Forbidden Islands
13 Places in Trinidad You Should Never Visit Alone
You are not afraid of these places. You are afraid of how fast they can take someone who came alone. Trinidad has an asphalt lake two hundred and fifty feet deep that closes over anything that stands still, rip currents off Maracas that run up to two metres per second, and a single stretch of southeast coast that has taken at least fourteen lives since 2020. This is a small island, roughly 1,800 square miles, and every one of these places sits within an afternoon's drive of a city. Thirteen places, where being there alone is the danger.
In this video, we explore:
→ The Devil's Woodyard near Princes Town, a mud volcano that erupted in 1995 and sits directly under a working Hindu shrine, on ground that moves without warning
→ Manzanilla, the long Atlantic beach where a father of two went under and was recovered 400 metres from where he was last seen standing
→ The Gasparee Caves off Chaguaramas, a tidal pool 85 to 100 feet underground where swimming is prohibited outright and access is by boat only
→ Rio Seco Waterfall in the Matura forest, a plunge pool about 25 feet deep that drowned two men within weeks of each other in June 2020
→ Las Cuevas Bay, where the currents at the western end drowned a Coast Guard officer with roughly 20 years of service
→ The Piparo mud volcano, which threw mud and debris 200 feet into the air in 1997 and forced over 300 people from their homes
→ The Caroni Swamp, nearly 6,000 hectares of mangrove where spectacled caiman and anaconda move under the tour boats and the channels double back on themselves
→ Three Pools on the Marianne River, three deep basins that have taken at least four lives in five years
→ The Mayaro and Guayaguayare coast, one stretch of Atlantic beach and river mouth that recorded at least fourteen drownings between 2020 and 2024
→ The Heights of Aripo below Trinidad's highest peak, the search ground that gave rise to the Hunters Search and Rescue Team
→ Paria on the north coast, where a body was recovered from the river in an operation that ran from 8:30 in the morning until 4:20 in the afternoon
→ Maracas Bay, the island's most crowded beach, where rip currents have been recorded close to two metres per second, faster than a person can swim against
And at number one, the Pitch Lake at La Brea, the largest natural asphalt lake in the world. About 100 acres of black bitumen, reported to reach close to 250 feet deep at the centre, holding somewhere between six and ten million tons of pitch that never stops turning over. Most of the surface carries a person's weight, but there are soft spots, and the guidance is to walk only in a guide's footprints, because anyone who stands still on the wrong patch begins to sink into warm asphalt that does not let go. It has surfaced the bones of a giant ground sloth and the tooth of a mastodon, and it is open to visitors every day.
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard and Fire Service Search and Rescue Team (incident and recovery reports via national press). Hunters Search and Rescue Team. Emperor Valley Zoo. Encyclopaedia Britannica and Guinness World Records (Pitch Lake dimensions and reserves). G. Knight, L. Scott, R. Grierson et al., "Activity at the Piparo and Devil's Woodyard Mud Volcanoes" (2020). Reporting from the Trinidad Express, Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, Loop TT, and CNC3.
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Published Aug 2, 2026
