Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

From January onwards, steel orchestras rehearse outdoors in their home yards across the city — Laventille, Woodbrook and St James are the districts to ask about — working up their Panorama competition pieces from scratch, night after night. Anyone can turn up and listen. There is no stage and no ticket: you stand at the edge of a yard while a hundred players take a piece apart and rebuild it, and it is the single most extraordinary free thing on offer anywhere in the region. Outside the season, the steelpan heritage is presented year-round at the National Academy for the Performing Arts. If you take only one piece of advice about Port of Spain, make it this one: find a panyard.

Carnival's two public days fall on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, so the date moves each year, but the season runs for weeks ahead with fêtes most weekends. It begins properly before dawn on the Monday with j'ouvert, when the streets fill with mud, paint and oil and there is no audience at all — everyone is in it. Tuesday is the Parade of the Bands, the costumed masquerade moving through the Savannah judging points, and the way to experience it is to register with a band, collect your costume and walk the route. Spectating is possible and much the poorer option. Flights, accommodation and band registration all sell out months ahead, so this is a trip you plan far in advance or not at all.

The Savannah is the city's lung and its reference point — a vast open green at the top of town, circled by a road that functions as everyone's mental map, with vendors selling coconut water from truck beds along the edge. On its western side stands the row of late-Victorian and Edwardian houses known as the Magnificent Seven: no two alike, one turreted, one heavily arcaded, and among them the gingerbread fretwork of Boissière House. They are viewed from the pavement rather than entered, and the sequence is best walked in the late afternoon. On the northern edge, the Botanic Gardens and the small Emperor Valley Zoo give a shaded hour, and the President's House grounds sit alongside.

Trinidad holds the largest Indo-Caribbean population in the Americas and its food reflects that completely — not as a separate cuisine but as the mainstream one. Doubles are the thing to learn first: two soft fried bara flatbreads folded around curried chickpeas, ordered by how much pepper you want, eaten standing at a stand in the morning for very little money. Say “slight” if you are unsure. Roti is the all-day staple, wrapped around curried meat or vegetables; pholourie with tamarind sauce is the snack; pelau, the one-pot rice dish, appears at every gathering. In the evening, Ariapita Avenue in Woodbrook is where the city eats and drinks, and it stays busy well into the night.

The classic half-day out of the city climbs the North Coast Road over the Northern Range and drops to Maracas Bay on the Atlantic side, with a lookout partway up that everyone stops at. The beach itself is a long stretch of surf and coarse sand backed by palms — a swimming beach with real waves rather than a lagoon, so watch the flags and the lifeguards. The reason people actually go is bake-and-shark: fried shark in a soft fried bake, taken to a condiment table where you build it yourself from tamarind, garlic sauce, pepper, pineapple and salad. Las Cuevas, quieter, is a little further along the same road, and both are firmly weekend territory for Trinidadians.

Twenty minutes or so south of the city, the Caroni Bird Sanctuary is a mangrove system worked by flat boats on a fixed daily rhythm: you go out in the late afternoon, thread the channels while the guide points out herons, caimans and tree boas, then moor in open water at dusk. What happens next is the point — thousands of Scarlet Ibis, the national bird, come in to roost in waves and turn whole mangrove islands crimson against a fading sky. It runs nightly rather than seasonally, boat capacity is limited and it fills up, so book ahead. Bring insect repellent and something warm enough for the water at dusk.

Piarco airport lies east of the city, roughly half an hour out depending on traffic, with regional and long-haul connections. Getting around locally means route taxis and maxi-taxis — shared cars and minibuses running fixed routes, cheap and efficient once you know the system, with the colour of a maxi's stripe telling you its route. Ask your accommodation which to take rather than guessing. Traffic into the city in the morning is heavy and best avoided. The ferry to Tobago leaves from the port downtown. January to May is the dry season and includes Carnival, making it both the best and the busiest window; June to December is wetter, quieter and cheaper.