Have you ever noticed how it takes people to visit for you to get up and take a look at your own surroundings? This was the case with our trip to the Asa Wright Nature Centre nestled on 1,500 acres in the mountains of the Northern Range Mountains of Trinidad’s lush tropical forest

It boasts of having native amphibians, birds, butterflies, reptiles, mammals and over 2,200 species of flowering plants! Unfortunately, we can’t say we saw a whole lot of animals or birds. From the huge open-air verandah which has specials feeders and nesting areas in the thatched roofing to attract birds we did see a variety of hummingbirds that were electric blue and emerald green. They hovered in nibbled and darted out again. Getting a photo of them was near impossible! Splodges and blurs in my photographs represented birds we saw.

The nature trail walk however gave us a more hands-on feel as we followed our guide into the undergrowth. He periodically broke off leaves from plants and trees and asked us to identify it by sniffing it, which we proved to be quite useless at. He also ran through the history of the centre pointing out areas on the trail which were said to be haunted! There’s nothing like a good ghost story to ask to head back to the centre, where we enjoyed the picturesque view from the verandah and a spot of tea until it was time to go home.