rare patch of red mangrove, and there are near-threatened Melocactus broadwayi cacti on the higher ground. Iguanas and lizards are the main terrestrial wildlife; there is no fresh water and no accommodation of any kind.

On screen. Petit Tabac, the outermost cay, is the rum-runner's island from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). This is where Barbossa maroons Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann with a pistol and a single shot; where Jack explains that he escaped his earlier marooning by bartering passage with the rum smugglers whose cache he had drunk his way through; and where Elizabeth burns the rum to raise a signal fire and Commodore Norrington's Dauntless arrives. The production based itself on mainland Saint Vincent from October 2002 to March 2003, running out to the Grenadines for the island sequences. The cay looks on screen exactly as it does today, because there was nothing to build: a curve of white sand, a stand of palms and open Atlantic behind.

What a visit involves. There is no ferry and no scheduled service. Visitors arrive by chartered yacht, by day-trip catamaran from Union Island, Canouan or Mayreau, or by open boat with a local skipper; Union Island is the usual jumping-off point, with its own small airport. Park fees are collected by rangers on the water. A typical day mixes a snorkel over the turtle grass at Baradal, a swim on the reef at Petit Bateau and a barbecue lunch cooked on the beach by the boat boys who work the anchorage. Overnight visitors sleep aboard; Mayreau, with a few guesthouses and a hilltop village of a few hundred people, is the nearest bed, and its Salt Whistle Bay — a sandbar with the Atlantic on one side and the calm Caribbean on the other — is the usual second stop of the day. The cays sit on the classic Grenadines sailing chain that runs south from Bequia through Mustique, Canouan and Mayreau to Union Island, and most visitors reach them as part of that itinerary rather than as a destination in itself.

Getting there and timing. From Kingstown, the route runs by fast ferry or light aircraft to Union Island or Canouan, then by boat. The dry season from December to May brings steady trade winds, minimal rain and visibility that regularly exceeds 20 metres; the sailing season peaks around Easter regatta week. June to November is hurricane season, when the lagoon can be uncomfortable and charters thin out. Bring sun protection, water and shoes — the sand gets fiercely hot and the reef edges are sharp — and take everything back out again, because the cays have no waste facilities and their appeal depends entirely on staying uncluttered.