San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago — Towns & Travel Guide

What is San Fernando known for?

San Fernando's reputation rests on two things. Industry is one: the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery sits close by, and the smelters and petrochemical works at Point Lisas in Couva, at Point Fortin and at La Brea have earned the city its label as the industrial capital of Trinidad and Tobago. Carnival is the other, with competitions and parades built around Skinner Park.

San Fernando Hill stands over both.

Where is San Fernando?

Four edges box the city in. The Guaracara River marks the northern boundary and the Oropouche River the southern, while the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway closes the eastern side and the Gulf of Paria the western. That gives San Fernando about 19 square kilometres of ground on the island of Trinidad.

It is not a large footprint. Within it the land is anything but flat, because the city was laid out over hills and the streets still climb and drop between one district and the next. San Fernando Hill is the best known of those hills anywhere on Trinidad.

It rises inside the city rather than outside it, so the built-up streets run right up to its base and the view from the slopes takes in the Gulf of Paria and the flat coastal ground beyond. North of the city the land carries industry. The Pointe-à-Pierre refinery stands out that way, and the Pointe-a-Pierre Wild Fowl Trust keeps wetland and woodland beside it.

Chaguanas lies further along the same island. The tropical band the city sits in keeps the vegetation green through the year on the slopes the streets have not taken.

What is San Fernando like?

Carnival runs the calendar. San Fernando builds toward its own season of competitions rather than borrowing another city's, and Skinner Park is where that build-up lands, with a wide assortment of contests staged on the ground before the parades take to the streets. The parades themselves are loud.

Many local Trinidadians call the city Sando, and that short form does most of the work the full name would. A motto sets the tone the city gives itself: Sanitas Fortis, rendered as In a Healthy Environment We Will Find Strength, which sits beside the refineries that gave San Fernando its industrial capital label. Work here means the plants.

Smelters and petrochemical works at Point Lisas in Couva, at Point Fortin and at La Brea draw people in and out of the city on shift, and that rhythm shapes the week as much as the carnival season shapes the year. Birdlife gets a look in too. The Pointe-a-Pierre Wild Fowl Trust runs beside the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery on the road out of San Fernando.

The competitions, the shift work and the wetland reserve all sit inside 19 square kilometres, which is why the carnival, the refinery gates and the Gulf of Paria shoreline can all be reached in one day.

What is the history of San Fernando?

San Fernando was a borough before it was a city. That standing changed on 18 November 1988, when the former borough was elevated to a city corporation, and City of San Fernando became the official form of the name. The motto stayed: Sanitas Fortis.

Industry had already made the place what it is, with the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery and the works at Point Lisas, Point Fortin and La Brea pulling the heavy plant of Trinidad and Tobago into this corner of the island.

What is the climate of San Fernando?

The Gulf of Paria does the moderating here. San Fernando lies in the tropical band with open water along its western edge, so sea air reaches the lower streets while the heat sits heavier on the slopes climbing toward San Fernando Hill. Seasons read as wet and dry.

Rain that falls on the hills runs off fast toward the Guaracara River on one side and the Oropouche River on the other, and the slopes stay green through the year.

How do you get to San Fernando?

The Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway is the road in. It runs along the eastern boundary of San Fernando and carries the traffic that moves between the city, Chaguanas and the Point Lisas works at Couva, which makes driving the usual way to arrive. Most arrivals come that way.

The same corridor carries on toward Point Fortin and La Brea past the Pointe-à-Pierre refinery, while the Gulf of Paria shuts the western side of the city.