The word that jumps to my mind as I first see him is "dapper".The smiling older gentleman with a large walrus moustache, green "old time" hat, floral shirt and a tie patterned with holly, berries and a teddy bear wearing a Santa Claus hat strolls up to the verandah, accompanied by four female tourists.He extends greetings, introduces his Swedish clients and exchanges a few words with Ean Mackay, owner/manager of Adventure Farm and Nature Reserve in Plymouth, where we all are now.
The estate visit is the women's final taste of Tobago before they are taken to the airport for their Apollo flight home.Scores of hummingbirds (a percentage of an estimated 1,000 inhabiting the estate) hover around feeders on the verandah. The collective buzzing of their wings and soft wind created by their movement is fascinating, especially for those who have never seen hummingbirds in real life–and so many, so close.
Ean informs me that Mr Blackman has a wealth of valuable knowledge and experience in the local touring industry. As far as Tobago guides go, he is a trophy from a fading era."I started when I was thirteen," Mr B says, when I ask him how long he has been in the business. One day, all those decades ago, while working a private job as a bread boy, some tourists at the Robinson Crusoe Hotel inquired about the plaited bakery loaves he was delivering.
"Miss Ibis", manager of the hotel, overheard young Mr B's eloquent explanation and, highly impressed by the way in which he spoke with the guests, invited and encouraged him to become a hotel tour guide. As he could not drive at the time, she had hired a taxi to take him and his guests around.
"You have to know about your own country before you know about other people's country," Mr B says, repeating the words of his school principal at the time. Armed with all he had been learning about Tobago at school, the young teen lived up to his new role as tour guide.His first payment was "six, six cent pieces which had twelve corners in those days." There was no looking back.
Today, Hurlton (that's a Scottish name) Hugh Blackman is an award-winning guide. In 2004 and 2006 he won the award for Best Tour Guide Taxi Driver in Tobago.In 2012 he was awarded as one of the icons in the Tobago Tourism Industry.One of his specialties is the ability to summon the rare white-tailed sabrewing hummingbird to come to him in the middle of the rainforest.
It took him six months, using a special feed and specific call, to train the hummingbirds to gather and feed from his hand–a popular "photo op" for photographers. Now, even when the food is done, the hummingbirds still follow him along the trail, as far as the bridge, before flying back into the forest.
"They call me 'The taxi driver with the biggest moustache,'" he tells me a few days later as we chat briefly on the phone. He explains that the whole of Tobago, "the kids and all", know him by that nickname. "And at the airport you could ask for 'Big Moosh'. This moustache has been my style for more than forty-three years."
As we close our conversation, he offers some words of advice from his grandfather, ingrained in him since childhood–and clearly lived up to: "When you're doing something, if you cannot do it from your heart, don't do it at all."