Birding in Trinidad & Tobago | A Vegan Wildlife Guide | Faraaz Abdool

Link for the Show Notes

In today’s episode, we’ll be talking to Faraaz Abdool, a wildlife photographer, writer, birding guide, safari guide, and conservationist from Trinidad and Tobago.

Faraaz helps people reconnect with the natural world through immersive birding and wildlife experiences. In this episode, he’ll be talking to us about why Trinidad and Tobago is such an incredible destination for nature lovers, from hummingbirds and primates to seabirds, turtles, and migratory birds. We’ll also talk about vegan and vegan-friendly food in Trinidad and Tobago, local chefs, remote villages, and what makes these islands so special for curious, compassionate travelers.

There are a lot of resources, destinations, wildlife experiences, and local food spots we talk about in this episode, so make sure you look at the show notes and the blog post for this episode to get all the details.

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Transcript

Brighde: [00:00:00] Hello, Faraaz, and welcome to The World Vegan Travel Podcast.

Faraaz: Thank you so much, Brighde. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Brighde: Thank you for joining me. I am so thrilled to have this conversation with you, Faraaz, because you are creating travel experiences that are one of my favorite kinds of travel experiences: birding tours. As a wildlife photographer and birding guide, I think many people listening to this will think that sounds like an amazing thing to be able to do, and to be a traveler on one of your tours as well.

So before we dive into all of these amazing experiences that you offer, can you introduce yourself in your own words? Who are you, where are you from, and what is your work in wildlife conservation and tourism all about?

Faraaz: Sure. So hello, everyone. My name is Faraaz Abdool, and I come from the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago [00:01:00] in the Southern Caribbean. My work in tourism really revolves around creating experiences through which people can connect, or, as I say, reconnect, with the natural world. Because, as we know, if we look at the news, we're fairly aware that we're not in the best state ecologically, and my view is that it is purely because of a lack of connection. Somewhere along the way, we've lost our connection with Mother Earth. So that forms the basis of my work.

That's what I try to do on my trips. Wherever we go, of course, I have ended up sort of specializing in birds and birding because that's my area of specialty. I started off photographing all of these different animals and so on, and long before that, I was just always drawn to the natural world. But birds have just been so forthcoming. I mean, I'm looking out of my window now and I'm seeing a little ground dove just [00:02:00] rummaging around in the grass outside. So they're always around, and that's how I have gotten more familiarity with them, in terms of photographing them and learning more about them.

That's what I like to share with people when we journey to these places. So wherever it is that we go, it's the same thing. Birds just happen to be the most forthcoming activity in the landscape. By virtue of doing that, and then just having these very often thought-provoking, insightful conversations along the way, I try to guide people along a path where we can rekindle that connection with the natural rhythms that surround us.

Brighde: And I imagine that taking photos of birds has a really unique set of challenges. I find that it's relatively easy to take an okay picture of an elephant in the wild, but it is much, much more difficult to take an okay picture of [00:03:00] birds. So what are the unique challenges with birds that are not present in other animals?

Faraaz: I think the main one, the funny thing about birds, is that they fly away. I don't know why they do that, but that's the thing.

Brighde: It's annoying.

Faraaz: Really annoying. I'm like, "Why do you fly?" But that's the whole magic of them, right? The key is always in knowing their behavior and in being kind to them, because very often we can get excited and we run towards them, or we approach them too closely, because everything has its personal space, right? Once we respect the personal space of birds, we can make really, really nice pictures. Of course, there are other technicalities that come into play, such as what type of camera you're using, how the light is, and all of these different things. There are a number of factors, which coincidentally I also teach, because I teach bird photography every year. I run a four-part course. You know, shameless self-promotion, as we say.

Brighde: Please, please [00:04:00] self-promote. Go ahead.

Faraaz: So that's done through an organization called Bird Alliance of Oregon, based in the western US, and it's all online. All that is to say that there are a lot of technical aspects that come into it. But the key challenge is always just being kind and being aware of how we are behaving towards the birds. When you do that, then they teach you how they behave. They teach you all of their little idiosyncrasies. One, you get better experiences, and two, you get better photos.

Brighde: I really invite listeners to go onto Faraaz's website. I went on again to his website before joining him on this call, and it's a new website, and I'm just blown away by the beautiful images that you have created. I mean, you obviously have an eye for this, and you have worked so hard on this skill.

These photographs that you're taking of birds and other animals absolutely take my breath away. They're really so special. So [00:05:00] listeners, please, please go and check out the website. It's really amazing. So let's talk about Trinidad and Tobago as a nature destination. I have to say, it never really occurred to me as a nature destination, to be honest. My friend is just finishing up having lived there for nearly two years, so I've learnt a little bit more. But what makes these islands extraordinary when it comes to nature experiences?

Faraaz: A lovely question and a very relevant one. So it boils down to the geological history of the islands. They do not have the same geological history. They have very different histories. I would start with Trinidad. Trinidad has a very short life as an island. Trinidad is very much a continental island. It has been part of South America for a very long time, up until the end of the last Ice Age. So as the [00:06:00] ice melted about 10,000 or 11,000 years ago, the sea levels rose and flooded the land bridge between Trinidad and Venezuela.

So we have actually a very active history with the indigenous people of South America, that they would be walking from the mainland, which they call the Main, to the island called Iere or Caeri in their native language, and they would be going back between Main and island. When that land bridge flooded, that is when Trinidad itself, as an island, was born. So in geological history, it's a very short timeframe. It's a short timeframe, plus Trinidad has a lot of South American flora and fauna because it was South American, right?

Tobago, on the other hand, is a piece of rock that's been drifting eastward for the last 65 million years. It started [00:07:00] from somewhere around Panama, in the northwest of South America, and it started drifting eastward from there. So it passed Colombia, it passed Venezuela, and it is now just off the northeastern coast of Trinidad. That is a longer history. It is still South American, with more sort of northern, South Central American fauna and flora, but that length of time, those millions of years, means that a number of endemic species have evolved. Some are endemic subspecies, so they're yet to be declared as a new and different species. But I think about 31% of the birds that breed on Tobago are actually an endemic subspecies to the island itself.

Brighde: Ooh, wow.

Faraaz: That's the varied geological history. Plus it's an equatorial location. It falls under this whole region of the Neotropics, and so, generally, there is very high [00:08:00] biodiversity. Add to that the natural migratory paths of birds. They come from North America and fly south to South America, and they have these really cool things that they call flyways. The flyways are like highways or roads or rivers or whatever it is.

If you visualize how a river flows out to the sea, and you visualize its tributaries, you see it comes from multiple places, it gets into one, and then when it gets to its destination, it splits into multiple areas. That's how the migratory birds fly from North America to South America. They gather across North America, and they can fly either over Central America or over the Caribbean. When they fly over the Caribbean, they fly directly over Trinidad and Tobago. We also get a lot of birds that come in from the north as well as from the south when it's winter in the south. Those birds would come up through South America and get to us too. So we have a whole lot of diversity.

Brighde: I didn't realize that. That's so interesting. What are [00:09:00] some of the migratory birds that are using the flyways that normal people might have heard of? I'm guessing maybe some hummingbirds come past you? I'm not sure.

Faraaz: Yeah, we have a number of native species of hummingbirds, but the ones that are found here actually migrate a short migration to South America. So when they're finished breeding, they do a dispersal across northern South America. But I would say the birds that people would know, like some swallows, some warblers, some thrushes, these small songbirds. What about maybe the peregrine falcon? It's the fastest bird on Earth, and it's regularly hunting pigeons through New York City, but in wintertime it's here.

Brighde: I'm embarrassed to say that I did not know that peregrine falcons migrated that far.

Faraaz: Yeah, they follow a lot of the other smaller birds that we may not be familiar with.

Brighde: And are there any other unique [00:10:00] species that listeners may know about? Maybe bird families that are particularly well known and can be seen in Trinidad and Tobago?

Faraaz: Trinidad and Tobago is widely known as the perfect introduction to Neotropical birding because we have representatives from a number of the major Neotropical bird families. So we have toucans, we have motmots, we have jacamars, we have all sorts of interesting families. But within each family there is one species, so you don't have to be like, "Oh, there's a toucan. Wait, which one is it?" It's not overwhelming.

Brighde: I love it. Okay. If someone just had a few days in Trinidad and Tobago and they were with you, looking at birds and looking at nature, what would surprise them most, do you think?

Faraaz: I would say the quickness with which we can change the habitat. We can start the morning in this very cool mountainous area. It's huge, [00:11:00] huge trees with big leaves, and it's misty and all of these magical things. Then we have lunch, and the afternoon finds us in a mangrove swamp, for example. It's totally different. It's totally different humidity, temperature, flora, fauna, everything. The whole vibe is different. So that ability to switch vibration, in a way, within a short space of time, I think that's what would really surprise a lot of people.

Brighde: Mm. How big is Trinidad and Tobago? Could you explain the diameters of the islands, how you get from one island to the other, and how long it takes?

Faraaz: Now, I know the area. It's about, I think, just over 5,000 square kilometers. 5,131, I think.

Brighde: Okay.

Faraaz: Yeah, it's fairly small. Trinidad has about 1.4 million people on it. So what you have to take into consideration when you're getting around is that, in theory, it doesn't take a long time, right? [00:12:00] It's a short distance, but traffic. There is often a lot of traffic, especially in the western half of the island. So that's just something to take into consideration. You can drive from one end to the next within maybe anywhere between two and three hours, depending on the traffic.

Brighde: My friend who lives in Trinidad and Tobago does say that the traffic can be quite difficult at times. Yeah, quite bad. So you offer a primates and hummingbirds experience, correct? Could you tell us where this takes place and what we are likely to see during that time?

Faraaz: So I mentioned that most of the traffic is on the western side of the island, right? This entire thing takes place on the eastern side, so we're going far away from people, which is typically ideal. We start in a wetland [00:13:00] on the east coast. The east coast of Trinidad is the Atlantic coast, so it's a very wild, ancient coast, and it's battered by winds all the time, so the salinity of the wetland is different. But that area, that little wetland there, borders into some other lowland forest. That's the only place where we can currently see our two native primate species.

So basically, we get to a point in the swamp, we jump on a boat, and it has to be a tiny boat, like a tiny flat-bottom boat. It's for places that have very shallow water, because it's shallow channels that we're going through. The whole thing is tide-dependent. We have to make sure that the low tide doesn't catch us there because we're going into the swamp, into a little sandy peninsula, and that is only accessible by boat or a very long walk. So we want to make sure that it's planned properly so that we don't get caught there [00:14:00] on low tide, because even if you jump out, it's mud, right? That whole area is very muddy. It's mangrove swamp, so you just sink when you jump out anyway.

But yeah, in those channels, we're looking out for multiple species of kingfishers and herons and manatees. You know what manatees are? These huge, people used to call them sea cows, right? Or like dugongs. It's a different species, but we have the West Indian manatee, and that's one of the few places in the country to find it.

When we get to this place, we come out and walk on this kind of, it's like an ancient beach because it's very sandy. We always go with a local forester because you need a permit to enter there. It's a protected wildlife sanctuary. One of the things that I always do on all of my tours is, wherever possible, wherever there is a guide, like a village guide, I always try to employ these people, just to give them more involvement in the local tourism sector. [00:15:00] I mean, I know the birds, I know the places to go, and I could take people, but it's about putting money in the community as well, yeah?

But yeah, the two species of primates that we can find there are the red howler monkey, and we hear those a lot of times before we see them, and the Trinidad white-fronted capuchin.

Brighde: Oh, I know.

Faraaz: So they're smaller. We know the ones in Costa Rica, the black ones with the white face, and these are similar, but they're all white. They are actually critically endangered. They're only found on Trinidad. The monkeys are wild. Everything is wild there, so there is no guarantee of seeing them, but we will try. Our local forester would know where they're feeding. He would know what trees are in fruit or whatever. He would see their scat on the ground and look up and say, "Okay, they were just here," and that kind of thing.

It's really exciting. All of that looking for monkeys tends to work up an appetite. So then after [00:16:00] that, I take people further north into the forest where we go to this family that has a little estate in the hills. It's within a national park in the northeast. They have hummingbird feeders, they have fruit feeders, so you get a boatload of birds, just every color of the rainbow, and they're coming in right in front of your face. Typically, we have trouble getting people to eat. It's a home-cooked meal, and it's delicious and everything, but there are just so many distractions, right? So yeah, it's just a nice family vibe.

Brighde: Fabulous. Oh, that just sounds like an absolutely wonderful day. So is that a one-day experience that they can have with you?

Faraaz: I do multi-day trips, because it's a lot of effort that goes into planning all of these things. If I do multiple single-day trips, I'm putting out a lot more effort. Based on the varied things that I do, I've decided that I need to streamline how I do things. So that day would form [00:17:00] one day in a multi-day excursion.

Brighde: That sounds lovely. And are you booking people's hotels, reserving hotels for them as well?

Faraaz: Everything. Yeah, all the lodging, the meals, transport, domestic flights as well. I didn't answer that part of the question. You were asking about how we transfer between one island and the next. There are domestic flights that run multiple times for the day, and there's also a ferry, which takes about three hours to get from one island to the next.

Brighde: That's not so long at all. That's easy.

Faraaz: It is.

Brighde: Okay. And I think one of the days on your tours is a journey to a remote mountain village and a farm-to-table meal. Could you tell us more about that?

Faraaz: So that village is a village called Brasso Seco, and if you look for Brasso Seco on the map, you'll see it is right nestled within the mountains. The northern end of [00:18:00] Trinidad is entirely a mountain range called the Northern Range. The Northern Range is the northernmost outcrop of the Andes.

So the Andes comes up all through South America, then curves eastward through Colombia and Venezuela. The end of it is in Trinidad. There is one road that goes from the northern coast over the mountains into the more populous areas south of the Northern Range. One of those roads is the Arima-Blanchisseuse Road. Blanchisseuse is French for washerwoman, and my French is poor, so I'm sorry to all French speakers. But along that road, there's a turnoff, and it takes you from sea level up until about 600 meters above sea level.

It's a lovely road to drive. I enjoy that trip very much. It takes you through this wonderful old virgin forest habitat, and you can take easily about five hours to go from one end to the other end, just based on the views, the state of the road, because there are a lot of potholes, and any of the animals that you may see along the way, mostly birds, of course. [00:19:00]

When you get to that village, I have a couple of contacts there. What we used to do there was there was a village co-op. A number of farmers would get together, and they would put all of their produce in boxes. You pay like 200 TT dollars, which is like 30 US dollars, for a mixed box from this farming co-op. Through them, some people from that have a small, there's a chef and they have a little kind of restaurant that they're starting up. So after all that long journey, we pull up, and it's a nice wooden structure set [00:20:00] in the forest, and we have a lovely meal there. The meals are always lovely.

Brighde: Oh, I love it. I think you're pretty much vegan, right? I'm guessing that means that there are some fun vegan options for vegan travelers.

Faraaz: Yeah, absolutely. Most of my meals are vegan. I don't eat meat at all. I don't eat fish at all. I do very minimal dairy because sometimes dairy is unavoidable on travels. If you check my website, you'll know that I go to some fairly remote locations. I do still eat eggs from time to time. The reason I keep on doing that is just to make sure that my body is fine just in case I'm in some remote location. As a tour leader, there's no option of really taking a lie-in. You always have to be out and about.

Yeah, in Trinidad and Tobago, it is very easy to eat vegan all the time. In [00:21:00] Tobago, a little less so because there are just fewer options in the supermarkets. As you go up the Caribbean, because I also do these birding trips in the Caribbean, many of the smaller islands, like Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, it can be very tough to get a balanced meal if you are fully vegan. You have to know exactly where you're going. Sometimes I end up having to carry power bars, granola bars and stuff like that, just to supplement myself.

But yeah, in Trinidad and Tobago, I work with all of these different chefs. It's not like restaurants that I'm always taking people to. Many of them are private chefs, like the one in Brasso Seco that I just told you about. I know him really well, and he loves to cook vegan. The estate in the northeast with the hummingbirds and stuff like that, these are people who I know. I spent a lot of time in these sort of fringe counterculture circles, and a lot of [00:22:00] us ended up being chefs. So I have a lot of contacts too.

Brighde: I love it. Sounds delicious, and I'm sure there's an abundance of beautiful fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and beans in the Caribbean. I guess from what I've read, because I don't know because I've never been there. But it seems like there would be an abundance of beautiful fruits and veggies there.

Faraaz: Absolutely. A lot of fruits, a lot of veggies. But we're still now coming out of, there's like a breakaway from Western diets, and the Western diet is a very meat-heavy diet. We are now trying to get away from that and people are reconnecting with things. So you get people doing a lot of innovative things with food that are non-meat options and totally vegan options as well. I had a burger, for example. There was a bistro that sadly is closed now, but there was a bistro in the south of the island, and I had this [00:23:00] burger from there, and the patty was black bean, black mushroom, and beet.

So it was all of that just blended in, and it was served with caramelized onions in a plantain bun.

Brighde: Mm.

Faraaz: So...

Brighde: Plantain bun. How fun.

Faraaz: Exactly. So the bun itself, there was no bread involved. It was simply two huge slices of plantains. Oh, that was so delicious.

Brighde: Pardon my ignorance, Faraaz, but was Trinidad and Tobago colonized in the past? And if so, who were they colonized by? I'm just wondering how their diet became so meat-heavy when traditionally it was not.

Faraaz: Yeah, so indigenous people would have an omnivorous diet, but it wasn't like how it is now. Trinidad was colonized by the Spanish first, and then the British, right? So we had Spanish and British influence in Trinidad. Tobago had a different political history as well. Tobago changed hands 32 times, I believe, between the Spanish, English, French, [00:24:00] Dutch, Latvians, a bunch of different people who were fighting over Tobago because she is just so beautiful. Everyone wanted their hands on her.

Brighde: Yeah, they shouldn't have done that, but I can understand why they wanted to. You've talked a lot about the birds in the forest and those in the swamp. I'm just wondering if you have some interesting seabirds there, because that's just a whole other ballgame, to have incredible seabirds. I was lucky enough to go to the Galapagos last year, and I kind of fell in love with seabirds and the incredible diversity.

Faraaz: This last trip that I did, we were at the northeastern end of Tobago. So if you visualize it on a map, that's the furthest point, right? What we did is we left a village that was on the Caribbean side. Tobago goes from the northeast to the southwest, so it's diagonal. On the [00:25:00] northern coast, on the northern end, you have the Caribbean Sea, and on the other side is the Atlantic Ocean. They are two very distinct oceans: different moods, different energies, different environments, all of these different things, right? Different coastlines as well.

So we leave from a village on the Caribbean side, and we head north on a boat. We'd just spent the day there. We got a locally made lunch at a village restaurant. We got on a boat. We got out. We did some snorkeling. People just soaked in the water, and it's an idyllic Caribbean Sea kind of vibe. We leave from the Caribbean Sea, we go north, and we circumnavigate the northernmost islands of Trinidad and Tobago, which are some tiny islands, like seabird sanctuaries on the northern end.

We circumnavigate those. We take in the sights. We have seabirds coming out, multiple species [00:26:00] of seabirds just flying around the boat, accompanying us as we go. We saw maybe easily five or six different seabird species while we were there around those islands. Beyond that is just open ocean. That's open Atlantic. In doing that, we cross over from the Caribbean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, and then we come back into port, but we come back into another village on the Atlantic side.

So we start in one ocean, and we end in another ocean. In between, we went around these islands and saw a boatload of seabirds. Then as we're coming in, the sun is going down. The sun is coming over through all of the trees on the island and just bathing all of the rocks that are also being bathed in mist and sea spray. It was so magical. The birds were flying around, and some of the seabirds are like little angels. They have these long white wings. Their tails are long. They have tail streamers and stuff like that, so they're catching the [00:27:00] light. They're looking like stars twinkling against the dark rocks that are in shadow. You have all of this mist going on. It was a scene that was difficult to describe without using obscenities. Let's just put it like that.

Brighde: It does sound absolutely lovely. Oh my goodness. T&T has just bumped itself up into the top 10 of dream destinations, I think, just from your beautiful descriptions and the beautiful images that you have taken. That's incredible.

Faraaz: It's magic.

Brighde: So you've mentioned that, even though T&T is a tropical destination, it sounds like there could be some times of year that are better to visit for wildlife than others. When are the best times, or what are the different times? Because maybe people should go back more than once.

Faraaz: So many people who visit here come back, and the group that I just had, so many of them promised, "You know, we will [00:28:00] be back. We will be back," because there is so much to see. Around now, this time of year, a lot of the birds are building nests and they're raising young, so we get to see a lot of different kinds of behaviors. Also, from March up until June is prime turtle nesting activity. It's such a high level of the mothers coming up on the beach and laying their eggs, and it reaches its highest concentration with adults on the beach around this time of year, May into June.

Brighde: Around this time.

Faraaz: But then as we go into June and further on beyond June, let's say June through September, sometimes the activities of the birds tend to ease up a little bit. We get less bird activity, but then you have more turtle activity, because you have the babies coming out. The little baby turtles come out on the beach, and they're running in, and the mothers are coming to lay, and it's all fabulous. Later [00:29:00] in the year, from December into let's say January, February, around then, the climate is a lot more friendly to people who are accustomed to cooler temperatures. Those are our coolest months.

Brighde: Ah. There's something to be said for that because you're traipsing around in quite difficult environments, I imagine. You talked about swamps. You talked about mountains and big forests. I'm guessing a lot of them are very tropical. I'm sure having good weather conditions is going to make things a little bit easier.

Faraaz: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, to be fair, we don't get hurricanes because we are south of the Atlantic hurricane belt, so that's always really appreciated.

Brighde: I love it! All right, Faraaz. It's been so wonderful to talk with you. I do want to learn about what projects you're working on at the moment, and what your future plans are for your bird photography holidays.

Faraaz: So the biggest project that I'm working on right now is actually a little [00:30:00] book. It's going to be a guidebook to the birds of Trinidad and Tobago. It will be a photographic guide, and it is scheduled to be published in 2027. So mark your calendars. Sometime during the year, it's going to be released. I can't share too many other details. We haven't gotten a cover yet from the publisher. But as soon as I get the cover, I will be sharing it on my website, along with further details and so on.

There are a few pictures of birds that I still need, so I'm still working on those, some of the more difficult species and so on. After that, I continue to do the tours I offer, mostly, of course, birdwatching and wildlife-watching safaris. In a couple of weeks we go back to Africa. Every year we do safaris in East Africa, and this year we're doing three back-to-back trips. Last year we did four, so it's a little shorter time, but we're doing three countries this year. So we're starting off in Uganda, [00:31:00] then off to Tanzania, and then we finish off in Kenya.

Brighde: Oh, that sounds fabulous.

Faraaz: Yeah, it's going to be amazing.

Brighde: I just want to go back to your field guide that you are putting together. I imagine that that would be a huge job to put together a photographic guide, because you have to capture pictures that will help the reader identify the birds. So they have to be in the perfect lighting, they have to show all of the colors, and I imagine different angles, and the males and the females and the juveniles.

Faraaz: Yeah, I'm guiding people and I have to say, "Okay, listen, there is this really common bird, and it's a female, whatever it is, and it's brown and nondescript and not much to look at or whatever, but I will be photographing her because I need it for this thing." So that's what I've literally been doing. The males look different, the females look different. Oh, I need a juvenile of this one. And [00:32:00] I'm co-authoring it with someone. He's the author of the current field guide to the birds of Trinidad and Tobago. He's a good friend of mine. He's like, "Faraaz, you know, leave the artsy pictures out of this. We need a different style of photograph." Because I'm all about the magic, right? I see all of these amazing things in front of me, and I just want to depict it as best as I see fit. But very often the photos that we need for the field guide are entirely different.

So yeah. It's 320 species that we're supposed to be covering in this, so it's going to be quite a volume.

Brighde: I wish you a huge amount of luck, and please do let me know when it is published or when you have more details. I'd love to tell people about it in our newsletter or something like that. That would be lovely. All right, Faraaz, please do share with us your website and your Instagram so people can go and check.

Faraaz: My [00:33:00] website is www.faraazabdool.com, and I am on Instagram and Facebook @faraazabdool.

Brighde: And it's Faraaz, F-A-R-A-A-Z, and Abdool is A-B-D-O-O-L dot com, right?

Faraaz: Thank you so much, Brighde.

Brighde: Thank you so much, Faraaz.

Faraaz: Much appreciated. Thanks for having me.