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A two-minute walk from the airport brings you to the best and most popular place to swim in Crown Point, Store Bay beach (lifeguards 10am-6pm). Close to the main hotels and with excellent, inexpensive food and crafts available, the fine, off-white sand is a favourite with many people (including the notoriously unadventurous Trinidadian holiday-makers). Though the cove is fairly small, the crystal calm waters and family atmosphere make it excellent for children and for those with a keen interest in people-watching. Facilities include a car park, changing facilities (daily 10am-6pm; TT$1) with lockers (TT$10 per day), as well as a couple of bars blasting reggae and soca. Best of all are the row of stalls housing the famed cookshops (8.30am-8.30pm) - Miss Jean 's and Miss Esmie' s are local institutions - a trip to Tobago would be incomplete without a plate of their crab and dumplin' . For a more expensive, though equally delicious meal, try Kariwak Village , the best hotel and restaurant in the area. The purpose-built craft shops (8am-8pm) at Store Bay are one of the best places to buy souvenirs, including carved calabashes, leather sandals and batiks. Running north from the airport past the entrance to Store Bay, Airport Road becomes Milford Road. Here, a left-hand turn (marked by the neon constellation of the Golden Star bar and restaurant) leads to Pigeon Point beach (daily 8am-7pm; TT$12), a picture-postcard Caribbean beach increasingly dominated by foreign sun-worshippers. The shoreline here - unlike the majority of Tobago's rugged beaches - is definitively Caribbean; powdery white sand and a turquoise sea lined with coconut palms. As an immensely popular strip that includes Tobago's most photographed pier - a weathered wooden boardwalk with a thatched roof hut at the end - it is one of the few places in the island to suffer from development. The shower blocks are shoddy, piles of beach chairs are rented at TT$5 a day and the fast-food chain Pizza Boys have ousted the local cafe (though it's sometimes possible to buy roti and the odd local dish on the beach). The groynes constructed to curtail beach erosion have reduced the water circulation, and this - along with general pollution - has allowed algae to flourish on the sea floor, making local people question the sagacity of swimming in what on a bad day resembles a rather milky soup. Though water quality is monitored by local environmental groups, and the chance of getting sick is pretty scant, try to shower off as soon as you leave the water and avoid immersing your head. During the rainy season, mosquitoes from the nearby marsh have a field day - insect repellent is essential. If you're driving into Pigeon Point, avoid parking under a coconut-laden palm - a single fallen nut can cause a lot of damage.
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