Oc­cu­py­ing Trinidad’s north­west tip, the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la was the site of a ma­jor US mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tion dur­ing WWII, and was ful­ly hand­ed back to Trinidad on­ly in the 1970s.

To­day the string of ocean­side mari­nas draws in yachties tak­ing ad­van­tage of dry-dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

How­ev­er, the area is al­so well poised as an ide­al tourist des­ti­na­tion.

While over the years there has been some in­fra­struc­tur­al im­prove­ments such as the Ch­aguara­mas Board­walk what ex­act­ly are Gov­ern­ment’s plan to achieve this goal?

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell who not­ed that Ch­aguara­mas falls un­der the di­rect man­age­ment and con­trol of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA).

He said in the past the CDA has de­vel­oped a num­ber of mas­ter and strate­gic plans to de­vel­op­ing the penin­su­la as a holis­tic tourism at­trac­tion.

Asked about the de­tails Mitchell said, “I can­not of­fer any de­tails of any of their plans. And it ap­pears that the “Ch­aguara­mas web­site” is down so there is no way pull the de­tails of their plans and strate­gic im­per­a­tives.”

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter did ref­er­ence two plans- Po­ten­tial for the de­vel­op­ment of a cruise Port in Ch­aguara­mas 2018 and En­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ment and fea­si­bil­i­ty 1997.

Mitchell added there is a con­cept pa­per de­vel­oped by the re­search unit of the min­istry that dis­cussed the po­ten­tial for the de­vel­op­ment of a ded­i­cat­ed cruise port in Ch­aguara­mas.

On the pos­si­ble cost of the plans the min­is­ter replied, “Not ap­plic­a­ble.”

Mitchell not­ed that some of the tourist at­trac­tions which al­ready make Ch­aguara­mas a vi­able prod­uct in­clude Bam­boo Cathe­dral, beach­es and wa­ter sports, golf course, zip line tours, hik­ing and bik­ing, mil­i­tary his­to­ry (track­ing sta­tions), par­ty cruis­es, caves, Nel­son Is­land and is­land tours, fish­ing and boat tours, en­ter­tain­ment, restau­rants and wa­ter parks.

He said there isn’t any plan to build a ho­tel in Ch­aguara­mas at this time ei­ther by the State or the pri­vate sec­tor.

“On the oth­er hand, there has been in­ter­est in the past by the Roy­al Caribbean Cruise Line to es­tab­lish a Crew Train­ing School in Ch­aguara­mas, and it is my un­der­stand­ing that that in­ter­est con­tin­ues to sub­sist,” Mitchell added.

No re­sponse from CDA

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to Tourism Trinidad on what has that or­gan­i­sa­tion been do­ing to aug­ment tourism in Ch­aguara­mas.

How­ev­er, in an emailed re­sponse Tourism Trinidad said the CDA is the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­spon­si­ble for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of tourism plans for the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la and there­fore should right­ly be the en­ti­ty to re­spond to your query.

But Tourism Trinidad not­ed that it “leads on the mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion of Des­ti­na­tion tourism prod­ucts, ser­vices and ex­pe­ri­ences, and to this end, we work close­ly with the CDA to ed­u­cate lo­cal and fu­ture in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors on the wealth of sites and at­trac­tions avail­able in the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la.”

The Busi­ness Guardian called CDA’s chair­man Guptee Lutch­me­di­al sev­er­al times seek­ing re­sponse on what is that or­gan­i­sa­tion’s plan for Ch­aguara­mas.

How­ev­er, all calls went unan­swered and so did text mes­sages.

Liv­ing his­tor­i­cal site

Lor­raine Pouchet, pres­i­dent of the T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, de­scribed Ch­aguara­mas as a place of in­cred­i­ble nat­ur­al di­ver­si­ty and beau­ty as it is a liv­ing his­tor­i­cal site.

“De­vel­op it as such, not as an amuse­ment park and use ac­tu­al ex­perts,” she rec­om­mend­ed.

Pouchet said the biggest prob­lem how­ev­er, has been “the at­ti­tude and lack of fore­sight of suc­ces­sive CDA boards.”

“Put a board that in­cludes eco­tourism ex­perts, tour op­er­a­tors, moun­tain bik­ers, reps from fish­ing and sail­ing as­so­ci­a­tions and so on,” Pouchet ad­vised adding that Ch­aguara­mas would al­so need to move away from re­liance on heav­i­ly built tourism fa­cil­i­ties to­wards the care­ful de­vel­op­ment of its nat­ur­al prod­uct.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said phys­i­cal safe­ty of both hu­mans and wildlife is a key con­cern.

The area should be de­clared a pro­tect­ed na­tion­al park, Pouchet said, ad­vis­ing that hunt­ing of wildlife ought to be stopped.

She al­so called on the po­lice to be much more re­spon­sive and “not just for the clos­ing of roads.”

There must al­so be the de­vel­op­ment of trail sys­tems for many us­es, Pouchet said not­ing that cur­rent­ly the best trails are de­vel­oped and main­tained by moun­tain bik­ers.

“This mod­el of part­ner­ship may al­so be used to cre­ate a va­ri­ety of hik­ing, bird­ing, trail run­ning and ex­er­cise, mon­key view­ing, scenic, nat­ur­al his­to­ry and re­lax­ing trail net­works,” she not­ed.

Rock climb­ing, ca­noe­ing, rap­pelling and oth­er ad­ven­ture prod­ucts, such as rap­pelling in­to the Gas­pa­ree cave would be ex­cel­lent to boost tourism, Pouchet added.

She al­so rec­om­mend­ed there be the cre­ation of camp­ing, yo­ga or star view­ing sites, adding that nat­ur­al and his­tor­i­cal sites in Ch­aguara­mas in­clud­ing Gas­pa­ree Caves, Point Gourde, Five is­lands his­tor­i­cal site, Salt Pond, Nun’s Quar­ters can all be amaz­ing­ly de­vel­oped.

The CDA, Pouchet added, needs to zone the penin­su­la as the in­dus­try shouldn’t hap­pen in a recre­ation­al ar­eas.

Par­ties, for in­stance, she said should oc­cur in the en­ter­tain­ment area at Pier 1 and not Tuck­er Val­ley with J’ou­vert bands “dis­turb­ing the wildlife in the wee hours of the morn­ing.”

“No more big fêtes and loud mu­sic in Tuck­er Val­ley. That area is for eco­tourism and farm­ing. Zone the whole penin­su­la and stick to the zones. I be­lieve on pa­per there are zones, but not in prac­tice,” Pouchet added.

Paving a way for­ward

Ten­isha Brown-Williams, tourism con­sul­tant and part-time lec­tur­er at UWI, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus said with a height­ened aware­ness of health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions due to COVID-19 is crit­i­cal.

She said ex­ist­ing tourism op­er­a­tors and op­er­a­tions must be held to na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Trav­ellers, Brown-Williams ex­plained, will be look­ing out for var­i­ous health and safe­ty cer­ti­fi­ca­tions such as the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil’s Safe Trav­els Glob­al Pro­to­cols and Stamp and The Caribbean’s Trav­ellers Health As­sur­ance stamp for Health­i­er Safer Tourism (HST).

In­ter­na­tion­al eco­cer­ti­fi­ca­tions such as Green Key (for ac­com­mo­da­tion fa­cil­i­ties, at­trac­tions, restau­rants) and Blue Flag (beach­es and mari­nas) should be pur­sued as is sim­i­lar­ly be­ing done in To­ba­go, she ad­vised.

“These eco­cer­ti­fi­ca­tions are not nec­es­sar­i­ly for the do­mes­tic mar­ket al­though lo­cals will ben­e­fit but rather it is crit­i­cal in this pe­ri­od as a mar­ket­ing/brand­ing strat­e­gy for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el to re-po­si­tion Trinidad and by ex­ten­sion Ch­aguara­mas as an eco/ad­ven­ture des­ti­na­tion in the minds of trav­ellers,”Brown-Williams added.

She said an im­me­di­ate pur­suit of these cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for sites and hos­pi­tal­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties in the Ch­aguara­mas area is rec­om­mend­ed since many des­ti­na­tions have em­barked on sim­i­lar ac­tiv­i­ties to jos­tle in ad­vance for space in the minds of trav­ellers who are gear­ing up for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el in the fu­ture.

Brown-Williams said in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ments are al­so need­ed to ex­ist­ing ac­tiv­i­ties to con­nect deep­er with na­ture and the des­ti­na­tion.

She ex­plained that for peo­ple who ven­ture in­to the Bam­boo Cathe­dral area and trek to the track­ing sta­tion and stop at the small plateau per­haps there should be a view­ing plat­form like what is of­fered in oth­er na­tion­al parks such as the Vir­gin Is­lands Na­tion­al Park, Egmont Na­tion­al Park in New Zealand or the Iguaçu Na­tion­al Park, Brazil.

Sup­port­ing sig­nage apart from the “Chal­lenge Com­plete” word­ing spray print­ed on the top of the hill af­fords so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers in the health and well­ness and eco/ad­ven­ture fra­ter­ni­ty to take key pho­tos and de­vel­op con­tent for mar­ket­ing Ch­aguara­mas, she added.

For po­ten­tial and ex­ist­ing star gaz­ers who uti­lize the track­ing sta­tion, Brown-Williams said one of the Caribbean’s first ear­ly-warn­ing radar sys­tem can be re­pur­posed to es­tab­lish a stargaz­ing ob­ser­va­to­ry like that of the Sci­ence Cen­tre in Sin­ga­pore.

Ch­aguara­mas al­so presents it­self as suit­able for new types of tourism ac­com­mo­da­tion and ac­com­mo­da­tion ac­tiv­i­ties such as glamp­ing(the ac­tiv­i­ty of camp­ing with some of the com­forts and lux­u­ries of home), she not­ed.

Brown-Williams added that the emer­gence of Airbnb has proven that trav­ellers to the Caribbean have shift­ed their gaze some­what away from the tra­di­tion­al ac­com­mo­da­tion types e.g. all-in­clu­sive re­sorts and want unique ex­pe­ri­ences such as stay­ing in a tree house, a re­pur­posed bus or in a lo­cal home.

These im­proved ac­tiv­i­ties must be ap­pro­pri­ate­ly pack­aged and priced to at­tract re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al trav­ellers and ap­pro­pri­ate en­try fees and oth­er meth­ods must be im­ple­ment­ed to man­age vis­i­tor ca­pac­i­ty to avoid ‘over­tourism,’ she said.

Vir­tu­al tours

Brown-Williams al­so ad­vised that vir­tu­al tours must be prop­er­ly de­vel­oped for the var­i­ous sites and at­trac­tions in Ch­aguara­mas.

For ex­am­ple, the Cha­cachacare Salt Ponds re­mains a mys­tery to many lo­cals and in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors how­ev­er, it is one of the most unique fea­tures of the Ch­aguara­mas area.

“In­ter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tours that con­tain sharp im­agery and nar­rat­ed in­for­ma­tion is trend­ing glob­al­ly and is be­ing sold at a cost to those wish­ing to ex­plore in ad­vance or in the in­ter­im due to COVID19 re­stric­tions,” Brown-Williams added.